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Man Dip has a six-month lease on life.

That’s about how long local grocery stores will give the spicy sausage and cheese dip, a new product from an unknown local entrepreneur, before they decide whether to keep it or dump it. But that’s a lot farther than most other food startups make it in the highly competitive race for grocery shelf space.

If it were up to Dr. Ted Mimlitz, the man behind Man Dip, the concoction he’s been whipping up for 15 years might have remained just a party favorite and inside joke among his circle of friends.

But about four years ago, Andy Wolf, a serial entrepreneur who has brought to market a number of items including a deer sled for hunters, took a bite of Mimlitz’s dip at a school-related event for their children.

“I said right there, ‘Have you ever thought about bringing this out commercially?’” Wolf said. “I pestered him for three months. Then he called me one December night and said, ‘Do you really think we can do this?’ I said, ‘Absolutely.’

That confidence belies the difficulty in bringing a product to market from scratch. Lots of folks flirt with the idea of branding and selling their homemade creations. But few people pursue it beyond their daydreams.

Local products face stiff competition from large food manufacturers with established brands, bulk negotiating power and money for extensive product and marketing research. Most local food products that have found success at area grocery stores are affiliated with local restaurants or well-known landmarks such as the Hill. Think Imo’s salad dressing, Zia’s pasta sauce and Fitz’s root beer.

“When people see that on your shelves, there’s that connection right away,” said Rich Wallace, Dierbergs’ director of procurement.

Another local example

An alleged renegade trader accused of losing Swiss banking giant UBS about $2 billion in unauthorized trading was charged Friday with fraud and false accounting, and ordered to appear before a London court.

City of London police said that 31-year-old Kweku Adoboli would appear at a magistrates’ court in the British capital on Friday.

“He remains in police custody and is due to appear at City of London Magistrates this afternoon,” the police department said in a statement. It said an investigation involving financial regulator the Financial Services Authority, the Serious Fraud Office and the Crown Prosecution Service was continuing.

Law firm Kingsley Napley, which represented Nick Leeson _ the trader who brought down British bank Barings in 1995 after he made around $1.4 billion of losses in unauthorized trades _ said that it had been hired to represent Adoboli.

In Switzerland, UBS faced pressure to explain how its managers failed to catch the $2 billion loss, and how monitoring systems had been unable to flag up the alleged unauthorized trades.

Adoboli, born in Ghana, has been employed by UBS on an equities desk known as Delta One and worked with exchange-traded funds _ which track different types of stocks or commodities, such as precious metals no checking account payday advance.

Some commentators and politicians called for senior managers at UBS to take responsibility for the loss.

“Until UBS has explained in detail how such a significant loss due to unauthorized trading could happen, and how the problem will be solved, confidence will remain impaired,” said Andreas Venditti, an analyst at Zuercher Kantonalbank.

The international banking industry has been trying to implement stricter controls on traders in the wake of a 2008 scandal at France’s Societe Generale, when trader Jerome Kerviel gambled away euro4.9 billion ($6.7 billion), and the infamous Leeson case.

UBS stock on Friday recovered some of the losses suffered the day before. Investors took the chance to buy the shares cheaply, sending their price up 3.3 percent to 10.07 Swiss francs ($11.52) on the Zurich exchange by early afternoon. Shares had slumped 10 percent the day before, after the bank said a lone employee had caused the massive loss.

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The past month wasn’t exactly a confidence-booster for would-be home buyers and sellers.

They’ve witnessed a turbulent stock market, a downgrade of U.S. credit, a spreading European debt crisis and a U.S. economy that seems to be running in place.

And now many say they’re even more hesitant _ a retreat that could further delay a rebound in housing. It could hold back the overall economy, too.

“I have people who are just waiting and waiting, who just haven’t pulled the trigger even though they have the down payment,” said John Stearns, senior mortgage banker at American Fidelity Mortgage outside Milwaukee. “There’s a lot of kicking tires. A lot of people saying they just won’t do it.”

Their unease explains why applications for home mortgages sank last week to a nearly 15-year low. What’s more, sales of new homes fell more than expected in July _ and analysts think the financial turmoil may be accelerating that slide this month.

