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It’s still more than a day away until the Super Bowl and I’ve already seen the Volkswagen commercial that shows a pudgy dog running on a treadmill in order to lose weight.

I’ve already seen Matthew Broderick call in sick so he can ride roller coasters, chase little kids at a museum and frolic on the beach in a Ferris Bueller-like day of revelry - and driving a Honda CRV to get from place to place.

And I’ve already seen the tattoo-rific David Beckham in his undies for H&M’s new ad campaign.

So is there any reason left to tune in to the big game on Sunday night?

Oh right, I guess there is the football. But with more companies than ever uploading their Super Bowl commercials in advance on YouTube and other websites this year, there will be fewer surprises on Sunday night. So will people take a pass on the commercials and actually use that time for a bathroom break?

Seethu Seetharaman, a marketing professor at Washington University, doesn’t think so. He thinks the early releases will just whet people’s appetite and help build excitement leading up to the game. After all, some companies are only putting out teasers or trailers of their ads.

“There is the danger of newness being lost,” he acknowledged.

But one of the most memorable and buzzed-about commercials last year - the kid dressed up as Darth Vader in a Volkswagen ad - was released online in advance of the big game, he noted.

That gets closer to Seetharaman’s main point. He questions the wisdom of companies wasting - err, spending - $3.5 million on a 30-second spot at all when they could get free exposure through a viral, online campaign.

Craig Kaminer, president of the St. Louis-based marketing agency Twist, also emphasized the free part of releasing commercials early on YouTube.

“You can get millions of additional people to see it and it doesn’t cost you anything,” he said. “At the end of the day, advertisers are interested in one thing and that’s getting to the most number of people to spread their message.”

And while some people may have seen some of the commercials before Sunday night, up until then it will have mostly been an individual experience. But during the game, it will be a communal activity with your family and friends, he said.

That is something I can understand. For the first time in many years, I found myself glued to the television at a friend’s Super Bowl party last year. Actually, I alternated between the TV and my iPhone.

I gave myself whiplash as I devoured snarky tweets from my friends - and yes, from the random group of witty people I don’t know who I follow on Twitter - as they dished out their real-time commentary on the ads.

That’s something you can’t recapture the next day.

So I’ll be tuning in on Sunday - with my smartphone at my side.

SIN IS IN

This year is shaping up to be a pretty good year for sin.

At least, that’s what the research firm IBISWorld concludes in a recent report tracking industries that it has assigned to each of the seven deadly sins.

With more disposable income at our fingertips - and with the help of new technologies - IBISWorld said Americans will find more ways to indulge themselves in 2012. Apparently, this will be a bountiful year for envy, lust and sloth. Yippee! But growth will be a bit slower for those who peddle in pride and greed. Boo!

The firm does takes liberties with its labels. For example, I’m sure there are plenty of gun manufacturers out there who would object to being placed into the “wrath” category. But nonetheless, it makes for some colorful reading.

So here’s a quick snapshot:

• Envy: Jewelry store sales are projected to grow 4.5 percent this year.

• Lust: Online dating sales are expected to increase 3.5 percent.

• Sloth: The “do-it-for-me” market of maids, nannies, personal chefs, gardeners and butlers is expected to grow 3.4 percent.

• Gluttony: Fast-food restaurants are expected to grow 2.6 percent.

• Wrath: Gun and ammunition manufacturers are projected to be up 2.3 percent.

• Pride: Tanning salon sales are expected to increase 2 percent.

• Greed: Commercial banking is expected to be up 1.9 percent.

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German unemployment dropped more than economists forecast to a two-decade low in January, bolstering economic growth as the euro region

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Much work remains to maximize U.S. employment and stabilize prices, and the central bank will do its part, an influential Federal Reserve official said on Friday.

The pace of the U.S. economic recovery remains “sluggish” and is likely to slow somewhat this year, said New York Fed President William Dudley. Unemployment is likely to remain “unacceptably high” for some time, he added, while inflation is likely to be below the Fed’s new 2-percent objective for several years.

“Clearly, much work remains to achieve the Fed’s dual mandate of maximum sustainable employment in the context of price stability,” Dudley told reporters in a regular briefing.

