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A weak year for the economy likely ended on a hopeful note.

The economy likely grew at annual rate of 3 percent in the October-December quarter, according to a survey by FactSet. The Commerce Department will release the actual figure Friday.

The gain would represent modest improvement from this summer, when the economy grew just 1.8 percent. However, even with the strong finish, economists believe the economy expanded just 1.7 percent for the whole year _ roughly half the growth in 2010.

And growth is expected to slow in the first three months of this year. A key reason is wages have failed to keep pace with inflation. That will likely force many consumers to pull back on spending after splurging over the holidays.

Consumer spending is important because it makes up 70 percent of economic activity.

Businesses are also expected to reduce spending in the first quarter after building up their stockpiles in the final months of 2011.

Richard DeKaiser, a senior economist at Parthenon Group, expects just 2 percent annual growth in the January-March quarter. But Kaiser says that should be the weakest quarter. He expects the economy to gain strength in each quarter and grow 2.6 percent for the entire year.

The year is off to a good start. Companies invested more in equipment and machinery in December. The unemployment rate fell to 8.5 percent last month _ the lowest level in nearly three years _ after the sixth straight month of solid hiring.

People are buying more cars, and consumer confidence is rising. Even the depressed housing market has shown enough improvement to make some economists predict a turnaround has begun.

Still, many economists worry that a recession in Europe could dampen demand for U.S. manufactured goods, which would slow growth. And without more jobs and better pay, consumer spending is likely to stagnate.

The Federal Reserve signaled this week that a full recovery could take at least three more years. In response, it said it would probably not increase its benchmark interest rate until late 2014 at the earliest _ a year and a half later than it had previously said.

The central bank also slightly reduced its outlook for growth this year, from as much as 2.9 percent forecast in November down to 2.7 percent. The Fed sees unemployment falling as low as 8.2 percent this year.

DeKaiser said part of his optimism stems from a view that housing sales and prices will rise moderately this year. That should lift the battered construction industry, which ended last year with three months of gains in single-family home construction.(backslash)

At the moment, housing remains the weakest part of the economy. New-home sales fell last month, and total sales for 2011 were the lowest on records dating back to 1963.

“I think the clouds will gradually lift over housing. Rising home prices will make consumers feel wealthier and this will translate into stronger consumer spending,” DeKaiser said.

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Quicker deliveries of Boeing’s commercial airplanes helped it report a 20-percent jump in fourth-quarter profits, and offset sluggish growth in its defense business.

However, its shares fell because of a weaker 2012 earnings outlook than analysts expected.

Boeing posted net income of $1.39 billion Wednesday, or $1.84 per share. That didn’t include a tax benefit of 52 cents per share. Analysts surveyed by FactSet expected $1 per share. Revenue was $19.56 billion, also better than expected.

Boeing delivered 128 commercial planes during the quarter, up from 116 a year ago. Profits from commercial planes jumped 56 percent. Revenue rose 31 percent.

Profits from defense rose 6 percent. Revenue rose 4 percent. Defense contractors are just beginning to see what is expected to be a major slowdown in military spending in the U.S. and Europe. Boeing says defense revenue will fall roughly 5 percent in 2012.

Boeing predicted a 2012 profit of $4.05 to $4.25 per share. Analysts had been expecting a profit of $4.90 per share. Not counting 83 cents per share in higher-than-expected pension expense and other one-time items, Boeing expects an adjusted profit of $5.06 to $5.26 per share.

The company forecast revenue of $78 billion to $80 billion. Analysts were expecting $78.45 billion.

Boeing, based in Chicago, says it plans to deliver 585 to 600 commercial planes this year, up from 477 last year. It delivered three of its new 787s last year, and nine of its new 747-8 superjumbo jets. Boeing says revenue from commercial planes will grow at least 31 percent this year.

Shares fell $1.94, or 2.6 percent, to $73.42 in morning trading.

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Treasuries are off to their worst start in nine years amid signs the U.S. economy is strengthening and Europe is moving closer to resolving its sovereign-debt crisis.

Yields on benchmark 10-year notes climbed 16 basis points, or 0.16 percentage point, the biggest weekly increase since the five days ended Dec. 23, as reports showed fewer Americans than forecast filed for unemployment benefits and home sales rose for a third month in December. The refuge appeal of Treasuries eased as Greek officials held debt-swap talks and European bond sales saw increased demand. Policy makers are expected by analysts to say they

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The ubiquitous symbols of gainful employment, the key card and picture ID attached to his sweater, speak equally to Ed Wolfgram’s periodic rejection of his life’s status quo.

