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Google intentionally hindered a federal regulator’s probe into its Street View cars’ accidental grabs of personal information off of Wi-Fi routers, according to the investigating agency.

Google’s penalty: A measly $25,000 fine.

The Federal Communications Commission said in a report filed late Friday that Google repeatedly gave the agency the cold shoulder when it was trying to determine whether Google had engaged in any wrongdoing.

Google admitted in late 2010 that it had inadvertently collected unsuspecting people’s information.

Prying out more detail proved exceedingly difficult for the FCC.

Google "deliberately impeded and delayed" the investigation by failing to respond to information requests, the agency said.

It added: "Google apparently willfully and repeatedly violated Commission orders to produce certain information and documents that the Commission required for its investigation."

The debacle came to light in mid-2010, when Google revealed that its data-collection cars had mistakenly downloaded so-called "payload data" (snippets of information sent over the Internet) from Internet users who were logged on to unprotected wireless networks in range of its cars. That data could include e-mails, instant messages, usernames and passwords.

Google (, Fortune 500) apologized for the gaffe and said it never used the personal information it collected. The company also said it deleted the information.

In its report, the FCC said it tried to gather information to determine whether Google violated any of the agency’s provisions.

In its initial response to the FCC’s inquiry, Google provided just five documents, including a copy of its software code that was so poorly documented that the FCC said it was "impossible to know where the redactions occurred."

Google initially refused to send the FCC its internal e-mails about the issue, despite repeated requests for them. The company also refused to name the engineers involved in the collection and review of the data gathered from Wi-Fi routers. Doing so would "serve no useful purpose," Google claimed.

The FCC, which called Google’s actions "inappropriate," sounded exasperated about Google’s many failures to respond to its requests.

The FCC had to try for nine months to get an appropriate person simply to sign off on Google’s statements to the agency. It took five letters and a threat to "compel compliance" with a subpoena to get all of the documents it initially asked for.

After it finally got the engineers’ names, the regulator delivered a subpoena to the software engineer who developed the code that was used to download the information from the Wi-Fi routers. He invoked his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination. As a result, the regulator said "significant factual questions … cannot be answered."

Because of all the hoops Google made the FCC jump through, the agency hit the company with the maximum penalty available, a $25,000 fine.

That fine was solely for Google’s failures to respond to the agency’s inquiries. In the end, the FCC said it could not find sufficient evidence that the company actually violated any of its statutes.

Google said it objects to the FCC’s ruling.

"We provided all the materials the regulators felt they needed to conclude their investigation and we were not found to have violated any laws," a Google spokeswoman said in an e-mailed statement. "We disagree with the FCC’s characterization of our cooperation in their investigation and will be filing a response."

The FCC’s fine is pocket change for Google, which just reported a nearly $3 billion quarterly profit. If every Google employee kicked in 75 cents, that would cover the fine. Google’s highest paid employee, Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette, earned more than $25,000 every 10 hours in 2011.

The FCC is the second U.S. regulator to probe Google for its Street View data collection oopsie. The Federal Trade Commission closed its investigation of the issue in October 2010 without taking any action against Google.

In November, Google implemented a way for people to opt-out of having their routers surveyed at all. 

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New Zealand house sales in March recorded the best monthly result since November 2007, adding to signs of a real-estate-market recovery that may boost consumer confidence and spending later this year.

Sales rose 25.3 percent from a year earlier, the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand said in a report published today. Sales reached 7,330 last month from 6,168 in February, according to the figures, which don

U.S. stocks finished higher for a second straight day Thursday, continuing to recover from a modest pullback at the start of April.

The Dow Jones industrial average () rallied 181 points, or 1.4%, the S&P 500 () gained 19 points, or 1.4%, and the Nasdaq () added 39 points, or 1.3%. The day’s gains were the best since March 13 for all three indexes.

Thursday’s advance came despite a fairly bland round of economic news. Initial unemployment filings rose a bit more than expected, while a separate report showed no change in wholesale prices.

But investors pushed stocks higher, recouping losses from earlier in the month, as they welcomed declining yields on Spanish and Italian bonds and geared up for the first-quarter reading on economic growth in China, due Friday.