The Fed, which has kept interest rates near zero for more than three years, “has done and will continue to do its part in supporting the recovery - but it is not all-powerful,” he added.

“Other complementary policy actions in housing, fiscal policy and structural adjustment or rebalancing of the economy will be essential if we are to achieve the best available recovery.”

Aside from the low rates, the Fed has also bought $2.3 trillion in long-term securities in an unprecedented drive to spur growth and revive the economy after the worst recession in decades. Yet the recovery has been slow and the outlook issued by the Fed this week was bleak, leading the central bank to say it expects to keep rates “exceptionally low” at least through late 2014.

Dudley, a permanent voter on the Fed’s policy-setting committee, added that he expects “moderate” growth this year, and warned the risks are skewed to the downside in part because of Europe’s debt crisis business cards design.

The economy continues to operate with “significant excess slack,” he said, adding: “Inflation has retreated and may be headed down further.”

On Wednesday, Chairman Ben Bernanke said the Fed stood ready to offer more stimulus in the form of bond purchases if inflation remains below 2 percent - a formal target unveiled earlier that day - and if unemployment, now at 8.5 percent, remains high.

The speech by Dudley, a policy dove focused on driving down the high jobless numbers, could add confidence to those who, since the Wednesday meeting, see another round of asset purchases - including mortgage-backed securities - as all but inevitable.

Still, the slow overall recovery has cast some doubt on the U.S. central bank’s far-reaching strategy, with some, including congressional Republicans, warning that the massive quantitative easing efforts over the last few years could crimp the Fed’s ability to tighten policy when the time comes.

The Fed’s ultra easy monetary policy stance, to nurse the recovery, got some support from data on Friday showing U.S. gross domestic product expanded at a 2.8 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter of 2011.

It was a sharp acceleration from the 1.8 percent clip of the prior three months and the quickest pace since the second quarter of 2010. But it was a touch below economist expectations in a Reuters poll for a 3-percent rate, and nearly 2 percentage points were attributed to the build-up in business inventories.

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A four-year economic crisis has left societies battered and widened the gap between the haves and have-nots, financial leaders conceded Wednesday _ with one suggesting that Western capitalism itself may be endangered.

With the global economic outlook gloomy at best as Europe struggles with its debt crisis, there’s a sense at the heavily guarded World Economic Forum in the Swiss Alps that free markets are on trial.

There’s a widespread acceptance that more must be done to convince critics that Western capitalism has a future and that it can learn the lessons of its massive failures.

For David Rubenstein, the co-founder and managing director of asset management firm Carlyle Group, leaders must work fast to overcome the current crisis or else different models of capitalism, such as the form practiced in China, may win the day.

“As a result of this recession, that’s lasted longer than anyone predicted and will probably go on for a number more years … we’re gonna have a lot of economic disparities,” said Rubenstein.

“We’ve got to work through these problems, if we don’t do in 3 or 4 years … the game will be over for the type of capitalism that many of us have lived through and thought was the best type,” he added.

His stark appraisal may have been an outlier, but there was a clear defensive posture among many participants on this opening day of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

There were numerous references to the need to innovate, the need to consult with employees and the realization that power in the world is shifting from the west to the east. While the traditional industrial economies of the United States and Europe have limped through the last few years, often from one crisis to another, many economies in Asia and Latin America have been booming.

As Ben Verwaayen, the chief executive of Alcatel-Lucent, said, there’s a “very different view” of capitalism in Brazil.

“This is a very different discussion depending where you are,” Verwaayen said.

Many rejected the suggestion from Sharan Burrow, the general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, that capitalism has lost its “moral compass” and needed to be “reset.” Still, representatives of the business community insisted they were learning from the mistakes that dragged the world into its deepest economic recession since the World War II.

Bank of America’s CEO Brian Moynihan said the excesses of banks in the run-up to the banking crisis of 2008 reflected the economies they were operating in, so it was important that policymakers don’t overreact.