“Buyers just don’t want to commit to anything right now,” said Joel Naroff of Pennsylvania-based Naroff Economic Advisors.

Interviews with more than three dozen agents, brokers and would-be buyers and sellers indicate that the heightened uncertainty in the financial markets and the economy has made people even more cautious than before.

Consider:

_ Eric Younan, a marketing professional at an accounting firm who was about to buy a home in July in Farmington Hills, Mich. Then along came August. “What really scared me is that I’m a single guy, and I don’t want to have a mortgage by myself,” Younan says. “The economy is taking a pounding, and my friends who are getting laid off are leaving the state. Prices are still falling. So I’d rather have money in the bank than money in a house.”

_ Fernando Maza, a security system programmer in Broward County, Fla., who was about to buy a second home, right before the stream of unnerving developments on the economy and the stock market. Now, he’s less sure. “House prices could go down,” he says. “There’s so much inventory and not a lot of qualified buyers.”

_ Kurt Winiecki, a financial planner in Chicago who has been counseling a young couple on whether to buy or continue to rent. August made Winiecki’s decision easier: He’s telling them to rent. “What if they lose 20 percent of their equity and they can’t sell the house? It’s just too big a risk.”

Even before the recent financial upheavals, the home market was being depressed by the economy’s many problems: High unemployment. Stagnant pay. Rising health care expenses. High debt loads pay day loans. A wave of foreclosures. Shrunken home equity.

And real estate agents were saying that more buyers were walking away at the last minute. In June, the latest month for which figures are available, about 16 percent of closings were canceled. That was the highest figure since record keeping started more than a year ago.

This year is on pace to be the worst for home sales in 14 years. Nationally, prices are at 2002 levels, and even lower in areas like Phoenix, Las Vegas and Tampa, Fla.

But the past few weeks’ turmoil may be making everything worse. Homebuilder stocks, for instance, have been battered _ even more than the stock market as a whole. As a group, they’ve shed nearly 23 percent, according to a Standard & Poor’s analysis, compared with about 12 percent for the Dow Jones industrial average.

In normal times, today’s record-low mortgage rates would energize buying. Yet while more people are refinancing, applications for new mortgages are stuck at 10-year lows, according to Inside Mortgage Finance.

Part of the problem is that many people can’t buy even if they want to. More than 23 percent of homeowners owe more on their homes than they’re worth. An additional 25 percent have less than 20 percent equity in their homes, according to Capital Economics.

That means that nearly half of homeowners couldn’t qualify for a new mortgage because they couldn’t produce a big enough down payment.

Add to that a chaotic stock market and a weak economy, and the belief is taking hold among many that now isn’t the time to invest in the biggest purchase in most people’s lives.

“There’s a reassessment of risk across the planet,” says Jonathan Miller of New York-based real estate consultancy Miller Samuel. “Volatility breeds uncertainty, and this is intimidating for consumers.”

Consider the lack of interest in Eric Johannson’s home. A pilot for cargo hauler Atlas Air, Johannson put his lakefront Houston home on the market in July 2010. He planned to upgrade to a home in Orlando, where his wife took a new job.

Yet despite the house’s excellent condition, it has drawn not a single offer, even after the price was slashed to $249,000 _ $100,000 less than what Johannson and his wife paid in 2008.

“If this economic situation drags out much longer, my wife just may have to quit her job and career” and move back to Houston, Johansson says.

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Horrendous weather and a public transport strike caused chaos at the Paris Air Show on Wednesday, delaying a raft of order announcements for Airbus and dampening the mood at Boeing’s unveiling of its new 787 jet.

Airbus had scheduled three order announcements before noon but pouring rain aggravated already overloaded highways, preventing at least one of the jet maker’s customers from making it to the air show on time.

Getting to Le Bourget Airport, only nine miles from central Paris, should take just 25 minutes but access has taken up to two hours some mornings because of heavy traffic and a strike by train drivers.

With news conferences delayed, Airbus had to make due with just a written announcement for its first order of the day, a deal for six A350 long-range jets from Kuwaiti leasining company ALAFCO.