“It’s important to keep learning and to keep things interesting,” Wolfgram said last week in an interview at a coffee shop near his Central West End home. “If you’re in a rut, and are feeling a little too comfortable, then every five years you need to add a new dimension to your life. That way you won’t lose out on something.”

A phychiatrist Wolfgram adheres to his own advice.

As middle age approached, Wolfgram abandoned a sedentary lifestyle to include a run in his daily routine. He has since competed in 60 marathons and Ironman events, once finishing first in the world in his age bracket.

The ID and key card underscore Wolfgram’s most recent commitment to personal evolution — a bid to re-enter the workforce.

The Metropolitan St. Louis Psychiatric Center responded to the submission of his resume with an invitation to an interview.

The “very nervous” Wolfgram apparently impressed the right people, because the resulting job offer was quickly followed the mandatory drug test, orientation, issuance of the key card and ID and, finally, his first day on the job.

Most of us are familiar with the drill.

Not Wolfgram: He last pursued and was subsequently hired for a salaried position 50 years ago when, to put it in perspective, John F. Kennedy occupied the White House and Barack Obama was still in diapers.

A half century later, Wolfgram, 79, leaped into the 21st Century from a work environment defined by segregation, households supported by a single salary, typewriters and manual labor.

“It’s sort of like riding a bike, but not quite,” he said.

The University of Iowa med school graduate took his leave from that world shortly after completing his training at the Washington University School of Medicine in the early 1960s.

Establishing a private practice, he set his own hours, made business decisions that had an impact only on him and his patients and reported to no one.

Now, to his astonishment, Wolfgram has a boss.

As well as an office, telephone extension with a dedicated line and the expectation that he’ll show up at 8:30 every morning and remain on the job until 4:30 in the afternoon, with a half hour for lunch.

Fifty years after he last punched the proverbial clock, Wolfgram arrived at his new place of employment with two primary objectives: to avoid getting lost in the labyrinth hospital corridors, and to pinpoint the location of the bathroom nearest his office without getting lost.

He got through those first days by sticking to another bit of advice he’d often imparted to others - “There are stupid answers, but never a stupid question.”

Wolfgram returned to the work place partially out of necessity.

A witness in criminal and civil proceedings, he is required by many states to maintain an active practice in psychiatry to meet the standard for expert testimony.

Beyond that, his position at the the psychiatric center also scratches the internal itch that propels him forward at an age when most of his contemporaries are long retired.

Between his private practice and periodic work in hospitals, Wolfgram through the years managed to stay up-to-date with the technology, medicine and research that has moved psychiatry forward over the past half century.

It’s thus the non-clinical aspects of the workplace — particularly the collegiality that has replaced the professional detachment of 50 years ago — he finds most interesting.

“Everybody is always saying hello, asking how I am and wishing me a nice day,” he said. “I wonder if they are programmed in some way.”

Wolfgram believes his own re-entry to the workplace carries a lesson for other job-seekers, be they recent college graduates or displaced workers landing on their feet after a prolonged layoff.

“No matter how educated you are, you’re starting at the bottom of the ladder,” he said.

And as he’s learning, there’s no where to go but up.

Even at age 79.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“Congressmen taking responsibility or taking credit for helping create jobs is like Al Gore taking credit for the Internet.” - Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney mocking claim by fellow GOP presidential hopeful and ex-House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s claim that he played a role in creating 16 million jobs in the 1980s.

Source: Bloomberg

BY THE NUMBERS

60 - Percentage of Rochester, N.Y. workforce drawing paychecks from Eastman Kodak, Xerox and Bausch + Lomb in 1987. 

6 - Percentage of  Rochester workforce employed by the same three companies today. 

Source: The New York Times 

FINAL WORD

“The right claims the stimulus failed because it didn’t bring unemployment down to 8 percent in its first year, as predicted by Obama’s transition economic team. Instead, it peaked at 10.2 percent. But the 8 percent prediction was made before Obama took office and was wrong solely because it relied on statistics that guessed the economy was only shrinking by around 4 percent, not 9. Remove that statistical miscalculation (made by government and private-sector economists alike) and the stimulus did exactly what it was supposed to do. It put a bottom under the free fall. It is not an exaggeration to say it prevented a spiral downward that could have led to the Second Great Depression.” - commentator and blogger Andrew Sullivan

Source: The Daily Beast

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The Philippines cut interest rates for the first time since July 2009, joining emerging markets from Thailand to Indonesia in easing monetary policy as a deteriorating global economy threatens growth.

Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas lowered the rate it pays lenders for overnight deposits by a quarter of a percentage point to 4.25 percent, according to a statement in Manila today. The decision was predicted by 13 of 17 economists in a Bloomberg News survey, with the rest expecting no change. The central bank maintained the reserve requirement ratio at 21 percent.

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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s new director — armed with the bureau’s full powers — has set his top priorities for what to do first.

With President Obama’s recess appointment of former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray last week, the six-month-old bureau — created as part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law — inherited a couple of key new powers.

These include the ability to regulate nonbanks and the ability to crack down on financial products considered unfair, deceptive or abusive toward consumers.

CNNMoney asked Cordray to detail his top three priorities in a media briefing on Thursday.

‘Know Before You Owe’

Cordray said his top priority was the bureau’s "Know Before You Owe" campaign, dedicated to helping consumers understand all the terms of their mortgage, credit card and student loan agreements.

By July, the consumer bureau has to finish up its simpler mortgage federal disclosure form, as required by the Dodd-Frank law that created the bureau.

The bureau is also working on a one-page financial aid shopping sheet to help students figure out how much in federal loans and private loans students should consider taking on, and what kind of loan repayments will follow after graduation.

Policing nonbanks

The next big priority for the bureau is to police nonbanking financial firms including student lenders, debt collectors, payday lenders and mortgage originators and servicers.

"We have the opportunity now, we’re aggressively moving forward with non bank supervision to level that playing field in these same markets," Cordray said.

The day after Cordray started, the bureau launched its nonbank supervision program, expected to turn its focus on the mortgage sector.

On Wednesday, the bureau released a new set of standards for consumer bureau officials to examining mortgage originators. The mortgage industry played a big role in the housing bubble that led to the financial crisis, signing up homeowners for loans they didn’t understand and couldn’t pay.

Cordray said that consumer bureau examiners would be sent into mortgage broker offices to start looking at their books in coming months.

On Thursday, Cordray will hold a hearing on payday lending — loans made to a worker in advance of his or her paycheck — in Birmingham, Ala. Alabama is home to the largest number of payday lenders per capita in the nation, according to the bureau.

Cracking down on law breakers

The last priority Cordray outlined is the one that makes the financial sector the most uneasy: Holding financial firms accountable when their financial product takes advantage of consumers.

"Providers need to know that whether they’re big or small, and whatever market they’re in, they have to follow the law and they have to obey the law," Cordray said. "They can’t engage in unfair and deceptive and abusive practices."

The power to declare products deceptive and abusive and to stop financial firms from selling them is another power that the bureau didn’t get in full force until Cordray took over.

And it’s the one everyone is going to be watching. So many other financial regulatory agencies failed at cracking down on firms that break laws that protect consumers. Those failures were a big reason the consumer bureau got created in the first place.

The bureau employs about 800 staffers. And it had already started flexing some key powers, such as examining the books of some the nation’s largest banks.

There’s still debate about whether Cordray’s appointment is legitimate. Republicans say it’s not. Obama made the recess appointment while Congress was technically in a do-nothing session, weeks after the Senate failed to muster enough votes to confirm Cordray.

But Cordray says he’s going to leave such questions for others, and concentrate on the task at hand.

"We have a job to do. We’re going to do the job. It’s a very important job, " Cordray said. 

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The Associated Press opened its newest bureau here Monday, becoming the first international news organization with a full-time presence to cover news from North Korea in words, pictures and video.

In a ceremony that came less than a month after the death of longtime ruler Kim Jong Il and capped nearly a year of discussions, AP President and CEO Tom Curley and a delegation of top AP editors inaugurated the office, situated inside the headquarters of the state-run Korean Central News Agency in downtown Pyongyang.

The bureau expands the AP’s presence in North Korea, building on the breakthrough in 2006 when AP opened a video bureau in Pyongyang for the first time by an international news organization. Exclusive video from AP video staffers in Pyongyang was used by media outlets around the world following Kim’s death.

Now, AP writers and photojournalists will also be allowed to work in North Korea on a regular basis.