Moynihan, whose bank was forced to back down on plans to start charging a $5 debit card fee after protests by the Occupy movement and others, said banks have “done a lot” to reduce excesses. He also noted that boom and bust cycles are a part of the Western capitalist structure.

Many outside the confines of the Davos conference center disagree, after years of crisis in which hundreds of millions of people have lost their jobs even as top executives have continued to reap huge pay packets.

Davos activists on Wednesday sent aloft big red weather balloons carrying a huge protest banner reading “Hey WEF, Where are the other 6.9999 billion leaders?”

The activists were from the Occupy WEF movement, a small group camping out in igloos here and following in the footsteps of the Occupy Wall Street movement that spread to cities around the world.

Davos is a hard-to-reach place to protest, tucked in the Swiss Alps. Some 2,600 of the world’s most influential people are gathered for the forum this week, amid increasing worries about the global economy and social unrest due to rising income inequalities.

The CEO of accounting giant Deloitte, Joe Echevarria, talked about developing “compassionate capitalism.”

“You’re going to have to deal with regulation _ balancing the need to protect society along with stifling growth,” he told The Associated Press in an interview. “I think that has to manifest itself through the choices that governments and businesses make.”

While the bigwigs debated at Davos, key Greek bondholders were holding closed-door meetings in Paris to discuss how _ and whether _ to continue talks central to resolving Europe’s debt crisis that would forgive 50 percent of Greece’s enormous debt.

Mark Penn, global CEO of the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller, told AP “the whole crisis has raised larger questions about how is capitalism working, how do you redefine fairness in the 21st century?”

Later Wednesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel may chart her course for Europe’s crisis in her keynote speech at the Davos forum.

In an interview with six European newspapers published Wednesday, Merkel drove home the need for reform in debt-troubled eurozone nations instead of spending more to beef up the region’s bailout fund.

Surveys ahead of the meeting showed pessimism among world CEOs and plunging levels of public trust in business and government leaders and concerns that fragility in the U.S. and European economies will bring the whole world’s economy down.

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India

Several times each year, the nation faces a widespread, food borne illness crisis. But there’s an easy, cheap technological solution that could stop scares and outbreaks in their tracks.

A relatively simple system of QR codes — those funny-looking, two-dimensional barcodes you see everywhere today — could instantaneously link a product sold on store shelves back to the farm where it was grown or raised with a snap of a smartphone camera. It would no longer take days or weeks to determine what food is safe and what isn’t.

The system could even prevent the contaminated food from reaching store shelves in the first place.

IBM (, Fortune 500) has developed a technology called the InfoSphere Traceability Server, which assigns unique barcodes to every step of the food distribution chain.

The farms, slaughterhouses, food palates, shipping containers, trucks, grocery stores and individual products that are using InfoSphere are all affixed with QR codes and tracked. Even specific animals are being tagged and scanned, so you could find out which specific cow your milk came from or which pig became your pork.

Using this system, the orange juice crisis could have potentially been avoided. Rather than halting all shipments of orange juice to test for a fungicide and testing OJ at grocery stores, as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has done, the juice could have been scanned and instantly linked back to a particular farm.

How RFID tags will change the future

"Someday soon, this will become the minimum requirement to participate in the food supply chain," said Paul Chang, IBM’s traceability program director.

But the system has yet to be widely adopted. There are some high hurdles to mass-adoption, most notably that for the system to work, every actor in the supply chain has to participate. And participation requires some level of investment in order to feed data into the network and extract results.

IBM already has a small handful of large retailers in the United States and Europe on its system, including Germany’s Metro Group, the third-largest food retailer in the world. But IBM believes it has found a way to get even the smallest mom & pop shops and farms on board as well.

IBM developed the InfoSphere system as a cloud-based service, meaning the only infrastructure needed to operate it is an Internet connection and a smartphone.

Though IBM’s Chang wouldn’t get specific about pricing, he said the costs are "minimal," pointing to the fact that that there are already small, rural farms in Thailand using the system no fax needed payday loans.

"We’ve developed the technology in such a way that it’s just a nominal cost to share and access information," Chang said. "We’re at an inflection point where this could be deployed more broadly."

