Holiday sales on the mainland grew 16 percent to 470 billion yuan ($75 billion), the slowest pace since the 2009 financial crisis and three percentage points below last year

Apparel sales have been dented, ski slopes are emptier, and there has probably been a modest impact on economic figures for everything from payroll numbers to housing starts.

But lower energy prices mean that some consumers and municipal governments will likely benefit as heating charges and snow removal costs decline. And some retailers are betting on the early sale of lawn mowers.

After two brutally long winters, the temperatures this year have been so balmy - forecasters say the average temperatures across the nation have been 3-4 degrees Fahrenheit above normal in January - that many Americans have been wondering whether the cold will arrive at all.

In January, the U.S. recorded the least amount of snowfall since the mild winter of 2006, while Canada had the second lowest snowfall amount in 50 years, according to Planalytics weather forecasters.

Natural gas prices have slumped to 10-year lows as warm weather cuts heating demand, hammering the profits of drillers and forcing firms like Chesapeake Energy (CHK.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and ConocoPhillips (COP.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) to shut in production.

In shopping malls, retailers are struggling to get rid of winter clothing as consumers do without seasonal apparel.

“We are going through peak heating season and temperatures have been well above normal for most of the nation with weather maps going into early February painting a similar picture,” said Chris Jarvis, president of Caprock Risk Management in Rye, New Hampshire.

Below is a summary of some of the sectors affected:

NATURAL GAS PRICES

Energy prices offer the clearest signal that the weather isn’t behaving normally, as traders scour forecast screens for a hint of how much heat households and businesses will need in the coming days and weeks.

The answer this winter: not much. November, December and January have come and gone without much sustained cold in the major energy demand centers such as the Northeast, swelling gas inventories to more than 20 percent above last year. Even oil demand has been hit slightly.

Heating degree days, a measurement that reflects the strength of energy demand for home heating, are running 12 percent below winter norms and analysts say gas storage levels will remain high unless there is an extreme and prolonged spell into early spring.

For a graphic showing the fall in U.S. heating demand: link.reuters.com/gyt36s

To return storage levels to normal by the end of winter, every single day between mid-February and mid-April would need to be 10 degrees colder than normal, according to Jan Schulte, in-house analyst at Thomson Reuters Natural Gas Analytics.

“That is simply impossible,” Schulte said.

Above-normal temperatures are forecast for the first half of February, though private forecaster Weather Services International sees colder than normal temperatures across most of the northern and western United States for some weeks after that.

THE ECONOMY

The mild winter likely provided a slight temporary boost to the economy as builders broke ground on new home construction earlier than normal, though researchers at JPMorgan recently estimated this impact was minor.

Goldman Sachs estimates the weather probably led employers to add about 20,000 jobs to payrolls in December, about 10 percent of the total gain in employment that month.

Fewer snow storms allowed people to shop more readily. Without the mild weather, there may have been a small contraction in retail sales in December rather than a 0.1 percent increase, Goldman estimates.

Lower spending by households on heating in the fourth quarter subtracted a bit from economic growth during the period. The money, though, may show up eventually in higher consumption of other products and services or in a higher savings rate.

RETAIL

Warm winter weather forced many U.S. retailers to offer deeper-than-usual discounts in January to clear their shelves off winter gear ranging from coats and sweaters to boots and gloves. Meanwhile restaurants and beer sellers might see a kick up in business.

“In this economy, nobody is going to buy unless there is a need for it, and the weather says, ‘You don’t need it,’” said Scott Bernhardt, chief operating officer of Planalytics, which provides weather data for businesses.

“It’s apparel that’s hit the most,” said Bernhardt, who expects outerwear sales to drop 20 to 30 percent in the month. Demand was weak for items such as snow shovels and rock salt as well, Bernhardt said small personal loans.

At a Home Depot store in Overland Park, Kansas, where the temperature was an unseasonably warm 65 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday, snow shovels, snow blowers and other winter equipment had been relegated to a small corner at the end of the store. Prime selling space has been given over to shiny green lawn mowers.

A Target store in the Kansas City area had snow sleds on clearance last week.

Toro Co (TTC.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), which makes snow throwers, would not provide specifics on demand ahead of its quarterly earnings report. “Certainly the snow thrower products we sell would be negatively impacted by the lack of snow pretty much everywhere,” said Kurt Svendsen, spokesman for Toro.