For North Korea, which for decades has remained largely off-limits to international journalists, the opening marked an important gesture, particularly because North Korea and the United States have never had formal diplomatic relations. The AP, an independent 165-year-old news cooperative founded in New York and owned by its U.S. newspaper membership, has operations in more than 100 countries and employs nearly 2,500 journalists across the world in 300 locations.

The bureau puts AP in a position to document the people, places and politics of North Korea across all media platforms at a critical moment in its history, with Kim’s death and the ascension of his young son as the country’s new leader, Curley said in remarks prepared for the opening.

“Beyond this door lies a path to vastly larger understanding and cultural enrichment for millions around the world,” Curley said. “Regardless of whether you were born in Pyongyang or Pennsylvania, you are aware of the bridge being created today.”

Curley said the Pyongyang bureau will operate under the same standards and practices as AP bureaus worldwide.

“Everyone at The Associated Press takes his or her responsibilities of a free and fair press with utmost seriousness,” he said. “We pledge to do our best to reflect accurately the people of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea as well as what they do and say.”

KCNA President Kim Pyong Ho called the occasion “a significant meeting.”

“I believe that the reason we are able to conduct all these projects in less than a year is that President and CEO Thomas Curley and the other members of the AP have promised to report on the DPRK with fairness, balance and accuracy, and have tried to follow through in collaboration with KCNA,” he said in remarks prepared to mark the occasion fast payday loan.

“Even though our two countries do not have normalized relations, we have been able to find a way to understand one another and to cooperate closely enough to open an AP bureau here in Pyongyang as we have today,” Kim said.

The North Korean capital, dappled in snow, remains in an outwardly subdued mood two weeks after the official mourning period concluded for Kim Jong Il, who died of a heart attack last month. His son, Kim Jong Un, has since become the third generation of his family to lead North Korea, following his father and grandfather, the nation’s founder.

Kim’s death came amid increased diplomatic activity surrounding the Korean peninsula, including recent bilateral meetings between North Korea and South Korea, and between North Korea and the United States. While his death put all that on hold, there are hints that North Korea remains willing to engage on a deal to restart six-party talks addressing the country’s nuclear program.

The AP bureau will be staffed by reporter Pak Won Il and photographer Kim Kwang Hyon, both natives of North Korea who have done some reporting for AP in recent weeks on Kim’s funeral and the mass public mourning on the streets of Pyongyang.

The bureau will be supervised by Korea Bureau Chief Jean H. Lee and Chief Asia Photographer David Guttenfelder, who will make frequent trips to Pyongyang to manage the office, train the local journalists and conduct their own reporting. Lee and Guttenfelder, both Americans, are longtime AP journalists with broad international experience.

As with other Asian news stories produced by AP, news from North Korea will be sent initially to AP’s Asia-Pacific regional editing desk in Bangkok, where AP editors review and edit the stories for distribution to AP member newspapers and customers. Similarly, photos from North Korea will be edited at the Asia-Pacific photo editing desk, located in Tokyo.

Over the past two years, AP has been in contact with North Korean officials about how to set up broader access for AP print and photo journalists to Pyongyang. This led Lee and Guttenfelder to make several extensive reporting trips to North Korea. A team of AP photojournalists conducted a three-day workshop for KCNA photographers in Pyongyang in October.

KCNA hosted Curley and other AP executives in Pyongyang in March, and a five-member KCNA delegation, led by Kim, attended talks at the AP’s world headquarters in New York City in June.

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Bel-Ridge - Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon stopped by a chemical manufacturing plant here Friday to tout his latest jobs plan, a plan that’s considerably more modest than previous editions.

Maybe it reflects the realities of election year politics. Maybe it reflects exhaustion after last fall’s economic development special session came up empty. But the “Missouri Works” plan Nixon has barnstormed the state to unveil this week is focused on mostly small-bore, and acheivable, programs designed to trigger job growth across the state.

“My clear priority for 2012 is to create jobs,” he said. “That’s always been our focus and that has not changed.”

Nixon said he’ll fill in details during his State of the State address next week, but the outlines of Missouri Works are this.

- Attract auto-supplier jobs around the expanding General Motors and Ford plants.

- Boost exports, help small businesses tap foreign markets and open more overseas trade offices.

- Continue to invest in high-tech training programs

- Expand the “Show-Me Heroes” program to hire veterans.

- Fund the new Missouri Science and Innovation Reinvestment Act at $4 million.

- Continue to refine incentives to target “high-growth industries no fax payday loans.”

