Lenon’s main business news

Americans are making a little more money and spending a lot more.

Under normal circumstances, that would be a troubling sign for the economy. But a closer look at some new government figures suggests another possibility: People are saving less money because they’re earning next to nothing in interest.

Saving is already difficult because of more expensive gas and food. It’s even tougher because of the lower returns _ the flip side of super-low interest rates that the Federal Reserve has kept in place since 2008 to help the economy.

Critics say the Fed is punishing those who play by the rules _ those careful enough to set aside money for savings or people who built up a nest egg and are living on fixed incomes that depend on interest.

Americans spent 0.6 percent more in September, three times the increase from the previous month, the government said Friday. Spending was especially strong on durable goods _ things like cars, appliances and electronics.

At the same time, what they earned was mostly flat. Pay increased 0.3 percent, and overall income just 0.1 percent. After deducting taxes and adjusting for inflation, income fell for a third straight month.

So to make up the difference, many have cut back on savings. The savings rate fell to its lowest level since December 2007, the first month of the recession _ and right about the time the Fed started its dramatic series of interest-rate cuts.

Considering how little you can get for parking your money at a bank, it hasn’t been a tough choice.

“Consumers have hit a level of saturation in their savings,” said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst with market research firm The NPD Group. “The propensity is to spend.”

The annual yield on six-month certificates of deposit was unchanged this week at 0.23 percent, according to Bankrate.com. Five years ago, it was 3.62 percent. If you put your money in the six-month CD today, you’d make about enough to buy a burger.

Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics, said the trend could mean more spending by Americans. But it will take robust personal spending _ along with improvement in the depressed housing market _ to get the economy going again.

Ashworth said his firm is not too concerned with the decline in savings because it partly represents “a sharp decline in debt servicing costs.” In other words, low interest rates mean it’s cheaper to borrow money.

The Fed began cutting interest rates four years ago at the start of the financial crisis. The rate cuts took the federal funds rate, the key for short-term interest rates, from 5.25 percent down to near zero, where they have stayed since December 2008.

The central bank has said it will keep rates super-low into 2013 as long as the economy stays weak. While that means low returns for savers, it is designed to encourage people and businesses to borrow more.

Many borrowers tend to be young families who are spending most of their income anyway. The loss in interest income tends to hit older households, which are saving for retirement and counting more on bonds and other fixed-income securities.

Consumer spending is closely watched because it accounts for about 70 percent of economic activity. A sharp rise in spending over the summer helped the overall economy grow in July, August and September at the fastest pace in a year.

Still, the economy would have to grow twice as fast to put a dent in the unemployment rate, which has stayed near 9 percent since the recession officially ended more than two years ago.

At the same time savings accounts and other fixed-income investments are paying less, the cost of food and gas has gone up.

Elizabeth Smith, who works in teacher education at the University of Arkansas, has cut her monthly contribution to her retirement savings in half to meet necessities.

“Every time I go to the store, butter, cheese and milk are more expensive,” she said. Child care costs for her two children have also risen this year.

On the other hand, Smith has benefited from lower interest rates. She and her husband refinanced the mortgage on her home a year ago, which lowered their monthly payments by $200, freeing up more cash.

The Fed’s policies are “designed to reward spending and effectively punish savers,” said Eric Green, chief U.S. economist at TD Securities.

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NATO said its commanders were not aware that Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi was in a convoy that NATO bombed as it fled Sirte, as NATO’s governing body gathered Friday to decide how to end its bombing campaign in Libya.

The success of NATO’s seven-month military operation in Libya has helped reinvigorate the Cold War alliance and polished the reputation of France and Britain, the two countries that drove it forward. Analysts attributed its success to the fact that NATO remained steadfast over the summer during a long and grinding stalemate against Gadhafi loyalists and avoided the temptation to send ground troops into Libya.

In a statement Friday, the alliance said an initial Thursday morning strike was aimed at a convoy of approximately 75 armed vehicles leaving Sirte, the Libyan city defended by Gadhafi loyalists. One vehicle was destroyed, which resulted in the convoy’s dispersal.

Another jet then engaged approximately 20 vehicles that were driving at great speed toward the south, destroying or damaging about 10 of them.