Instead of hats, gloves and snow blowers, what consumers may be after in balmy weather is a nice cold beer.

“Warm weather does always help beer sales in the winter. Hard to quantify how much it’s helped the past two months though. Too early to tell,” said Harry Schuhmacher, editor and publisher of Beer Business Daily.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT

The mild winter is delivering welcome savings to many U.S. local governments still battling drag from the financial crisis and subsequent deep recession.

Cities, counties and other local governments report lower costs on heating bills for schools and other government buildings.

Lower overtime costs for ploughing crews, less use of salt to de-ice highways, and less wear and tear on equipment and roads, have also helped local authorities.

The state of Illinois reported that it saved $50,000 in December on heating the State Capitol and other buildings it controls in the state.

In Chicago, where a single fierce blizzard blew through the city’s snow budget in February 2011, the unseasonably warm December and January have barely dented the $20 million allocated for snow costs.

Plows were deployed just nine times in the past two months, versus 17 times during the same two months in the previous winter, while the amount of salt used so far is about half, said Matt Smith, spokesman for Chicago’s Department of Streets and Sanitation.

But the city, where Mayor Rahm Emanuel continues to chip away at a nearly $636 million structural budget gap with layoffs and other measures, is not counting yet on any savings.

“Just like every snow flake is different, every winter is different,” Smith said, adding “we still have a long way to go this winter.”

Kansas City snowfall this season is just three-tenths of an inch, down from the 1981-2010 seasonal average snowfall of 19.5 inches, and following two years when snowfall annually topped 40 inches, according to Kansas State climatologist Mary Knapp.

So far this has saved at least $250,000 in overtime pay, fuel and other snow-removal costs, city spokesman Dennis Gagnon said.

“No one wants to put a number on total savings, because you never know what will happen, and last February we had a big storm,” Gagnon said. “If we don’t use any salt, and can use it next year, additional savings might be as much as $1.3 million.”

The savings in the city’s $2.75 million yearly budget for snow removal were being offset by lost revenues tied to a tax on home heating fuel use, Gagnon said.

TOURISM

Business at ski resorts in New Hampshire in the U.S Northeast is down roughly 30 percent from a year ago because of the warmer weather, hurting sales at local inns and restaurants as well as the earnings of staff, said Ben Craig, snowsports school director and resort marketing coordinator for Dartmouth Skiway in the state.

“The warmer weather has certainly impacted business,” Craig said. “When people don’t see snow in their front yard, it’s hard to get excited to go skiing,” he said.

The lack of natural snow has forced the Dartmouth Skiway to make more snow than normal, raising costs, Craig said.

“A lot of ski resorts are in more rural areas and they are the biggest economic factor in those areas,” he said.

Warm-weather travel is also less on people’s minds when they don’t see snow on the ground, travel industry executives said.

David Fishman, president of Cadillac Travel in the Detroit suburb of Southfield, Michigan, said people have to be reminded during warmer winters that they want to go on vacation, preferably to a place where it’s sunnier.

“When it’s like this, people don’t think about travel as much,” he said. “People just aren’t as quick to pull the trigger because they are not looking outside or seeing snow or ice.”

Read more

The government will issue debt and inject the funds into banks via contingent convertible bonds, or CoCos, which convert into equity if capital ratios fall below a certain level, a person familiar with the process said yesterday. It will only support banks that merge and those lenders will also have more time to apply new provisioning rules, the person said.

Economy Minister Luis de Guindos speaks to reporters at 5:30 p.m. in Madrid today and the plan is due to be approved by the Cabinet tomorrow. The ministry gave no more details in an e- mailed statement.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, in power since December, has pledged a

Eurostat, the EU’s statistics office, said the 10.4 per cent unemployment rate in December was unchanged at its highest level since the euro was launched in 1999, as November’s was revised upward from a previous estimate of 10.3 percent. Unemployment has been steadily rising over the past year _ in December 2010, it stood at 9.5 percent _ largely because of Europe’s debt crisis.

There are huge disparities across the eurozone, however, with those countries at the front line of Europe’s current financial turmoil, such as Greece and Spain, suffering record rates of unemployment that are stoking concerns about the social fabric of their societies _ Spain’s unemployment stands at a staggering 22.9 percent and Greece’s is not far behind at 19.2 percent.