But even if the majority of vendors, farms, shipping companies and grocery stores adopt it, it would really take everyone to join in to link your OJ to a particular farm.

To make such a global food traceability network a possibility, the food industry has developed an open standard for data recording and tracking. That means customers using IBM rivals’ systems could communicate with the InfoSphere server so a farm, a supplier and a grocery store all doing business with one another would not necessary need to be using the same system.

IBM says a very small percentage of companies in the food industry have adopted the technology so far. But with recalls happening on a weekly basis, and costs of technology falling, some regulators are becoming tempted to impose requirements that companies adopt traceability systems. IBM said is currently working with a small number of government regulators from around the world.

If widespread adoption does occur, it may help stop outbreaks before they start.

Today, testing products for contamination is a difficult and ineffective process. Food companies can’t test every batch, so choosing which ones to test is essentially random.

For instance, Coca-Cola (, Fortune 500) tested its batch of orange juice and found that the fungicide was present. But it also noticed that competitors’ juice was contaminated as well and had gone unnoticed.

Using advanced analytics, companies could know exactly which batches to test. As an example, a sensor in a shipping container of tomatoes that is several degrees warmer than normal could tip off the company to check the product that was shipped on that vessel. With QR tags, testers could know which palates were on that container and test them before they reach store shelves.

The technology is cheap and easy to implement. But until everyone adopts it, contaminated food outbreaks will continue. 

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Retail sales rose at the weakest pace in seven months in December as consumers pulled back late in the holiday shopping season, cutting purchases at department stores and spending less on electronic gadgets.

Total retail sales increased 0.1 percent after rising by an upwardly revised 0.4 percent in November, the Commerce Department said on Thursday.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast retail sales climbing 0.3 percent last month.

The upward revision for November sales suggests consumers likely frontloaded their holiday shopping. The government had initially estimated retail sales gained 0.2 percent in November.

Spending at electronics and appliance stores fell 3.9 percent in December, while shopping at department stores slipped 0.2 percent.

Fueling the overall increase in retail sales during December, receipts for motor vehicles and parts increased 1 Internet Payday loans.5 percent, adding to the prior month’s 0.9 percent gain.

Excluding autos, retail sales fell 0.2 percent, the first decline since May 2010.

Sales at food and beverage stores fell 0.2 percent in December. Also holding back the overall gain in sales, receipts at gasoline stations dropped 1.6 percent last month after rising 0.9 percent in November.

Core retail sales, which exclude autos, gasoline and building materials, dropped 0.1 percent in December after advancing 0.3 percent the prior month.

Core sales correspond most closely with the consumer spending component of the government’s gross domestic product report.

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Nintendo Co.’s upcoming Wii U game console will come with a controller that has a big, touch-enabled screen. At first glance, that seems like an obstacle to the kind of casual multiplayer gaming that made the first Wii console such a breakout hit.

But in demonstrations Tuesday, the company emphasized that the Wii U will work with the cheaper, stick-like Wii controllers as well, making family multiplayer games feasible.

The Japanese company is giving some journalists hands-on time with the console on the sidelines of the International Consumer Electronics Show, which started Tuesday in Las Vegas.

It’s the second time the U.S. media is getting a glimpse of the device, which was first shown in June. Nintendo said the device will go on sale after the next Electronic Entertainment Expo gaming trade show in Los Angeles in June.

Nintendo went against conventional wisdom with the original Wii in 2006. The quirky, cheap game console relied not on high-end graphics and complex buttons to lure in hardcore players, but on simple motion controls to lure in everyone.

Although the company successfully courted casual gamers with the Wii, it is now facing increased competition from Apple Inc.’s iPhone and other devices that offer simple games. It had hoped to win new gamers through a 3-D handheld device. But sales were slow, and Nintendo slashed prices on the 3DS within six months.

The Wii U will be sold as a bundle with one touch-screen controller, which is almost as big as the game console itself. Nintendo hasn’t said what the package or an extra controller will cost. Touch screens are expensive, often accounting for nearly half of the cost of a phone or a tablet computer.

