Movie theaters are pushing 3D screenings and fancy new amenities to justify higher ticket prices, but experts say there are still bargains at the box office.

Given the choice between seeing a movie in a regular screening or 3D, more consumers are opting for the latter — and are paying a premium of $3 to $4 over the regular ticket price, says Jeffrey Logsdon, an industry analyst for BMO Capital Markets. When a movie is shown in both formats, 3D represents half of ticket sales, up from 40% in 2010. IMAX movie showings, which carry a roughly $5 price premium, are also rising in popularity, he says. In fact, not counting 3D screenings, the average price of a movie ticket nationwide actually dropped during the first three quarters of 2011, from $8.06 to $7.96, according to the National Association of Theatre Owners.

Experts say the high-tech showings are part of a broader industry trend to turn a movie outing into a fancier experience, replete with cushier seats, gourmet concession offerings and special events. Ironically, such offerings are becoming more popular because consumers have been cutting back in recent years, making the trip for fewer films and spending less at the concession stand, says Agata Kaczanowska, an industry analyst for consulting firm IbisWorld. “Theaters are looking to have wider profit margins per customer,” she says. A better experience, even at a higher price point, may be attractive to moviegoers, she says.

But industry experts say bargain-hunters still have plenty of ways to cut the bill for their movie habits. Below are six.

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By Anthony Mirhaydari

Experts say workers will need ever-larger nest eggs to retire. It’s possible to save enough, but only with stocks and not without risk. Here’s a look at the road that might lead to a big payoff.

Will you be able to retire comfortably?

Like so much in life, it depends. Will Social Security still be around, and if so, will it provide more than a pittance? Will Medicare cover the costs of health care as you age?

More immediately, will you be able to keep working until you’re ready to retire? And if so, will you earn enough to keep socking money away every month?

And, most important, will you be able to earn enough on your savings to fund a retirement?

When I wrote on this topic back in late 2010, in “How to build a million-dollar 401k,” I picked a number often cited by financial planners that seemed like a nice, round target. I said getting there would require buying stocks and mean accepting some risk, at a time when neither was very popular. I tried to be realistic, but I hope it made $1 million seem not so out of reach.

But there’s a hitch. For the young, at least, that may not be nearly enough.

No wonder they’re in the streets

A recent survey of investment advisers suggests that for members of the up-and-coming Gen Y cohort, $2 million is a better retirement target.

Those not born in that 1977-to-1994 window aren’t off the hook, either. For the more seasoned out there, especially baby boomers who have postponed saving for fast-approaching retirement, a similarly aggressive strategy will be needed to make up for lost time.
•Related: The best funds for your 401k in 2012

Is this doable? I think it is. But it will require more diligence, dexterity and determination than was required in the go-go 1980s and 1990s, an era the entire financial advisory industry and its “buy and hold” mentality remains fixated on. And it will require people to end their long love affair with bonds, because those supposedly reliable fixed-income assets look set to underperform for years to come.

First, let’s address the elephant in the room: skepticism that this is even possible, and a creeping feeling that unless you’re a Wall Street trader or a hedge-fund jockey, the system is hopelessly stacked against you. Because paralysis is not going to get anyone to $2 million.

Yes, the market has failed us

It’s easy to forget, with all the emphasis on CEO pay, banker bonuses, insider trading, scandals, fraud and such, but half of the stock market’s two-part mission is to help average Americans build wealth, provide for their families and save for retirement.

(The other half of the stock market’s mission is to funnel wealth to entrepreneurs and fast-growing businesses. I’d argue it’s failing here as well — witness the recent string of failed initial public offerings and the accumulation of idle cash on the books of America’s largest companies — but that’s a story for another day.)

The stock market is also the institution by which the social contract of American capitalism — that while not all share in the spoils of growth equally, all can participate in it — is made manifest.

Yet, by just about any measure you’d care to use, Wall Street has been failing the average investor miserably for more than a decade. No wonder the Occupy Wall Street movement generated so much heat before the chill of winter and the holidays set in.