Recent data out of China have been mixed, raising fears of a sharp slowdown in the region. But Mark Williams, chief Asia economist for Capital Economics, said he expects China’s first-quarter GDP to grow at least at an 8% annual rate, which "is low in historical terms for China, but far from the ‘hard landing’ that many have feared."

Investors were also continuing to shift their focus to first-quarter corporate results.

After the market closed Thursday, Google (, Fortune 500) beat earnings expectations, with a profit of $2.9 billion for the first quarter, up 61% from a year earlier, as revenue climbed 24% to $10.7 billion. The search giant also announced an unorthodox stock split.

Earnings from JPMorgan Chase (, Fortune 500) and Wells Fargo (, Fortune 500) are due Friday.

5 reasons investors shouldn’t panic

Following robust gains in the first quarter, stocks hit a rough patch at the start of the month, triggering five straight days of losses for the Dow and S&P 500. Both indexes lost more than 4% in that short stretch, as investors were hit with bad news from nearly every direction: fears of a slowdown in China, rising yields on Spanish and Italian bonds, and slowing job growth in the United States.

"We had a terrific start to the year, but there were three possible concerns always looming, and they all gave us a reason to pause," said Art Hogan, managing director at Lazard Capital Markets.

"Together, they acted as a catalyst for what was a long overdue correction," added Hogan, highlighting the 29% run-up in the S&P 500 since the one-year lows hit last October.

But Hogan said the rebound in stocks on Wednesday and Thursday is likely just a "brief pause in what will prove to be a shallow correction."

"I think we’re going to see a lot more fits and starts during the second quarter, compared to the first three months of the year," he added.

The upcoming volatility will likely take its cue from corporate results releases, Hogan said. So far, investors have been relatively satisfied, but the reporting period is just getting underway, and expectations are bleak.

Can Google get its groove back?

U.S. stocks closed higher Wednesday, bouncing back after a string of five down days, as concerns about Europe eased and hopes for a better-than-expected earnings season rose. Aluminum producer Alcoa (, Fortune 500) led Wednesday’s gains after reporting a surprise first-quarter profit late Tuesday.

Economy: The Labor Department reported that initial jobless claims rose unexpectedly to 380,000 in the latest week, up from a revised reading of 367,000, which was also revised higher.

Separate reports showed no increase in overall wholesale prices in March, which was better than the 0.2% increase forecast, and the nation’s trade deficit declined unexpectedly in February.

Companies: Shares of McKesson (, Fortune 500) popped after the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs awarded the wholesale pharmaceutical company a contract worth about $4 billion a year to supply medication to VA facilities.

Hewlett-Packard’s (, Fortune 500) stock jumped following news that the company’s PC sales in the United States grew by nearly 7% over the first quarter of 2011, outpacing every other competitor — even mighty Apple (, Fortune 500) — according to estimates compiled by tech research firms Gartner and IDC.

Rite Aid (, Fortune 500) shares rose slightly after the drugstore chain reported a quarterly loss of 18 cents a share on $7.1 billion in revenue, in line with expectations.

Shares of Royal Dutch Shell () fell sharply after the company said it had activated an oil spill response vessel to investigate a "light sheen" of oil spotted in the Gulf of Mexico, but recovered a bit in later trading.

Sony () said Thursday that it would be cutting 10,000 jobs during the 2012 fiscal year as it seeks to revitalize its struggling business. The electronics maker warned earlier this week that its annual loss would be twice as large as its prior forecast, blaming write-offs of deferred tax credits.

Oaktree Capital Group () started trading under the ticker OAK after the asset management firm raised $378 million through an initial public offering Wednesday. Oaktree sold 8.8 million shares at $43 apiece, the low end of its estimated range. Shares of the company finished lower in their stock market debut.

World markets: European stocks closed higher. Britain’s FTSE 100 () gained 1.3%, while the DAX () in Germany and France’s CAC 40 () rose 1%.

Asian markets finished higher. The Shanghai Composite () rose 1.8%, the Hang Seng () in Hong Kong climbed 0.9% and Japan’s Nikkei () gained 0.7%.