What even those figures mask is that unemployment among the young is much, much higher. Latest figures from Spain show unemployment among people aged under 25 was 48.7 percent, prompting concerns that an entire generation of people could fail to accumulate the necessary skills and experience for a prosperous life.

At the other end of the scale, some countries like Austria are operating not far off what is considered to be the natural rate of unemployment in an economy of 4.1 per cent, while Germany’s rate at a post-unification low of 5.5 per cent.

Since Europe’s debt crisis exploded around two years ago, the focus has been on austerity, with governments getting their houses in order with big, often-savage spending cuts, and tax increases.

However, there are growing signs that Europe is changing tack, and that measures to boost growth and jobs are now central to the crisis resolution effort.

On Monday, at a summit in Brussels designed to shore up the euro’s budgetary defenses against debt, EU leaders promised to stimulate growth and create jobs across the region.

“Yes we need discipline, but we also need growth,” said Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm.

The leaders pledged to offer more training for young people to ease their transition into the work force, to deploy unused development funds to create jobs, to reduce barriers to doing business across the EU’s 27 countries and ensure that small businesses have access to credit.

The task is hand is massive, with just under 16.5 million people unemployed in the eurozone, up 751,000 on the year before. Across the EU, which includes non-euro countries such as Britain and Poland, the number of unemployed stands at 23.8 million, or 9.9 percent of the potential work force.

Even if reforms to economies across Europe help boost growth and potential employment opportunities, there are many headwinds that will be difficult to overcome, not least the fear that many economies will slip back into recession in the wake of ongoing austerity measures and subdued global demand.

“Governments in these countries urgently need to deliver labor market reforms that make it more attractive to hire workers and ensure that young people in particular are not put at risk of permanent exclusion from the work force,” said Tom Rogers, a senior economic adviser at consultants Ernst & Young .

“Such reforms, if swiftly implemented, could have a powerful impact on confidence in the near term, and help ease the burden of the current crisis,” Rogers added.

Source

Bollard won

The Fed Chairman will deliver four lectures at George Washington University in March on "The Federal Reserve and its Role in Today’s Economy," the central bank announced Thursday. The lectures are part of a series on central banking that will also include other speakers.

While the class is geared toward undergraduate students in the university’s business school, the Fed will post videos and transcripts for the public to view online.

Bernanke already has a long history in academia. Before he joined the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors in 2002, he taught economics at Princeton University.

Under his leadership, the once secretive Fed has tried to become more open with the public. Bernanke started giving four regular press conferences last year, and just yesterday, the Fed gave more insight into its planning tools than ever before.

Fed forecasting breaks new ground

For the first time ever, the Fed released forecasts for the federal funds rate, its key tool for stimulating the economy. The forecasts show the central bank plans to keep interest rates ultra low until late 2014.

That announcement came as the Fed acknowledged the U.S. economy has been improving, but said significant headwinds still remain before the job market is entirely back to normal. 

Source

The Seattle-based coffee company reported on Thursday after the stock markets closed that fiscal first-quarter revenue grew 16 percent as it attracted new customers by adding stores in China and Morocco, upgrading locations in the U.S. and rolling out single-serve coffee and other new items at grocery stores.

“Starbucks is firing on all cylinders and taking full advantage of the many global opportunities that lie ahead,” CEO Howard Schultz said in a statement.

Starbucks reported that earnings rose 10 percent to $382.1 million, or 50 cents per share, for the quarter that ended Jan. 1. That’s up from $346.6 million, or 45 cents per share, in the same quarter last year. And its total revenue increased to $3.44 billion with growth from all its business lines.

Starbucks said revenue from its stores open at least a year _ an important measure because it strips away the impact of recently opened or closed stores _ increased 9 percent as more customers visited its cafes and spent more each trip. It was the company’s most successful holiday season ever, with customers buying more peppermint mochas, gingerbread lattes and Starbucks gift cards.

Starbucks also benefited from the addition of 241 new stores during the quarter. It now operates 17,244 stores worldwide, with plans to open 800 new stores in the coming year.

Additionally, the company delivered major gains in its consumer products business, which sells its new single-serve coffee products, Via instant coffee, Starbucks ice cream and other items for sale in grocery stores and other retailers payday loans online. Revenue from this segment increased 72 percent and Starbucks expects the business to continue to grow

But the solid quarterly performance was followed by a full-year forecast that was slightly below Wall Street expectations as Starbucks acknowledged that it continues to struggle with higher costs for coffee beans, dairy products and other ingredients it needs.