“We later learned from open sources and allied intelligence that Gadhafi was in the convoy and that the strike likely contributed to his capture,” the statement said.

After Libya’s former rebels killed Gadhafi on Thursday, officials said they expected the aerial operation to end very soon. But the North Atlantic Council may also decide to keep air patrols flying for several more days until the security situation on the ground stabilizes.

The final decision will depend on the recommendation of Adm. Jim Stavridis, the supreme allied commander, and the Military Committee, the highest military organ.

NATO’s Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen says the end of the campaign “has now moved much closer.” He has also hailed the success of the mission, saying that it demonstrated that the alliance continues to play an “indispensable” role in confronting current and future security challenges business card.

NATO warplanes have flown about 26,000 sorties, including over 9,600 strike missions. They destroyed Libya’s air defenses and over 1,000 tanks, vehicles and guns, as well as Gadhafi’s command and control networks.

The daily airstrikes finally broke the stalemate that developed after Gadhafi’s initial attempts failed to crush the rebellion that broke out in February. In August, the rebels began advancing on Tripoli, with the NATO warplanes providing close air support and destroying any attempts by the defenders to block them.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Friday that “the operation has reached its end.” But how to draw down the campaign will be decided “with our allies and also with input from the (interim government).”

But in London, Britain suggested that NATO may not immediately complete its mission in Libya, wary over the potential reprisal attacks by remaining Gadhafi loyalists.

“NATO will now meet to decide when the mission is complete, and once we are satisfied that there is no further threat to the Libyan civilians and the Libyans are content, NATO will then arrange to wind up the operation,” British Defense Secretary Philip Hammond told BBC radio.

Sarkozy, British Prime Minister David Cameron and President Barack Obama discussed the NATO campaign in a video conference late Thursday.

“They discussed the need to maintain the NATO-led operation while a threat remained to civilian life,” a spokeswoman for Cameron’s office said, on customary condition of anonymity.

___

Associated Press writers Elaine Ganley in Paris and David Stringer in London contributed to this report.

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Capital One Financial Corp. says its third-quarter profit edged up 1 percent, despite a big drop in the amount of loans written off as uncollectible.

The McLean, Va.-based bank says Thursday its net income for the September quarter was $813 million, or $1.77 per share.

Total revenue rose 4 percent to $4.2 billion.

Wall Street was expecting profit of $1.68 per share, on revenue of $4.04 billion.

The bank, best known for its ubiquitous “What’s in your wallet?” advertising campaign, said it wrote off $812 million in uncollectible loans, a drop of 47 percent from last year guaranteed online personal loans. But marketing and operating expenses rose 15 percent, offsetting some of that benefit.

Capital One shares added 74 cents, or 2 percent, in Thursday trading and were unchanged aftermarket.

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A faster iPhone with better software and an improved camera went on sale Friday as hundreds of buyers camped out for hours to be among the first to get one.

About 200 people were at Apple’s Fifth Avenue store in Manhattan as the iPhone 4S went on sale at 8 a.m. Steve Wozniak, who created Apple with Steve Jobs in a Silicon Valley garage in 1976, was first in line at a store in Los Gatos, Calif.

Many said the event resembled a remembrance to Jobs, who died last week.

Emily Smith, a 27-year-old user experience designer in New York, checked in to the line on the location-centric social network Foursquare. She got a virtual Steve Jobs badge that read: “Here’s to the crazy ones. ThankYouSteve.”

Others joked that the 4S model stood “for Steve.”

Una Chen, a 24-year-old banker, said she was just happy to swap out her BlackBerry Bold for the new iPhone, particularly after a BlackBerry outage affected her phone this week.

“It’s not good to have a phone and not be able to use it,” Chen said.

Wozniak came out to the California store even though he already had two new phones on the way. He told television station NBC11 on Thursday that while he waited for the store’s opening Friday morning, he planned on getting caught up on his email and chatting with fans.

Sales were beginning at 8 a.m. in each time zone. They were available at Apple stores, along with those of the three partner carriers, AT&T Inc., Sprint Nextel Corp. and Verizon Wireless. Some Best Buy, Target and Walmart stores and authorized resellers also carried the phones.