Boeing, meanwhile, showcased its 787 jet, dubbed the Dreamliner, for the first time despite the bad weather.

Japan’s All Nippon Airways announced Wednesday it expects to receive the first of the much-delayed 787s in August or September, and have a total of 14 of the revolutionary composite jetliners by next March payday loans. The airline has 55 of the planes on order.

Developmental problems have delayed the twin-engine jet’s introduction into passenger service by more than three years.

Chicago-based Boeing has announced fewer new orders in Paris than Airbus, but the arrival of the 787 late Tuesday caused a lot of neck craning by attendees. The plane goes on demonstration Wednesday.

Airbus has booked over $25 billion in orders and commitments for new aircraft at this year’s air show, including a raft of orders for its A320neo, a fuel-efficient workhorse that airlines are eager to buy because of the 15 percent fuel savings Airbus boasts the jet will achieve.

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The escalating political crisis in Greece sent shockwaves through markets Thursday and fueled a sense of inevitability that the eurozone is about to face its first debt default.

While Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou is preparing to reshuffle his government in an attempt to get austerity measures through Parliament, European policymakers expressed their dismay as they prepare for what could be a crucial meeting of EU leaders in a week’s time.

“What we need most today, is unity,” said French President Nicolas Sarkozy. “We have to leave the national fights behind us to find our sense of common destiny again.”

As events unfolded and uncertainty grew, experts became increasingly convinced that some form of debt default by Greece is now inevitable.

If Papandreou does not get his austerity plan approved, the country won’t get its next rescue loans and would have to renege on its debt obligations.

But in order to help Greece, some form of default may also be required. In recent weeks, Europe’s top financial authorities have been at loggerheads over how to get private creditors to share the pain, a move experts say could be considered a default.

That could heap massive pressure on the continent’s banks, particularly if investors become convinced that other bailout recipients Ireland and Portugal will be next.

A European Central Bank official warned that the EU’s crisis bailout fund would have to double to euro1.5 trillion ($2.1 trillion) if Greece fails to pays its debts, spreading financial turmoil.

Nout Wellink told Dutch paper Het Financieele Dagblad that “if you fall through the ice you better have a very large safety net.”

European officials are talking about more aid to keep Greece from defaulting but the political chaos has thrown everything into question. And the uncertainty has hit sentiment in markets around the world.

“Talk of the bailout fund being doubled in size, a Greek government reshuffle, and Greek PM Papandreou offering to resign, doesn’t offer a stable back drop for investors,” said Michael Hewson, market analyst at CMC Markets.

Stock markets across Europe fell sharply on Thursday, a day after they suffered big losses as protests in Athens turned violent and Papandreou sought, but ultimately, failed to create a coalition government, even offering up his job in the bargain.

By late-morning London time, the euro was down at $1.4072 _ its lowest level since May 26. Thursday’s decline means that the single currency has fallen around four cents since Greece’s government appeared to be on the verge of collapse Wednesday.

In Paris, Sarkozy urged other European leaders to find a compromise on Greece’s debt crisis to stabilize the euro. The Greek crisis will likely be at the forefront of discussions between Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday.

Sarkozy said compromises to “preserve the stability of the eurozone were needed now….Because without stability, no growth is possible,” Sarkozy said at a conference of international farmers.

The potential of a Greek debt default to inflict damage on France, Europe’s second biggest economy, was evident Wednesday when Moody’s warned that three of the country’s biggest banks were at risk of a credit downgrade because of their exposure to Greek debt.

Ahead of another round of meetings of eurozone finance ministers and EU leaders next week, there’s increasing speculation that a deal that involves the private sector sharing some of the bailout burden will have to be struck if Greece is to avoid default.

That’s not proving to be easy, with Germany and the European Central Bank seemingly at loggerheads over the issue.

Another top ECB official, Juergen Stark, said the bank could envision involving bondholders, but stressed that any such step must be completely voluntary.

“We are not against involving the banks, not against involving the private sector in financing Greece, but it must be completely voluntary, otherwise it will have negative consequences for the financial markets and negative consequences possibly for other countries,” said Stark, a member of the bank’s six-member executive committee.