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The US Treasury has “no intention’ of providing additional money to the International Monetary Fund, a Treasury official told CNBC Wednesday, even though the IMF is hoping to raise an additional $500 billion to help fight the European debt crisis.

The Treasury spokesperson said that Europe has the capacity to solve its own problems and the IMF cannot substitute for a robust euro-area firewall.

“Based on staff’s estimate of global potential financing needs of about $1 trillion in the coming years, the Fund would aim to raise up to $500 billion in additional lending resources,” an IMF statement said.

“This total includes the recent European commitment of about $200 billion in increased Fund resources. At this preliminary stage, we are exploring options on funding and will have no further comment until the necessary consultations with the Fund’s membership have been completed,” it added.

Earlier, a source had told CNBC the IMF was seeking to raise another $600 billion.

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By CRAIG KARMIN And ELIOT BROWN

Penn Mutual Towers, an office complex across the street from Independence Hall in Philadelphia, has seen its vacancy rise and income fall after one big tenant left and another renewed its lease for 15% less than it had been paying. Its creditors are foreclosing on the property, according to data company Trepp LLC.

Similar problems are mushrooming in office markets throughout the country, foreshadowing a new wave of real-estate trouble.

While the housing market was at the heart of the most recent real-estate crisis, office buildings—the center of past meltdowns—until now haven’t been a major source of concern.

But many owners who have been able to keep their heads above water are being undone by tenant contractions and the expiration of five-year leases that were signed at the peak of the boom.

Rents in most markets are still well below what they were in 2007, with the drop in some areas as much as 26%, according to data firm Reis Inc. Because of the weak market, landlords with empty space or expiring leases also have to spend large amounts on incentives to attract tenants, like free rent and interior work.

Defaults and foreclosures are rising. The delinquency rate of office loans that were securitized hit 9% in December, up from 7.4% in June.

Analysts expect the rate to keep rising. Meanwhile, the delinquency rate of other asset classes like apartments and hotels has begun to fall, according to Trepp.

“These people have turned into zombie landlords,” says Kevin Traenkle, a principal at Colony Capital. “They have been able to service mortgages with rents that are above marketplace today. When those rents roll, they will get a much lower number.”

Problems are particularly acute for owners that purchased or refinanced buildings near the top of the market.

BentleyForbes Group LLC bought Atlanta’s Bank of America Plaza in 2006, putting a $363 million mortgage on the property. At the time, the 55-story tower was 99% leased, and Bank of America Corp. was the anchor tenant.

Last year, the bank reduced its space by more than half to 139,000 square feet, according to Trepp. That, and other departures, left the building 37% vacant and its income down more than 25% from the time of purchase. In the fall, BentleyForbes defaulted on its mortgage.

Brent Ware, a BentleyForbes executive, said his firm is working on a plan “that will stabilize the tower’s underlying long-term capital structure.”

To be sure, office vacancy rates have slowly improved in some markets as companies added jobs, and owners will benefit even more if the economy gains steam. Also, values of office property have increased in New York, Washington, Boston and other major cities, easing the stress on some properties.

But the rise in value has been primarily due to the capital markets climate, in which low interest rates are convincing yield-hungry investors to switch to real estate. Rents and occupancy rates haven’t risen nearly as much as values have and, in almost all markets rents are still far below what they were in 2007.

For example, in New York, values of some office buildings are approaching boom-era highs, especially properties that are mostly occupied by credit-worthy tenants on long term leases. But six out of seven New York City’s submarkets all have effective rents-which includes landlord incentives—down 15% or more since end-2007, according to Reis.

Because most investors relied heavily on borrowed money, even a very modest reduction in rent could hurt a building owner. For instance, a 1% decline in rent this year would result in an 8% loss of profits if the building owner used 80% leverage, according to CoStar Group Inc. With 95% leverage, that profit loss soars to 50%.

For tenants looking for space, this is good news. In many cities, they are enjoying rent cuts when they sign renewals. But the number of loans being scrutinized for possible problems has been steadily swelling as landlords have to reach deeply into their pockets to pay incentives and brokerage commissions.