The phones also debuted Friday in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and Britain. They are coming to 22 more countries by the end of the month.

The base model of the iPhone 4S costs $199 with a two-year contract. Customers have a choice of white or black.

The phone _ Apple’s fifth _ has a faster processor and an improved camera compared with last year’s model. However, some customers and investors were disappointed that Apple didn’t launch a more radical new model. It’s been more than a year since Apple’s previous model was released.

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Wednesday was a good day for Fawad Khan.

He got up shortly before 3 a.m. and headed to a bank of computers in his Mississauga basement. While his family slept, he started trading.

One screen charted the euro in real time. It looked like the seismic readout for an earthquake. Trading in this kind of market, with one’s own money, is not for the faint of heart.

At 3 a.m., Khan bought euros, expecting the currency’s value to rise. When it did, he sold. Then he bought low and sold high, again. Within an hour he was up $750 (US). For his third move, he went short, predicting the euro would fall. It did, and he made another $300. It was 4:30 a.m.

“Then I went back to sleep,” says Khan, 62, a civil engineer who made day trading his full-time job after emigrating from Pakistan in 1999.

At 1 p.m., Khan was back in the basement of his modest bungalow. He sold short again, both the euro and the S&P 500 stock index. He called it a day at 2:30 p.m. — $2,935 (US) richer after three hours of trading.

“If you go with the (market) trend, you make money. If the bull is in command, you follow the bull. If the bear is in command, you follow the bear,” Khan explains, referring to the beasts that signify a rising or falling market.

It sounds simple enough, but Khan is part of a relatively small group making money in today’s wildly volatile global markets. Most investors are watching their investments, including retirement savings, evaporate. Although marked by frenetic swings, the overall market tendency is down, some 20 per cent since spring.

“We’ve seen a lot of wealth shed away in the last few months. And the ones who lost it are the people who can’t afford to lose it,” says Eric Kirzner, professor of finance at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.

“Ninety per cent of the people lose money,” says Khan, “and the money they lose goes into the pockets of the 10 per cent making money.”

This lopsided formula rings true to many these days. It partly explains the anger of protesters “occupying” Wall Street for the past three weeks. It might also explain why recent statements on the BBC by an unknown trader — Goldman Sachs rules the world; traders dream of market turmoil and recession — went viral.

“He was honest and forthright in the most scary way,” Rotman’s dean, Roger Martin, says of Alessio Rastani. “This guy was absolutely correct. What he said is, ‘traders like us couldn’t care less whether the economy is doing well or badly. . . all that has to happen is for there to be volatility.’”

There’s nothing of the vulture in Khan. He’s the soft-spoken father of five children who warns against greed and never risks more than $900 in leveraged currency contracts. Yet he too gets a rush from the kind of volatility that has many fearing they’ll never afford retirement.

“I love it,” he says.

The small group of winners in today’s market is largely made up of professional traders selling financial products the uninitiated wouldn’t understand, like index futures, or buying bear market exchange-traded funds. They are people making short-term trades while riding the market’s ups and downs.

“High frequency trading is all the rage now,” says Dave Poxon, 45, a day trader in Whitby.

Poxon says “click traders” — buying and selling with a click of the mouse — can’t keep up with those, like himself, who use algorithms to ride the volatility. He said he and two colleagues made a total of about $5,000 to $6,000 (US) a day last week using an algorithm he designed.

There’s no clearer sign of the profitability of volatility than HBP S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures Bull Plus, an exchange-traded fund (ETF). It was the most profitable mutual fund on the Toronto Stock Exchange during the last three months, its value rising an eye-popping 178 per cent.

The leveraged fund doesn’t buy and sell stock. It simply tracks the performance of the VIX Index — known by insiders as the Fear Index — which measures the volatility of U.S. stocks. The more volatile the market, the more money it makes.

“Volatility has been a very lucrative asset class to be invested in,” says an official with Horizons BetaPro, which manages the ETF. The official, who didn’t want to be named, stressed the fund isn’t for typical, long-term investors: “If the market isn’t volatile, you would lose gads of money on that ETF.”