Nintendo’s demonstrations reveal that the touch-screen controller is designed to work with older controllers free credit report and score. For example, in one of Nintendo’s demonstration games, four players with Wii remotes chase a fifth, who uses the touch controller. The fifth player uses the screen on the controller to guide his movements, which are thus kept secret from the other players. The other players keep track of their own movements on the TV screen.

In another demonstration game, two players with Wii remotes collaborate to fight a third, who zooms around in a spaceship, controlled through the touch controller.

The integration of the older remotes and the touch controller goes even further. The existing Wii console is able to keep track of where the old-style Wii remotes are with the help of a “sensor bar” that attaches to the TV set. That’s how the Wii remote can be used to “point” to things on the screen. The new Wii U controller has its own sensor bar, so the Wii U can figure out where a Wii remote is in relation to the controller, not just the TV set.

This sounds complicated, but it enables simple, unexpected forms of game play. For instance, Nintendo showed in a video how the Wii U controller could be placed on the floor for a golf game. The screen of the controller shows a teed-up golf ball. Swinging a Wii remote like a golf club above the controller gets the ball flying.

While the ability to use older remotes will appeal to consumers, supporting multiple remotes could pose a challenge for game developers, who might decide to drop support for older hardware. To make things more complicated, there are two versions of the Wii remote, with differing motion-sensing abilities, and an accessory “Nunchuck” controller.

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WASHINGTON • If timing is everything, as the saying goes, then Matt Blunt might consider a job giving advice on when to make career changes.

Blunt picked 2004 as the year to run for governor of Missouri. It turned into a strong year for Republicans and, at age 33, he became America’s youngest governor.

In his new incarnation, Blunt last year became chief spokesman and a lobbyist in Washington for Detroit’s Big Three automakers just as the American automotive industry was enjoying a resurgence.

It is one of several positions Blunt holds these days that enable him to prove life after Missouri’s Governor’s Mansion can be rewarding and, he says, enjoyable.

As president of the American Automotive Policy Council, one of Blunt’s main tasks is reminding Congress of his industry’s recent success, a rare good news story about American manufacturing.

Two years after General Motors and Chrysler emerged from bankruptcy, both companies, along with Ford, reported profits and increasing sales in 2011. Their turnaround is hailed in reports such as a recent Time magazine cover story titled, “How America Started Selling Cars Again.”

Yet many Americans — some of them in Congress — see the automotive industry as bloated and inefficient, surviving on government bailouts.

“What some people believe about automobile manufacturers, the American-based companies, isn’t accurate,” Blunt said. “The companies today are fundamentally different than they were just a few years ago, in terms of what they make and how they make it.”

Blunt’s portfolio these days includes the vital matters affecting American carmakers, including global trade agreements, new fuel economy standards and a recent recommendation to ban texting and cellphone use in automobiles.

Blunt, who turned 41 in November, is leading a life different from his sometimes rocky four years as a young governor, in which he endured criticism for his cuts to Medicaid and low approval ratings at times.

After leaving office in January 2009, he moved swiftly into the world of business. Besides his Big Three job, he is a director for Copart Inc., an online auto auction company in California that claims to sell 1 million vehicles yearly. He is a senior adviser for Rubicon Global, an Atlanta-based waste management firm, and an advisory board member for private equity funds.

Rather than living in Jefferson City or Springfield, Blunt, his wife, Melanie, and sons Branch, 6, and Brooks, who turned 2 on New Year’s Day, reside now in Middleburg, Va., situated in rolling horse country that has been home to such notables as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Elizabeth Taylor.

Blunt says he is comfortable in a part of the country where he has spent considerable time. He graduated from the Naval Academy in nearby Annapolis, Md., and he was stationed on a Virginia-based ship. His wife is a Virginia native.

In recent interviews, Blunt, whose father, Roy, just completed his first year in the U.S. Senate, said he has no regrets in deciding not to seek a second term.

“I loved being governor. It was a great experience. I was proud of what we accomplished,” he said. “But I don’t know that over another four-year term, I would have been particularly effective. I don’t know there’s much that I would have gotten done.”