A 660,000 square-foot office building in downtown Kansas City, Mo., is trying to renegotiate its $40 million mortgage with creditors, according to Trepp. The property’s vacancy rose to 48% in 2010 when a major tenant, Dickinson Financial Corp. didn’t renew its lease.

At Penn Mutual Towers, a complex of three connected buildings, a receiver has been put in place, and the servicer of the $102 million mortgage is taking control of the property, according to a Trepp. Loeb Partners Realty, the owner, couldn’t be reached for comment.

INTEL SOURCE LINK:  WallStreetJournal.com

By Rebecca Christie and Peter Woodifield

Even before the euro crisis, people were worried about Europe’s pension bomb.

State-funded pension obligations in 19 of the European Union nations were about five times higher than their combined gross debt, according to a study commissioned by the European Central Bank. The countries in the report compiled by theResearch Center for Generational Contracts at Freiburg University in 2009 had almost 30 trillion euros ($39.3 trillion) of projected obligations to their existing populations.

Germany accounted for 7.6 trillion euros and France 6.7 trillion euros of the liabilities, authors Christoph Mueller, Bernd Raffelhueschen and Olaf Weddige said in the report.

“This is a totally unsustainable situation that quite clearly has to be reversed,” Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a research fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics inWashington, said in a telephone interview.

A recession threatening the world’s second-biggest economic bloc, along with efforts to reduce debt across Europe, is exacerbating the financial risks. Stable or falling birthrates, plus rising life expectancies, are adding to pressures, with the proportion of economic output devoted to spending on retirement benefits projected to rise by a quarter to 14 percent by 2060, according to the ECB report.

Ageing Populations

Increased retirement ages and lower benefits must be part of any package to hold the 17-nation euro area together, according to analysts, including Fergal McGuinness, the Zurich-based head of Marsh & McLennan Cos.’s Mercer’s pensions consulting unit for central and eastern Europe.

Europe has the highest proportion of people aged over 60 of any region in the world, and that is forecast to rise to almost 35 percent by 2050 from 22 percent in 2009, according to a report from the United Nations. That compares with a global estimate of 22 percent by 2050, up from 11 percent in 2009.

The number of people aged over 65 in the 34 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is forecast to more than quadruple to 350 million in 2050 from 85 million in 1970. Life expectancy in Europe is increasing at the rate of five hours a day, according to Charles Cowling, managing director of JLT Pension Capital Strategies Ltd. in London.

In so-called developed countries, the average lifespan will reach almost 83 by 2050, up from about 75 in 2009, the UN said.

Cutting Costs

Governments and companies have taken steps to reduce future costs with policy makers having increased retirement ages in countries, including France, Germany, Greece, Italy and the U.K.

“Irrespective of whether you’re inside or outside the euro or anything else, raising retirement ages is one of the structural reforms that all of Europe has to do,” Kirkegaard said. “The crisis has forced them to address this. This is actually a positive thing in many ways.”

By 2060, the average French pension benefit will be 48 percent of the national average wage, compared with 63 percent now, said Stefan Moog, a researcher at Freiburg University in Freiburg, Germany.

Pension managers and governments are relying on economic growth to safeguard the promises they make. If the euro zonegrows too slowly to bolster public and private coffers, theretirement plans may become unaffordable, according to Mercer’s McGuinness.

Benefits’ Squeeze

“The amount of money countries are going to spend on social security and long-term care is going to go up,”McGuinness said in an interview. “Governments with more generous social-security systems will have difficulty affording them. They will have to recognize these costs will impact their ability to reduce borrowings.”

State pension obligations in France and Germany are three times the size of their economies, according to data compiled by Mercer. It’s more sustainable in France than Germany because of France’s higher birthrate.

Last year, there were 4.2 people of working age for every pensioner in France. The ratio will fall to 1.9 by 2050, according to a report by Economist magazine in March. In Germany, the proportion will decline to 1.6 from 4.1 in the same period.