Starbucks said these costs were $105 million higher for the quarter than this time last year, sending its operating margins down from 17 percent to 16.2 percent for the quarter. Starbucks said commodity costs will add $230 million in costs for the full fiscal year but it anticipates the pressure will lesson in the second-half of the year.

As a result, Starbucks nudged up the lower-end of its earnings guidance. It now expects to earn $1.78 to $1.82 per share for the full year, up from prior guidance of $1.75 to $1.82 for the year. This falls just short of analyst expectations of $1.83 per share.

Jack Russo, an analyst with Edward Jones, said the modest outlook and lower margins drove some investors away in after-hours trading. On the news, the company’s shares fell 54 cents to $47.80 in after-hours trading.

Starbucks remains a strong growth company, Russo said, but the stock is already rich. It hovered near record highs this week. Its shares have traded between $30.75 and $48.39 in the past 52 weeks.

Source

First lady Michelle Obama and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack are expected to announce Wednesday that most school meals, including pizza, will have less sodium, more whole grains and more fruits and vegetables as sides. The popular pizzas will still be on school lunch lines but made with healthier ingredients.

Mrs. Obama and Vilsack were making the announcement at an elementary school in Alexandria, Va., with celebrity chef Rachael Ray.

The new rules, the first major nutritional overhaul of school meals in 15 years, won’t be as aggressive as the Obama administration had hoped. Congress last year blocked the Agriculture Department from making some of the changes the department had sought, including limiting french fries and pizzas.

A bill passed in November would require USDA to allow tomato paste on pizzas to be counted as a vegetable, as it is now. The initial draft of the department’s guidelines, released a year ago, would have prevented that. Congress also blocked USDA from limiting servings of potatoes to two servings a week. The final rule to be announced Wednesday will have to incorporate those directions from Congress.

The congressional changes had been requested by potato growers and food companies that produce frozen pizzas for schools, among others in the food industry. Conservatives in Congress called the guidelines an overreach, saying the government shouldn’t be telling children what to eat. School districts had also objected to some of the requirements, saying they go too far and would cost too much online payday loans.

The new guidelines would apply to lunches subsidized by the federal government, and a child nutrition bill signed by President Barack Obama in 2010 would help school districts pay for some of the increased costs. Some of the changes could take place as soon as the next school year, while others would be phased in over time.

The guidelines are also expected to limit the total number of calories in an individual meal and require that milk be low in fat. Flavored milks would have to be nonfat.

While many schools are improving meals already, others are still serving children meals high in fat, salt and calories. The guidelines are designed to combat growing childhood obesity and are based on 2009 recommendations by the Institute of Medicine, the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences.

The subsidized meals that would fall under the guidelines are served as free and low-cost meals to low-income children and long have been subject to government nutrition standards. The 2010 law for the first time will extend nutrition standards to other foods sold in schools that aren’t subsidized by the federal government, including “a la carte” foods on the lunch line and snacks in vending machines.

Those standards, while expected to be similar, will be written separately and have not yet been proposed by USDA.

Source

The convening of the new parliament is a significant benchmark in the timetable provided by the generals who took over from Mubarak for the handover of power to a civilian administration.

It is also a step forward for Islamist groups on the road to becoming the strongest political force in the nations that experienced Arab Spring revolts. Islamists dominated elections first in Tunisia and then in Egypt, and Libya’s Islamists are also expected to do well in parliamentary voting later this year.

The Egyptian chamber’s top priority is to elect a 100-member panel to draft a new constitution, which will have to be put to a vote in a referendum.

The next major step in the transition will be presidential elections, scheduled to be held before the end of June, when the generals are due to step down.

“The era of political exclusion is over,” said Saad el-Katatni, an Islamist lawmaker from the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest and best organized political group. El-Katatni, secretary general of the Brotherhood’s political arm _ the Freedom and Justice party _ was elected as speaker by a vast majority of the 508-seat chamber.

The Brotherhood was banned for most of its 84-year history, legalized only after the 18-day popular uprising in early 2011 that ousted Mubarak.

The elections, which started on Nov. 28 and ran into January, were the freest in Egypt in decades. Elections for parliament’s upper chamber, a largely toothless body known as the Shura Council, will begin later this month.

The outcome of the elections reflect the strength of the Islamists in Egypt, a mainly Muslim nation of some 85 million people that has grown steadily more religiously conservative over the past 40 years.