Currencies and commodities: The dollar slipped against the euro and the British pound and was flat versus the Japanese yen.

Oil for May delivery rose 94 cents to settle at $103.64 a barrel.

Gold futures for April delivery rose $20.50 to $1,679.50 an ounce.

Bonds: The price on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury fell slightly, with the yield rising to 2.05% from 2.03% late Wednesday. 

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Former Missouri Gov. Roger Wilson has pleaded guilty this afternoon in connection with indictments late Wednesday on allegations of laundering campaign contributions to the Missouri Democratic Party through a St. Louis law firm.

Herzog Crebs partner Ed Griesedieck, indicted along with Wilson, also plans to plead guilty, said his attorney Matt Schelp.

The $8,000 in contributions originated with a state-created workers’ compensation company, Columbia-based Missouri Employers Mutual Insurance Co., and Wilson.

“I made a mistake. I have taken public responsibility for the mistake. I apologize to everyone. I will bear the consequences of my mistake and will have no comment other than that,” Wilson said in a prepared statement.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a news release that Wilson faces up to 1 year imprisonment and a fine of up to $100,000. Wilson’s lawyer, Robert Haar, said his client faces probation to six months in prison and the possibility of a fine.

“It’s a misdemeanor, and it doesn’t change all the good things (Wilson has) done for the state of Missouri,” Haar said.

Asked whether the donation was earmarked for a specific person, Haar said he couldn’t comment on the facts of the case.

Sentencing for Wilson, who appeared to enter his plea this afternoon, is set for July 9, 2012, at 1:30 pm before In determining the actual sentence, U.S. Magistrate Judge Mary Ann Medler is required to consider federal sentencing guidelines, which provide ranges for specific offenses, according to the release.

More details to come soon on this breaking story.

Earlier story:

 ST. LOUIS • Former Missouri Gov. Roger Wilson and a St. Louis lawyer were indicted on a federal misdemeanor charge late Wednesday on allegations of laundering campaign contributions to the Missouri Democratic Party through a St. Louis law firm, the U.S. Attorney’s office said Thursday morning.

State campaign finance records show that the contributions, $5,000 on Aug. 28, 2009, and $3,000 on Dec. 22, 2009, were from the Herzog Crebs law firm in St. Louis to the Missouri Democratic State Committee.

But Wednesday’s indictment says that the $8,000 actually came from a state-created workers’ compensation company, Columbia-based Missouri Employers Mutual Insurance Co., and Wilson.

They were made at the direction of former MEM board member Doug Morgan and with the knowledge and approval of Wilson, the indictment says, and came through former Herzog partner Ed Griesedieck, who was also indicted. Herzog was repaid for the $5,000 contribution by billing MEM for legal work. The $3,000 contribution was billed to Morgan, but Wilson eventually wrote a personal check to cover the contribution and MEM’s in-house counsel learned of the political contribution.

The other MEM board members did not know about or approve the contributions, the indictment says.

The criminal charge, misappropriation of money by someone in the insurance business, carries a potential penalty of up to a year in prison, but both men will likely face no more than probation and perhaps a fine.

The indictment sheds light on a mystery that has recently surrounded Wilson, who served briefly as governor after Gov. Mel Carnahan’s death in a plane crash in 2000.

Since June 2011, when he was ousted as CEO, Wilson has refused to talk about his departure from MEM. That silence contrasted with his two decades in public office, when he was known as a straight-shooter who was always quick with a quip.

The indictment is the latest scandal for Columbia-based Missouri Employers Mutual Insurance Co., the state-created workers’ compensation firm that has endured a year of setbacks to its public image.

Two former board members were indicted separately last year for alleged theft and fraud involving other organizations. The company’s former chairman, Doug Morgan, resigned in May, and questions mounted in June when the company forced out its chief executive officer, Wilson, without explanation.

Chuck Hatfield, a longtime political adviser to Gov. Jay Nixon, was retained by Missouri Employers Mutual to help manage the crisis. Jim Owen, a former law school classmate of Nixon, became the CEO.