“That is going to put a lot of pressure on Germany’s ability to meet their promises,” McGuinness said. “What they are more likely to do is cut back benefits. Governments face a lot of longevity risks.”

Add to Risks

Private pension funds are under pressure too with benchmark euro-area interest rates at the lowest level since the 13-year-old currency was introduced. Low rates mean pension plans have to hold more assets to back their long-term payout projections.

Unless growth returns, fund managers will effectively be forced to take on more risk, said Phil Suttle, chief economist of the Washington-based Institute of International Finance.

“That creates problems because they all head into sectors that seem a great idea now, and then they blow up, whether it’s commodities or equities or whatever,” Suttle said. “You’re going to intensify the boom-bust cycle.”

The growing doubts facing the euro area is another planning hurdle as companies reconsider investment strategies amid concerns that Greece may default on its debt and spark a broader euro breakup.

The implied probability of one country leaving the euro by the end of 2013 fell to 49 percent on Jan. 10 from 51 percent a week earlier, based on wagers at InTrade.com, an Internet betting market. The probability of one country departing by the end of 2014 is 59 percent.

Rates Benefit

Pension plans in countries such as Greece or Portugal may benefit from exiting the euro as higher interest rates that would likely accompany a return to their national currencies would cut the cost of liabilities, while assets invested abroad would almost certainly gain in value, according to Mercer, a unit of Marsh & McLennan Cos.

PensionDanmark, Denmark’s seventh-largest pension fund by assets, sold all its German government bonds last year, Chief Executive Officer Torben Mogen Pedersen told reporters in Copenhagen yesterday.

“Our government debt investments are all in Scandinavian non-euro countries,” Pedersen said. “We think 2012 will be a very hard year for European investors.”

In Britain, which has refused to join the euro, occupational pension funds have moved the risk of ensuring adequate retirement income to the employee from the employer in the past decade to curb pension-fund shortfalls.

Funding Gap

Unfunded public-sector U.K. pension obligations across 1,500 public bodies totaled 1 trillion pounds ($1.57 trillion) in March 2010, the Treasury said Nov. 29 in the first set of audited Whole of Government Accounts. That compares with a total of 808 billion pounds of outstanding U.K. government bonds and accounts for 90 percent of all public-sector pension liabilities.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA), Europe’s largest oil company, was the last member of the benchmark FTSE 100 Index to close its defined-benefit pension plan to new entrants when it made the decision last month to do so. The company plans to introduce a fund for new employees next year that makes them responsible for ensuring they have enough to live on in old age.

Governments may have to follow the same path for their own employees as well as increasing the retirement age to at least 70 and possibly 75 to make the pensions affordable, Cowling wrote in an article published in July by Public Service Europe.

To contact the reporters on this story:Rebecca Christie in Brussels at rchristie4@bloomberg.net; Peter Woodifield in Edinburgh at pwoodifield@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Hertling at jhertling@bloomberg.net

INTEL SOURCE LINK: bloomberg.com

INTEL SOURCE LINK: NYtimes.com

By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

U.S. Federal Reserve, via Reuters
A Federal Open Market Committee meeting on March 28, 2006.

WASHINGTON — As the housing bubble entered its waning hours in 2006, top Federal Reserve officials marveled at the desperate antics of home builders seeking to lure buyers.

by Suzanne Goldenberg

New data shows worldwide funding of green energy projects rose by 5% last year

This is definitely going to be a Shit Storm

By David Boaz

Two Cato scholars have offered devastating critiques of the Federal Reserve in the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal over the last two days.

This morning, in “The Fed’s Mission Impossible,” adjunct scholar John Cochrane takes a look at the latest list of bank regulations under Dodd-Frank. Although the proposal “opens with an eloquent ode to the evils of too-big-to-fail,” he writes, it then “spends 168 pages describing exactly how it’s going to stop any large financial institution from ever failing again.”