“It is not just about Greece, but also about the other countries that at the moment are likewise in EU and IMF programs.”

Stark said he had sympathy for the viewpoint that taxpayers not be expected to fund all of the bailout efforts, but warned that the concern was the risk such a step would have for triggering serious financial market disruption.

“I have great understanding for this argument, that one demands burdensharing between taxpayers on the one side and the private sector on the other, but once again: it’s about far reaching effects that must be kept in view, if one broaches such an idea and then carries it through to a political decision,” Stark added.

____

David McHugh in Frankfurt, Toby Sterling in Amsterdam and Raf Casert in Paris contributed to this story.

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A scene from My Fair Lady is playing out in a London hotel in honor of this month’s royal wedding _ a princess boot camp.

Pint-sized wannabe princesses are gathering to learn how to walk straight, hold their forks and what to do if they meet the queen.

Jerramy Fine, the American founder of Princess Prep, says Saturday’s one-day tutorial will be followed by week-long summer camps for 8- to 11-year-old girls. The girls will learn about real princesses and decorum and will volunteer at several royal charities payday loans direct lenders.

Fine says the program is aimed at teaching girls how to be ladylike _ not necessarily how to bag a prince when they get older.

Still, the princess business is booming. Disney says its princess franchise is worth more than $4 billion a year.

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Demonstrators thronged streets in northern Iraq Saturday to demand justice over a deadly shooting at a protest earlier this week. In Baghdad, hundreds of orphans and widows rallied to call on the government to take care of them.

The uprisings sweeping the Middle East have galvanized many in Iraq, one of the rare democracies in the region, to demand better services from their leaders. The demonstrations in the capital and the northern city of Sulaimaniyah were peaceful, but five protesters were killed earlier this week.

A few thousand demonstrators took the streets in downtown Sulaimaniyah, demanding that those responsible for a shooting two days earlier that killed two people and injured nearly 50 be held responsible.

The crowds shouted: “Down, down, with Massoud Barzani!” referring to the president of the three provinces that make up the autonomous Kurdish region.

On Thursday, hundreds of protesters had demonstrated in front of the offices of Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party in Sulaimaniyah, 160 miles (260 kilometers) northeast of Baghdad. They pelted the building with stones, and Kurdish guards on top of the building opened fire.

Officials from the KDP say their guards were forced to defend themselves from the crowd; Barzani has appealed for calm and vowed to investigate.

The demonstrators were angry with the tight grip with which the two main ruling parties in the Kurdish north dominate the region and its economy, making it almost impossible for people not affiliated with either one to find a decent job or start a business.

Saturday’s rally was largely peaceful, but at one point security forces fired shots overhead to disperse the crowd; an official at the hospital said 12 people were treated after being hit by stones, indicating some scuffling had gone on Payday Loan for Bad Credit. The official did not want to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Earlier at the city’s university, about a 1,000 students also rallied to demand Barzani apologize.

The controversy extended to parliament in Baghdad where lawmakers loyal to Barzani got in a shouting match with a representative from Goran, an upstart political movement in the Kurdish region that is trying to challenge the grip of the two main Kurdish political parties on the levers of power.

As the Goran member was describing how the protesters were not armed and carrying out a peaceful protest, a Kurdish lawmaker shouted: “This not true!”

About 1,500 people rallied in Baghdad in a demonstration organized by non-governmental organizations looking to highlight the plight of some of Iraq’s most vulnerable citizens.

The hundreds of thousands of women who lost their husbands in wars over the decades or children who have lost parents are particularly vulnerable.

One of those in attendance was 9-year-old Ahmed Nasir, who lost his father in 2006 in a roadside bombing in western Baghdad.

“We have seven children at home,” he said. “My mother takes care of us by sewing clothes, and we have no salary.”

In a statement, the organizations behind the demonstration said they want the government to give each orphan a monthly stipend.

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Brian Sack, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s markets group chief, said the central bank’s asset-purchase program has supported the economic recovery by easing market conditions.

“The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet actions have helped to make broader financial conditions more accommodative,” Sack said in the text of remarks given in Philadelphia today. “Risky asset prices such as equities have risen at a rapid pace, and credit spreads and measures of credit availability have continued to ease.”