During Wilson’s tenure, the state-sponsored insurance company made at least one political donation to Jay Nixon’s gubernatorial campaign, even though the governor controls the 5-member board of Missouri Employers Mutual by appointing three of the insurer’s board members.

According to the Missouri Ethics Commission, the firm contributed $4,000 to the “Jay Nixon for Missouri” committee on Dec easy to get unsecured personal loans. 30, 2008. The contribution was made after Nixon’s election but before he took office in January 2009.

A recent state audit took issue with Missouri Employers Mutual’s spending practices, but did not dwell on its political contributions. However, the audit noted that company funds since 2003 were used for $8,000 in political contributions to the Missouri Democratic Party; $7,400 in cash and in-kind donations to the Missouri Insurance Coalition Political Action Committee; and $4,000 in donations to gubernatorial inaugural festivities in 2005 and 2009.

State Auditor Tom Schweich portrayed a company that operates like a private entity, handing out hefty bonuses to employees, while enjoying federal tax-exempt status and other advantages that its private competitors lack.

The company was created by the Legislature in 1993 in response to a crisis in the state’s insurance industry, when small businesses struggled to afford workers’ compensation coverage. As an “independent public corporation,” the firm has avoided about $50 million in federal taxes since its founding, which has enabled it to accumulate a surplus of $163 million and become the state’s leading workers’ compensation provider.

The insurer paid about $1.58 million in severance benefits or settlement payments to four former top executives and employees who either resigned or who left the company in 2009 and 2010, the auditor found. The firm also has bankrolled lavish business jaunts to Hawaii and Mexico, along with sports tickets and suites for its board members, executives, employees and guests.

Amid state lawmakers’ questions about the company’s large surplus and tax-exempt status, Missouri Employers Mutual recently decided to pay its first dividend to members

Griesedieck’s firm worked for Missouri Employers Mutual, but he had another connection.

He also represented a development company in a failed bid for a casino in north St. Louis County.

Last year, federal prosecutors claimed in an indictment that MEM board member and former chairman of the St. Louis County Planning Commission Doug Morgan told at least two friends he was a secret partner in the development company, North County Development LLC.

POLITICAL PAST

Politics ran in Wilson’s family.

Wilson was an assistant elementary school principal in Columbia in 1976 when friends persuaded him to run for Boone County collector, an office his father had held. Wilson’s grandfather had been Boone County sheriff when he was killed in a gunbattle with bank robbers in 1933.

Roger Wilson moved to the state Senate in 1979. Education and law enforcement were his focus, along with the state budget. He headed the Appropriations Committee for six years.

He won his first statewide election in 1992, edging out State Auditor Margaret Kelly in the lieutenant governor’s race. He won re-election in 1996.

Wilson was expected to run for governor in 2000 but dropped that quest in March 1998, citing a distaste for raising the millions of dollars needed for the campaign and a desire to spend more time with his family.

Wilson was nearing the end of his term as lieutenant governor in October 2000 when Carnahan was killed in a plane crash. Wilson took over as governor for three months, until Democrat Bob Holden was inaugurated.

After leaving the Capitol, Wilson worked for a money management firm. He served as the Missouri Democratic Party’s chairman from 2004 to 2007.

The county government building in Columbia is named after him. A statute of him stands outside the building.

Griesedieck’s profile has been removed from the Herzog website, and a reporter was told Wednesday that he was no longer with the firm.

In his 2008 profile, the firm said that Griesedieck was a partner and member of the firm’s management committee and did corporate and real estate work and acted as general counsel for a number of medium and large corporations throughout the Midwest.

He also is a former city attorney and prosecuting attorney for several St. Louis County communities and hosted the “Ask the Attorney” program on KMOX for 20 years.

He graduated from Notre Dame and St. Louis University Law School, the site says.

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Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said Spain

Stocks pulled back sharply at the open as Wall Street got its first chance to react to a slowdown in hiring in the United States in March.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 136 points to 12,923 shortly after trading began. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index was off 17 at 1,381, and the Nasdaq composite lost 40 points to 3,040.

The losses were broad — only seven of stocks in the S&P 500 rose. Financial stocks fell the most. Bank of America was off 3 percent, Citigroup 2.5 percent.