- “Create jobs in rural communities.”

Many of these programs came from the strategic plan the Missouri Department of Economic Development crafted last year, and most generally get broad support from business leaders and lawmakers.

Still, the agenda is considerably less ambitious than in 2010, when Nixon pushed big tax breaks for auto plants, or 2011, when he proposed overhauling the state’s dozens of tax credit programs. Many of the proposals are things Nixon can do on his own - without lawmakers’ help - though he’ll need the General Assembly to fund MOSIRA and, he said, for his auto-parts supplier proposal. 

As for tax credit changes, which gobbled up so much time and energy last year but went nowhere, Nixon said he’d still welcome them. But, he noted, that’s a long-term project.

“The short-term budget benefit from tax credit reform is relatively small,” he said.

And Nixon is up for re-election in less than ten months.

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A former tabloid newspaper editor told Britain’s media ethics inquiry Thursday that he published an inflammatory story about the parents of a missing girl because he thought there was a possibility the story could be true.

The unfounded Daily Express story suggested that Kate and Gerry McCann, the parents of missing schoolgirl Madeleine McCann, might have been linked to her 2007 abduction and possible death.

The Daily Express newspaper had to make a front-page apology and pay a substantial settlement to the parents, but former chief editor Peter Hill seemed unrepentant when quizzed about the decision to publish.

“I felt the stories should be published because there was reason to believe they might possibly be true,” he said, suggesting that the saga of the young girl’s disappearance from a holiday resort in Portugal had generated extraordinary interest throughout the world.

Hill testified before the Leveson Inquiry, a wide-ranging investigation of wrongdoing at British newspapers. The inquiry stems from public anger about the phone hacking scandal, which saw reporters and private detectives hack into the voicemail systems of celebrities, sports stars, crime victims and royal aides.

Committee lawyer Robert Jay seemed angered by Hill’s casual explanation of the decision to link Madeline McCann’s parents to her disappearance, suggesting that Hill had just “whacked it into the paper” regardless of its veracity.

Hill responded angrily that he felt he was being put on trial and said other British papers had taken similar liberties in reporting the McCann case.

The hacking scandal has centered on Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid, which the media mogul shut down in July.

More than a dozen journalists have been arrested in the probe, senior executives with Murdoch’s News Corp. media empire have lost their jobs, and top U.K. police officers have resigned over their failure to tackle the problem.

Another tabloid editor, Dawn Neesom of the Daily Star, testified that reporters do exaggerate headlines, dramatize reporting and occasionally go too far. She said stories are written “to put a smile on people’s faces.”

Neesom’s paper is among the smallest of Britain’s daily tabloids, with a circulation of about 650,000 and a decidedly lowbrow tone Faxless payday loans. Front pages typically feature seminude reality television stars, celebrity gossip and sensationalized stories about immigration.

Neesom said her paper’s mission was to entertain, but she evaded claims that the paper systematically distorted stories to titillate its readership.

“To be entertaining doesn’t necessarily mean that you can just make a story up,” she said.

Inquiry lawyer Robert Jay then flipped through some of the paper’s more creative headlines _ including one stark front-page story that appeared to claim that “American Idol” star Simon Cowell had died.

“TELLY KING COWELL IS DEAD,” the June 2, 2011 headline read, followed by the subtitle: “The show’s finally over for Simon.”

The story itself referred to an off-the-cuff remark by rival talent show judge Gary Barlow claiming that Cowell’s reign at the top of British television was over. Cowell himself is alive and well.

Inquiry lawyer Robert Jay asked Neesom how she could justify the alarmist headline.

“It’s wrong, isn’t it?” Jay said.

“Um … it’s dramatic,” Neesom said. “Eye-catching.”

Even more dramatic was a front-page story published on April 21, 2010, when international air traffic had been paralyzed by a huge ash cloud from the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokul. Over a picture of an airplane wreathed in ash and fire, the headline read: “TERROR AS PLANE HITS ASH CLOUD: Dramatic pictures as jets get OK to defy volcano.”

The “pictures” were actually from a television reconstruction of an event that had occurred almost three decades earlier. Jay told Neesom that U.K. airport officials had been so horrified by the misleading headline that they had pulled the paper from their newsstands.

Neesom agreed the ash cloud terror story may have “over-egged the pudding.”

“Occasionally, I admit, we do cross lines,” she said. “But we do have standards.”

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