Sack is among Fed officials defending the central bank’s decision last month to press ahead with its plan to buy $600 billion of bonds through June in an effort to create jobs. Republican Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, chairman of the House Budget Committee, today repeated his criticism of the purchases, saying they risk creating asset-price bubbles and fueling inflation.

“The recent asset purchases by the Federal Reserve have had helpful effects on financial conditions and have been implemented in a manner that has been flexible enough to avoid any significant negative consequences for the functioning of financial markets,” Sack said.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said in testimony before the House budget panel today that the unemployment rate is likely to remain high “for some time” even after its biggest two-month drop since 1958, to 9 percent in January. Joblessness rose above 9 percent in May 2009, beginning the longest period of unemployment at that level or higher since monthly records began in 1948.

Adding to Concerns

Ryan today said an increase in long-term Treasury yields this week “certainly adds to these concerns” about inflation. The benchmark 10-year Treasury note yields 3.65 percent, up from 2.57 percent on Nov. 3, the day the Fed announced its asset- purchase program.

The increase “in large part reflects the greater optimism among investors about the outlook for economic growth,” Sack said business card. “The rise in yields does not appear to be driven by the concerns expressed by some that the asset purchase program would unleash a considerable rise in U.S. inflation.”

Sack said in response to audience questions that rising Treasury yields reflect that “there’s a lot more confidence in the markets that we’re seeing the beginnings of a more sustained, robust recovery.” Equity prices “should have come down,” if that weren’t true, he said. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index has gained more than 10 percent since Nov. 3.

Dual Mandate

Bernanke said today that “inflation is expected to persist below the levels that Fed policy makers have judged to be consistent” with their dual mandate from Congress for stable prices and maximum employment.

Sack said while the central bank has been pressing ahead with quantitative easing, it has also been preparing to withdraw its record monetary stimulus.

“Even as the Federal Reserve has been expanding its balance sheet, it has not lost any momentum in the preparation of its exit tools,” Sack said. “We continue to make considerable progress increasing our capacity to drain reserves if necessary.”

More than 500 depository institutions have registered for the Fed’s term deposit facility, and 58 money-market funds have been added as counterparties for reverse repurchase agreements, Sack said. Last week, the Fed also added two firms as primary dealers, or counterparties to the central bank’s transactions.

“We have already established considerable capacity to drain reserves with these two tools, and we will continue to advance them in productive directions,” Sack said.

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Warehouse club operator BJ’s Wholesale Club Inc. says it is considering selling itself.

The company based in Natick, Mass., said Thursday that it is evaluating its strategic options and has hired Morgan Stanley & Co. as its financial adviser.

BJ’s has been rumored as a possible takeover target since July, when Leonard Green & Partners LP bought a 9.5 percent stake. The private equity firm has reportedly expressed interest in purchasing the company cash advance loan no fax.

BJ’s said it has not made a decision to pursue any specific deal or other strategic option. There is no guarantee the company’s evaluation process will result in a sale and no timetable has been set for the process.

BJ’s has 189 warehouse clubs in 15 states.

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Gap Inc.’s North American President Marka Hansen is leaving the company after 24 years, effective Friday, following a weak holiday season by the clothing brand.

In December, revenue in stores open at least one year fell 8 percent at Gap brand stores. That measure was better at other Gap-owned stores, up 1 percent at Banana Republic and down 2 percent Old Navy.

It is considered a key gauge of a retailer’s financial health because it excludes stores that open or close during the year.

Hansen, 57, also faced criticism when Gap changed its logo in October, asked for logo suggestions online, then quickly switched it back to where it started after a firestorm of online criticism instant payday loan.

“There may be a time to evolve our logo, but if and when that time comes, we’ll handle it in a different way,” Hansen said at the time, adding that the project was not the right one to offer up to “crowd sourcing.”

She joined the company at Banana Republic as a merchant in 1987. She was named to her current position in 2007.

Gap said her successor will be announced within the next day.

It also said it was “comfortable” with analyst expectations of fiscal year net income of $2.09 per share.

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