Martin argues that big players are increasingly counting on market volatility. He points especially to hedge funds, which in 2008 controlled $2 trillion of assets in the U.S.

In theory, hedge funds reduce risk by placing bets in opposite directions. They should therefore make money no matter which way the market goes. But the way most hedge fund managers get paid magnifies the theory to the extreme, Martin argues.

Managers are paid according to the “2 and 20 formula” — 2 per cent of the assets they manage plus 20 per cent of the increase they generate. Big paycheques are made when markets shoot up or down.

“The more back and forth the better,” Martin says.

As the market swings, the incentive is to “roll the dice” and make a killing. If the bet turns out wrong, the manger has lost other people’s money — including, perhaps, a pension fund’s — yet still walks away with the 2 per cent fee. If the trade works, the millions or billions of dollars the fund earns is at the expense of other investors or companies because the market is a zero sum game, Martin says.

Either way, Martin argues that hedge fund managers are getting filthy rich without adding value or jobs to the economy. He calls it “the very biggest problem with the economy now.”

Sometimes the action raises allegations of crime. Canadian insurer Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. is suing a group of hedge funds, accusing them of spreading false information to drive down its stock and then profit through short-selling. (In short selling, a trader borrows shares to sell, hoping to buy them back later at a lower price. If that happens, the trader settles the loan and pockets the difference.)

Short sellers make money when stocks go down, which explains their reputation as vultures. Kirzner argues they help create an efficient market by moving stocks where they belong, pointing to the recent decline in share price of Research in Motion — maker of the BlackBerry — as an example.

It’s a game many are playing now, but one with a history of dire warnings. The legendary short-seller Jesse Livermore made millions betting short when stock markets crashed in 1929. But he lost as many fortunes as he made. In 1940, after throwing back two drinks, he walked into the cloakroom of a swanky Manhattan hotel and blew out his brains.

Fawad Khan isn’t playing for high stakes. He’s happy making what he describes as a decent living.

He was introduced to the stock market while working as a contractor in Pakistan. He built a home for a businessman who was so grateful he gave Khan a quick course on trading.

In Canada, he realized that contracting work involved the same kind of “palm greasing” it did in Pakistan. So he gave it up, studied trading and for the past nine years has been focusing on buying and selling currencies.

“It’s beautiful work,” he says. “I can do it any time I want. No business will give you that freedom.”

He says most days a handful of people will join him in his basement and copy his trades. He doesn’t charge them, unless they get hooked and want to take a course he gives now and then. He urges them to trade with a “stop loss” of $50 or $100 — if you lose that much, stop trading.

“The people who know this business, they make money. The people who are greedy, the people who have fear, they lose money.”

So what should a cautious trader do these days?

“Keep selling the euro short,” he says. “Short selling is good advice.”

Unless you’re Jesse Livermore, of course.

Big winners

Canada’s top performing mutual funds and ETFs over the last three months:

HBP S&P 500 VIX Short-term Futures Bull Plus: up 178.7%

HBP S&P 500 VIX Short Term Future: up 87.0%

HBP COMEX® Gold Bullion Bull Plus ETF: up 39.6%

Friedberg Global Macro Hedge (US$): up 29.8%

HBP S&P/TSX Energy Bear Plus ETF: up 28.0%

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The Bank of England surprised markets Thursday by sanctioning another 75 billion pounds ($116 billion) injection into a British economy that’s suffering from the shockwaves of Europe’s debt crisis and the British government’s austerity program.

The Bank’s rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee said it was reviving a program of asset purchases which injected 200 billion pounds in between March 2009 and January 2010 to help lift Britain out of a deep recession. The hope is that by buying government bonds from banks, they will use their cash injection to lend to hard-pressed businesses and households.

The scale of the asset purchases, which will take four months to complete, was more than anticipated by those predicting Thursday’s move. Most economists thought the Bank would opt to wait until November before deciding on a more moderate 50 billion pound injection.

“It is clearly an indication of the extent to which the MPC is worried about the slowdown that it has chosen to act so soon and so decisively,” said Peter Dixon, economist at Commerzbank.