He added, “I don’t necessarily miss politics.”

understanding autos

Blunt is dealing now with politics of a different order, in some cases global. He was outspoken last fall in pressing to keep Japan out of the budding Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade alliance, noting Japan’s protectionist policies that keep out all but a few thousand American cars yearly.

Trade is a key focus for Blunt but just one of many focuses for an industry that experts say needs help.

Joe Wiesenfelder, executive editor of Chicago-based Cars.com, said he sees “a gross misunderstanding in Washington about developing and building cars and how long it takes, about the inconsistency of the market and about inconsistency of regulation and the effects on companies.”

Until two years ago, Ford, Chrysler and GM were aligned in Washington with the Auto Alliance, which also includes foreign automakers. But the interests of domestic and foreign companies diverged just as legislation and government rules were becoming more consequential.

Blunt’s background as a governor likely played a role in his selection as the industry sought to navigate tricky political waters in Congress after the controversial bailouts No teletrak payday loan.

Blunt technically is not a registered federal lobbyist because he spends less than 20 percent of his time lobbying. Nevertheless, he works the halls of Congress, trumpeting the key role of the Big Three in the nation’s economy. GM, Ford and Chrysler will add 34,000 jobs in coming years, he said, which translates to 400,000 jobs in the economy supported by automotive plants.

“The American companies are competitive, they are productive and they are making great products,” Blunt said, sounding like the car salesman he has become. “Because of that, what recovery we do have in the American economy, the automobile makers are playing a big part.”

As a self-described conservative Republican, Blunt might find old allies who decry the $80 billion bailout of Chrysler and GM. Most of the money has been paid back, and the White House projected the cost to taxpayers at $14 billion.

“Decisions that President Bush made at the end of his administration and President Obama made early in his administration have had a successful outcome,” he said. “It’s always an academic debate whether a different road map would have led to the success.”

As governor, Blunt was an advocate of smaller government. Those sensibilities could come into play as government moves more aggressively to dictate vehicle design.

After an agreement with both domestic and foreign manufacturers, the administration of President Barack Obama in November proposed nearly doubling fuel economy requirements to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. In 2010, the administration completed rules to raise the fuel standard to 35.5 mpg by 2016. The current requirement for new autos is 27.3 mpg.

Foreign-based manufacturers believe the White House has tilted the rules in favor of the domestic industry. True or not, the Big Three will need to be vigilant as regulations are implemented; their focus will be on easing the burden those regulations could cause.

“It’s the classic ‘devil’s in the details,’ and it will be very important to see the rules filed by all the agencies,” Blunt said.

Texting debated

Automakers took notice recently when the National Transportation Safety Board said states should ban texting and cellphone use in vehicles. The board made the recommendation after concluding that a driver’s texting was a factor in a deadly pileup near St. Louis.

Blunt said companies he represents are paying close attention because “they really do believe that you can integrate technology into a vehicle that’s not only safe but safer than the way most drivers use technology today.”

“As you think about what you might or might not ban in a vehicle, it’s important to do it in a way that wouldn’t inhibit safety ideas some of the companies have today, and at the same time be realistic,” he said. “Quite frankly, I don’t think (a cellphone ban is) very realistic.”

As a lobbyist, Blunt seemingly could have a ready ear from father Roy, who won election this month to a Senate GOP leadership slot. Matt Blunt said he doesn’t intend to talk business at family gatherings, perhaps because Roy Blunt has in the past been criticized for ties to lobbyists in his family and otherwise.

Matt’s brother, Andy Blunt, works at a law firm in Jefferson City with a long list of lobbying clients. His sister, Amy, maintains some lobbying clients in her business in the state capital, which largely deals with helping candidates comply with Federal Election Commission rules. Roy Blunt’s wife, Abigail, was a lobbyist for tobacco giant Philip Morris before joining Kraft’s legislative affairs team.

Andy Blunt said his brother arrived in a position that suits his talents.

“He’s a great manager and executive and has the ability to focus on details while thinking about long-term strategy,” he said.

Blunt, who acknowledged driving a German-made automobile in the past, also is walking the talk now — driving it, actually.

He gets around Washington in a Chrysler-made Jeep Grand Cherokee.

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