The Brotherhood spearheaded the Islamist victory in Egypt, winning just under half of all the seats.

In second place to the Brotherhood came another Islamist group, the ultraconservative Salafis, with nearly a quarter of the seats.

The liberal and left-leaning groups that organized the anti-Mubarak uprising garnered less than 10 percent of the seats. Many of them were not as well prepared for the vote as the Islamists, particularly the Brotherhood, whose members have over years of underground work acquired a high degree of discipline and loyalty.

Several of these lawmakers wore yellow scarves saying, “No to military trials for civilians,” a reference to the hauling of at least 12,000 civilians before military tribunals since the generals took over power in February last year.

The Islamists’ dominance was obvious in Monday’s session, where many lawmakers sported long beards, clerical turbans or flowing robes.

“We are here because the People’s Assembly (parliament) is all Islamists,” said Mina Samir, a protester in his early 20s who was among several thousand demonstrators near the parliament building calling for an end to military rule Online payday loans. “Now we have a military power supporting a conservative power. That’s why I am here.”

Some of the protesters wore masks made out of photographs of those killed or wounded by security forces during the anti-Mubarak uprising, or in subsequent protests against the generals. “Down, down with military rule!” they chanted, and, “No military and no Brotherhood.”

What was supposed to be a quiet procedural session turned briefly chaotic when some lawmakers improvised additions to the text of the oath they were taking in turn, provoking angry protests from the interim speaker, Mahmoud El-Saqqah of the liberal Wafd party.

The oath ends with a pledge to respect the constitution and the law, but several Islamist lawmaker added “God’s law” or “as long as there are no contradictions with God’s law.” Pro-reform lawmakers also improvised, with two of them pledging to “continue the revolution” and “be loyal to its martyrs.”

The convening of parliament is a moment of triumph for the Brotherhood, whose members endured decades of arrests and intimidation by Mubarak’s feared security agencies.

The Brotherhood has contested parliamentary elections since the 1980s, circumventing the ban on the group by fielding candidates as independents. They won 20 percent of parliament’s seats in 2005, but could not win a single seat in elections held in November and December 2010, thought to be the most fraudulent since army officers seized power in a 1952 coup that toppled the monarchy.

On Monday, Brotherhood volunteers escorted their lawmakers into the parliament building.

“I want to make sure that my representatives are safe. I want to celebrate and make sure that no one ruins this atmosphere. There are many who want to ruin it,” said Fathy el-Sayed, a 35-year-old Brotherhood supporter outside parliament.

Others waited outside parliament with flowers they said they planned to give to their lawmakers. They chanted religious songs to the beat of drums.

“Democracy brought the people (who are) inside the building now. They were elected by the people,” said Adel Musbah, a supporter of the Salafi el-Nour party.

He questioned planned protests by pro-democracy groups marking the first anniversary of the start of the uprising. “Why are they coming to object?” he said.

Security was tight in the area around the parliament building, scene of recent deadly clashes between troops and protesters demanding that the generals immediately step down. The building is also a short distance away from Tahrir Square, birthplace of the uprising that topped Mubarak’s 29-year regime.

Monday’s session was chaired by el-Saqqah, because he was the oldest lawmaker.

He began the proceedings by ordering lawmakers to stand in silence for a minute in memory of the hundreds of protesters killed during the protests.

Source

Intelligence, as measured by tests given to 158,044 Finnish soldiers over 19 years, outweighed income in determining whether someone owns shares and how many companies he invests in. Among draftees scoring highest on the exams, the rate of ownership later in life was 21 percentage points above those who tested lowest, researchers found. The study, published in last month’s Journal of Finance, ignored bonds and other investments.

Economists have debated for decades what they call the participation puzzle, trying to explain why more people don’t take advantage of the higher returns stocks have historically paid on savings. As few as 51 percent of American households own them, a 2009 study by the Federal Reserve found free 3-in-1 credit report. Individual investors have pulled record cash out of U.S. equity mutual funds in the last five years as shares suffered the worst bear market since the 1930s.

“It’s what we see anecdotally: Higher-IQ investors tend to be more willing to commit financial resources, to put skin in the game,” said Jason Hsu, chief investment officer at Research Affiliates. “You can generalize a whole literature on this. It seems to suggest that whatever attributes are driving people to not participate in the stock market are related to the cost of processing financial information.”

Source