In a statement, the nine members of the MPC said the pace of global expansion has slackened, especially in Britain’s main export markets _ a reference to the eurozone, which is mired in a debt crisis that’s beginning to impact on banks’ day-to-day activities.

“Vulnerabilities associated with the indebtedness of some euro-area sovereigns and banks have resulted in severe strains in bank funding markets and financial markets more generally,” the panel said. “These tensions in the world economy threaten the U.K. recovery.”

Though the eurozone economy is also showing increasing signs of heading back into recession, the European Central Bank opted to keep its main interest rate unchanged at 1.5 percent. Many in the markets had been predicting a cut.

While launching another round of so-called quantitative easing, the Bank of England’s panel left the base lending rate at an all-time low of 0.5 percent and said that inflation would likely undershoot the 2 percent target in the medium term in light of the deteriorating outlook. It’s currently running at 4.5 percent and likely to go above 5 percent in the next month or two on the back of higher utility bills, the panel said.

“In the light of that shift in the balance of risks, and in order to keep inflation on track to meet the target over the medium term, the committee judged that it was necessary to inject further monetary stimulus into the economy,” the panel said.

The pound slumped soon after the announcement, trading 1.1 percent lower at $1.5293 as investors were caught unawares by the surprisingly big increase.

Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit, said the decision was not without risk but would bolster the economy “until European policymakers can find a resolution to the region’s sovereign debt crisis and the U.K. government outlines a coherent strategy for growth.”

The Bank acted a day after revised data showed that the British economy grew by only 0.1 percent in the second quarter, half the previous estimate. It managed little or no growth in the previous six months.

American economist Adam Posen has been alone among the nine Monetary Policy Committee members to vote last month for another 50 billion pounds in asset purchases, but minutes of that meeting signaled a shift in sentiment with “most members” agreeing that the case for more stimulus had strengthened.

With the base rate at an all-time low of 0.5 percent and the government cutting spending, quantitative easing is the only remaining big lever to jolt the economy to life.

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Protests against Wall Street entered their 18th day Tuesday as demonstrators across the country show their anger over the wobbly economy and what they see as corporate greed by marching on Federal Reserve banks and camping out in parks from Los Angeles to Portland, Maine.

Demonstrations are expected to continue throughout the week as more groups hold organizational meetings and air their concerns on websites and through streaming video.

In Manhattan on Monday, hundreds of protesters dressed as corporate zombies in white face paint lurched past the New York Stock Exchange clutching fistfuls of fake money. In Chicago, demonstrators pounded drums in the city’s financial district. Others pitched tents or waved protest signs at passing cars in Boston, St. Louis, Kansas City, Mo., and Los Angeles.

A slice of America’s discontented, from college students worried about their job prospects to middle-age workers who have been recently laid off, were galvanized after the arrests of 700 protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge over the weekend.

Some protesters likened themselves to the tea party movement _ but with a liberal bent _ or to the Arab Spring demonstrators who brought down their rulers in the Middle East.

“We feel the power in Washington has actually been compromised by Wall Street,” said Jason Counts, a computer systems analyst and one of about three dozen protesters in St. Louis. “We want a voice, and our voice has slowly been degraded over time.”

The Occupy Wall Street protests started on Sept. 17 with a few dozen demonstrators who tried to pitch tents in front of the New York Stock Exchange. Since then, hundreds have set up camp in a park nearby and have become increasingly organized, lining up medical aid and legal help and printing their own newspaper, the Occupied Wall Street Journal.

About 100 demonstrators were arrested on Sept. 24 and some were pepper-sprayed. On Saturday police arrested 700 on charges of disorderly conduct and blocking a public street as they tried to march over the Brooklyn Bridge. Police said they took five more protesters into custody on Monday, though it was unclear whether they had been charged with any crime.

“At this point, we don’t anticipate wider unrest,” said Tim Flannelly, an FBI spokesman in New York, “but should it occur the city, including the NYPD and the FBI, will deploy any and all resources necessary to control any developments.”

Flannelly said he does not expect the New York protests to develop into the often-violent demonstrations that have rocked cities in the United Kingdom since the summer. But he said the FBI is “monitoring the situation and will respond accordingly.”