The U.S. added just 120,000 jobs in March, about half the pace from December through February. The slowdown interrupted the strongest stretch of job growth since the Great Recession. The government released its jobs report on Friday, but the stock market was closed.

The stock market had already started to pull back from its strongest first quarter since 1998. The Dow closed as high as 13,264 earlier last week, then lost more than 200 points in three days.

Even before the job number came out, investors were worried that the Federal Reserve does not appear inclined to take further steps to stimulate the economy no fax payday advance.

This week, investors will turn their attention to first-quarter corporate earnings reports. Aluminum maker Alcoa releases its results Tuesday, becoming the first company among the 30 in the Dow to do so. Two major banks, JPMorgan Chase and Well Fargo, report on Friday.

Analysts are expecting quarterly earnings to decline slightly compared with a year earlier. That would break a streak of nine straight quarters of earnings growth since 2009.

In other corporate news:

— AOL shot up 44 percent after the company agreed to sell hundreds of patents and patent applications to Microsoft for a little more than $1 billion. The company plans to return some of the cash to shareholders.

— Avon fell 3 percent after the struggling beauty products company named a former executive at Johnson & Johnson, Sherilyn S. McCoy, to be its CEO. She starts April 23.

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Americans took out more loans to buy cars and attend school in February but used their credit cards less frequently for the second straight month.

The Federal Reserve said Friday that consumers increased borrowing by $8.7 billion, the sixth straight monthly increase.

The jump was driven by an $11 billion increase in the category that measures demand for auto and student loans. Borrowing on credit cards fell by $2 billion after a $3 billion decline in January.

Total consumer borrowing rose to seasonally adjusted $2.52 trillion. That’s nearly at pre-recession levels and up from a post-recession low point of $2.39 trillion reached in September 2010. Borrowing had tumbled for more than two years during and immediately after the recession.

Consumer borrowing rose by $18.6 billion in January, following similar gains in December and November. The gains for those three months were the largest in a decade.

A rise in borrowing could suggest that consumers are feeling more confident paydayloans. But few are comfortable enough to step up credit card use. Consumers carried $799 billion in credit card debt in February — 15 percent less than in December 2007, the first month of the Great Recession. And student loan debt surpassed the $1 trillion mark for the first time at the end of last year.

Steven Wood, chief economist at Insight Economics, said February’s borrowing increase was strong but noted that it was the smallest increase since October.

Other analysts said Americans might be opting to use cash instead as a way to continue paying down their debt.

Most consumers spent more of what they earned. The saving rate dropped to 3.7 percent of after-tax income in February. That was the lowest level since August 2009 and a full percentage point lower than all of last year.

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Stocks are closing out their worst week of the new year.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 ended a shortened trading week down 0.7 percent. That’s the biggest fall for the index this year and the worst since the week ended Dec. 16, 2011.

Stock trading will be closed for the Good Friday holiday.

Investors sold stocks on fears that Spain may have trouble paying back its debt. On Thursday, the interest rate on a key Spanish government bond rose to its highest since November.

The S&P 500 fell less than one point to 1,398. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 15 points to 13,060. The Nasdaq rose 12 points to 3,080.

More stocks fell than rose on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume was light at 3.3 billion shares.

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President Obama thoroughly denounced the budget plan favored by House Republicans on Tuesday, calling it "thinly veiled social Darwinism" that will only exacerbate income inequality in America.

The president’s address, delivered to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, also marked the first time that he has called out Mitt Romney, his likely challenger, by name.

Quiz: What the rich really pay in taxes

That passing reference, in which Obama linked the former governor of Massachusetts to the budget written by Rep. Paul Ryan and adopted by his House colleagues, marks an opening volley in a bitter campaign that will stretch until November.

"One of my potential opponents, Governor Romney, has said that he hoped a similar version of this plan from last year would be introduced on day one of his presidency," Obama said. "He said that he’s very supportive of this new budget and he even called it marvelous, which is a word you don’t often hear when it comes to describing a budget."

But Romney was not the main target on Tuesday. That distinction was reserved for Ryan, his budget and trickle-down economics.