Wiljago Cook, of Oakland, Calif., who joined the New York protest on the first day, said she was shocked by the arrests.

“Exposing police brutality wasn’t even really on my agenda, but my eyes have been opened,” she said. She vowed to stay in New York “as long as it seems useful.”

City bus drivers sued the New York Police Department on Monday for commandeering their buses and making them drive to the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday to pick up detained protesters.

“We’re down with these protesters. We support the notion that rich folk are not paying their fair share,” said Transport Workers Union President John Samuelsen. “Our bus operators are not going to be pressed into service to arrest protesters anywhere.”

The city’s Law Department said the NYPD’s actions were proper.

On Monday, the zombies stayed on the sidewalks as they wound through Manhattan’s financial district chanting, “How to fix the deficit: End the war, tax the rich!” They lurched along with their arms in front of them No teletrak payday loan. Some yelled, “I smell money!”

Reaction was mixed from passers-by.

Roland Klingman, who works in the financial industry and was wearing a suit as he walked through a raucous crowd of protesters, said he could sympathize with the anti-Wall Street message.

“I don’t think it’s directed personally at everyone who works down here,” Klingman said. “If they believe everyone down here contributes to policy decisions, it’s a serious misunderstanding.”

Another man in a suit yelled at the protesters, “Go back to work!” He declined to be interviewed.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire who made his fortune as a corporate executive, has said the demonstrators are making a mistake by targeting Wall Street.

“The protesters are protesting against people who make $40- or $50,000 a year and are struggling to make ends meet. That’s the bottom line. Those are the people who work on Wall Street or in the finance sector,” Bloomberg said in a radio interview Friday.

Some protesters planned to travel to other cities to organize similar events.

John Hildebrand, a protester in New York from Norman, Okla., hoped to mount a protest there after returning home Tuesday. Julie Levine, a protester in Los Angeles, planned to go to Washington on Thursday.

Websites and Facebook pages with names like Occupy Boston and Occupy Philadelphia have also sprung up to plan the demonstrations.

Hundreds of demonstrators marched from a tent city on a grassy plot in downtown Boston to the Statehouse to call for an end of corporate influence of government.

“Our beautiful system of American checks and balances has been thoroughly trashed by the influence of banks and big finance that have made it impossible for the people to speak,” said protester Marisa Engerstrom, of Somerville, Mass., a Harvard doctoral student.

The Boston demonstrators decorated their tents with hand-written signs reading, “Fight the rich, not their wars” and “Human need, not corporate greed.”

Some stood on the sidewalk holding up signs, engaging in debate with passers-by and waving at honking cars. One man yelled “Go home!” from his truck. Another man made an obscene gesture.

Patrick Putnam, a 27-year-old chef from Framingham, Mass., said he’s standing up for the 99 percent of Americans who have no say in what happens in government.

“We don’t have voices, we don’t have lobbyists, so we’ve been pretty much neglected by Washington,” he said.

In Chicago, protesters beat drums on the corner near the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. In Los Angeles, demonstrators hoping to get TV coverage gathered in front of the courthouse where Michael Jackson’s doctor is on trial on manslaughter charges.

Protesters in St. Louis stood on a street corner a few blocks from the shimmering Gateway Arch, carrying signs that read, “How Did The Cat Get So Fat?,” “You’re a Pawn in Their Game” and “We Want The Sacks Of Gold Goldman Sachs Stole From Us.”

“Money talks, and it seems like money has all the power,” said Apollonia Childs. “I don’t want to see any homeless people on the streets, and I don’t want to see a veteran or elderly people struggle. We all should have our fair share. We all vote, pay taxes. Tax the rich.”

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President Barack Obama said Monday the U.S. Postal Service should be allowed to reduce mail delivery to five-days-a-week to help cut its massive losses.

The Postal Service lost $8.5 billion last year and is facing even more red ink this year as the Internet siphons off large amounts of first-class mail and the weak economy reduces advertising mail.

While the post office has cut more than 100,000 workers in the last few years it needs to cut more, close offices and find other ways to reduce costs to keep operating.

In his economic growth and debt reduction plan unveiled Monday, Obama endorsed the idea of dropping one day of mail delivery _ it is expected to be Saturday _ and urged other changes in postal operations

He agreed that nearly $7 billion the post office has overpaid into the federal retirement system should be refunded to the agency, urged that its payments for advance funding of retiree medical benefits be restructured, and said the post office should be allowed to sell non-postal products and raise postage rates.

Currently the post office cannot raise rates more than the amount of inflation.

Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said the president “has offered helpful recommendations to stabilize the Postal Service’s financial crisis.”

Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del personal loan for poor credit., who has proposed a bill including many of the same suggestions, welcomed the president’s statement.

“I have been saying for some time now that Congress and the administration need to come together on a plan that can save the Postal Service and protect the more than seven million jobs that rely on it,” he said in a statement.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who has his own postal reform bill in the House, responded that “the president’s proposal is not what taxpayers or the Postal Service needs.”

He asserted that Obama’s plan “will certainly cost taxpayers money.” Currently the post office does not receive tax funds for its operations.

Meanwhile, 75 members of Congress led by Reps. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., and Don Young, R-Alaska, called on the independent Postal Regulatory Commission to block the post office’s plans to close as many as 3,700 local offices across the country.

The proposed closures, most in rural locations that do little business, are currently under review.

The letter called for establishment of a new business model for the post office without closing offices and cutting its work force.

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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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Dressed in an electric-blue vest and a white hat, Carlos Santana stopped by Brown Shoe Co.’s Clayton headquarters this afternoon where a small fashion show was held in his honor to celebrate the 10th anniversary of his shoe brand.

So your first question might be: Um, Carlos Santana has a women’s shoe line? Yes, indeed he does.

He may have been wearing sporty white shoes (with no socks), but his women’s line is full of vibrant colors — yellows and oranges and pinks — and eye-popping designs (think leopard print). And many of them have quite high heels, platforms, and wedges.

Brown Shoe, which also designs a line of shoes for Fergie, launched the legendary musician’s shoe brand 10 years ago. And in the years since, the brand has sold 8 million pairs of shoes and tallied up $400 million in retail sales, according to company officials.

A small percentage of the sales go to the Milago Foundation, a charity that Santana founded with his ex-wife in 1998 that gives grants to groups around the world working with children. To date, the shoe brand has donated about $2.5 million to the foundation.

Rick Gelber, the brand’s general manager, recalled that Brown Shoe launched Santana’s show line soon after his hit album, “Supernatural,” came out. The shoes are carried in Macy’s as well as many independent boutiques and online.

“He has transcended the celebrity brand and just become a brand,” Gelber said. “We established a niche that was high-fashion dress shoes and that now has evolved into a whole lifestyle brand.”

During the fashion show of shoes from his upcoming fall and spring collections, Santana held the hand of his wife, Cindy Blackman, who he married last year. He bopped along to the music, which he knew well because, of course, it was his own.

Afterwards, he thanked Brown Shoe employees for their work and passion. He said he wants to take Blackman to Porto Allegre in Brazil, where many of his shoes are made. He visited some of those factories several years ago when he was on tour there.

“When we went there, the floor was so pristine and clean,” he said proudly.

You hear a lot of horror stories about sweatshops, he said. “But it was completely the opposite.”

With so much fear in the world today, he said he wants to make women happy with his shoes.

“When you turn to joy, somehow fear becomes like fog in San Francisco where you can’t see your nose at 6 o’clock in the morning,” he said. “But by 12 o’clock, the sky is blue.”

There’s nothing more attractive in a woman than confidence, he said.

“When I see ladies walk with confidence in these shoes, it’s almost like they turn into an actress,” he said.

He compared it to the transformation that Michael Jackson made when he was on stage. Once he crossed onto the stage, he channeled the likes of James Brown to Marcel Marceau to Fred Astaire, Santana said.

“When you wake up in the morning, it’s OK to enter into character if you don’t like who are right now — if you’re not comfortable in your own skin,” he said. “You need to enter into — it’s not faking it — but entering into character.”

Santana stuck around for a bit to take pictures with employees and to sign some guitairs, too. He performs tonight at the Fox.

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