"For much of the last century, we have been having the same argument with folks who keep peddling some version of trickle-down economics," Obama said. "They keep telling us that if we’d convert more of our investments in education and research and health care into tax cuts, especially for the wealthy, our economy will grow stronger."

Obama said the theory has failed, and that "the results of their experiment are there for all to see."

"In this country, broad based prosperity has never trickled down from the success of a wealthy few," Obama said. "It has always come from the success of a strong and growing middle class."

Conservatives would argue that Obama’s description of "trickle-down economics" — which is often called "supply side economics" — is a simplification of their position.

And Ryan slammed Obama in a statement issued shortly after the president spoke.

"The president refuses to take responsibility for the economy and refuses to offer a credible plan to address the most predictable economic crisis in our history," Ryan said faxless pay day loans. "Instead, he has chosen tired and cynical political attacks as he focuses on his own re-election."

Obama went on to say that his guiding economic philosophy for the country — described as a place where "everyone gets a fair shot and everyone does their fair share" in the pursuit of prosperity — is superior.

Obama attacks GOP budget proposal

Those themes of income inequality, which Obama said is "the defining issue of our time," largely echo ideas the president advanced during a speech in Kansas last fall and again at the State of the Union in January.

But this time, Obama used the contrast as a springboard to attack Ryan’s budget plan, which he called a "Trojan horse disguised as a deficit reduction plan."

"It is really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country," Obama said. "It is thinly veiled social Darwinism. It is antithetical to our entire history as a land of opportunity and upward mobility for everybody who is willing to work for it."

Tax reform: Why it’s so hard

Obama criticized the Ryan budget for cutting too deeply into non-security discretionary spending, an area of the budget that funds education, research and development and most government agencies.

"You can be sure that with cuts this deep, there is no secret plan or formula that will be able to protect the investments we need to help our economy grow," Obama said.

Romney and Ryan, meanwhile, spent the morning in Wisconsin, where Republican voters will cast primary votes on Tuesday.

The attack from Obama, the substance of which had been reported Monday, sparked a rebuttal.

"So today, instead of standing up and saying, as the president, his [Obama’s]policies have not worked, he of course will look for someone else to blame," Romney said. "This president is unwilling to take responsibility."

Obama had also scheduled high-profile events on primary days earlier this year, including a speech at a United Auto Workers conference on the day of the Michigan primary in February, and a news conference on Super Tuesday in early March. 

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If you thought that going public would end Groupon’s parade of financial restatements, you’d be wrong.

In a double-bomb announcement on Friday, Groupon was forced to revise its fourth-quarter income and sales lower, thanks to a higher rate of customers asking for refunds.

Groupon () said that its fourth-quarter offerings included a growing number of more expensive deals, for which more customers tend to demand a refund. The company had to go back and retroactively beef up its reserve fund, which cut its fourth-quarter sales and widened losses.

Now, Groupon is recording a loss of $65 million on sales of $492 million, a wider loss than the $43 million loss it previously reported on sales of $507 million.

The company said it has updated its refund model and thinks the new version will be more accurate.

Adding salt to the wound, Groupon revealed that its independent auditor uttered the dreaded phrase "material weakness."

Ernst & Young’s 2011 audit report report found that Groupon has a deficiency in its financial statement close process, which covers the steps companies go through at the end of each quarter to ensure that all of their financial transactions have been accurately recorded and reported.

Groupon said it is working on a fix, including hiring more financial staffers and developing "formal policies" and "documented procedures."

Despite the setbacks, Groupon affirmed its guidance for the current quarter, saying it still expects first-quarter sales of $510 million to $550 million, and income from operations of $15 million to $35 million.

As soon as Groupon disclosed its financials in its June 2011 IPO filing, critics slammed the company for its unorthodox accounting measures. That led to several downward revisions of Groupon’s financials as it adopted more conventional metrics.

Those restatements effectively cut Groupon’s reported sales in half to $688 million for the first half of 2011, down from the $1.5 billion it initially claimed.

Despite all that, Groupon shares soared about 31% on their debut day, at one point topping $31 a share. Since then, they have fallen back, and finished trading Friday at $18.38.  

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