According to Cochrane, the proposal “exemplifies” the core problem withWashington’s heavy hand: “Everything under the sun gets regulated, with no attempt to measure benefits or costs.” This scenario, of course, is nothing new:

For 70 years, our government has sought to stop crises by guaranteeing more and more debts, explicitly with deposit insurance, or informally with predictable too-big-to-fail bailouts. Guaranteeing debts gives obvious incentives to gamble at taxpayer expense, so we try to limit risks with regulation. But big banks still have every incentive to avoid, evade and financial-engineer their way around the rules, and they have lots of lawyers, lobbyists and ex-politicians to pressure regulators to use their wide discretion. The government has lost this arms race time and time again.

Unfortunately, it seems to be taking this arms race across the Atlantic. Yesterday, in “The Federal Reserve’s Covert Bailout of Europe,” Cato senior fellow Gerald P. O’Driscoll, Jr., examined the Fed’s bailout of European banks through what is called “a temporary U.S. dollar liquidity swap arrangement”—an operation that has gone “largely unnoticed here.” O’Driscoll explains:

Simply put, the Fed trades or “swaps” dollars for euros. The Fed is compensated by payment of an interest rate (currently 50 basis points, or one-half of 1%) above the overnight index swap rate. The ECB, which guarantees to return the dollars at an exchange rate fixed at the time the original swap is made, then lends the dollars to European banks of its choosing.

Why are the two central banks doing this? O’Driscoll explains that they are engaged in this “Byzantine financial arrangement” because “each needs a fig leaf” for past transgressions:

The Fed was embarrassed by the revelations of its prior largess with foreign banks. It does not want the debt of foreign banks on its books. A currency swap with the ECB is not technically a loan.

The ECB is entangled in an even bigger legal and political mess. What the heads of many European governments want is for the ECB to bail them out. The central bank and some European governments say that it cannot constitutionally do that. The ECB would also prefer not to create boatloads of new euros, since it wants to keep its reputation as an inflation-fighter intact. To mitigate its euro lending, it borrows dollars to lend them to its banks. That keeps the supply of new euros down. This lending replaces dollar funding from U.S. banks and money-market institutions that are curtailing their lending to European banks—which need the dollars to finance trade, among other activities. Meanwhile, European governments pressure the banks to purchase still more sovereign debt.

Recently Cato scholars Lawrence H. White and George Selgin asked, “Has the Fed Been a Failure?”  Read much more on the Federal Reserve and monetary policy here.

INTEL SOURCE LINK: Cato @ Liberty

People if you see something that you really want to buy but bottom line if it’s something that you want then come on let’s face it DO NOT GET IT because if you get something that you want really bad, BUT you do not need it then don’t get it! I cannot stress how much this is an issue now a day’s especially with teens.

2. No Job = No Money = No Saving: Start looking for a job

To save money you obviously have to have money, so it’s simple get a job and start getting paid and start earning some money. Another option is collect some cans and recycle them you can get some good cash if you save enough cans. Pennies, quarters, nickels and dimes are always good to save inside a box or bottle, one coin of each may not be a lot but when you start looking for them you will then begin to bunch them up one or two months pass, you will soon be able to cash them in.

“Which reminds me I remember when I did that out of curiosity just to see how much money I would get I first got a 2Liter bottle of Coke and I filled it up to the top and I got $150 !!. It took me about a month. Now I know it may not be much but no one is going to hand you that money unless you are a little brat that always had to ask your parents for money.”

3. Stop complaining that you don’t have any money and do something about it !

Talk is cheap. Concentrate on what you want and do it. Stop complaining that you have nothing, stop wishing and stop doing what you are doing if it comes to the point that you are stressing a Shit Storm just because you don’t have whatever the amount it to buy something. So STOP! Focus on what you want and go for it. You know you need a job, you know you can save and you know you can do it. Get off your couch and get off your comfort zone and start thinking of ways you can make some money. This applies to boys and girls Go! ask your neighbor if you can cut their grass for $20-30 bucks. Or go babysit some kids or go walk some dogs. You may not get very much doing that but in the end it adds up!

4. Don’t Spend it once you have it

5. DO NOT SPEND IT ONCE YOU HAVE IT !!!!!!!!!!!!!

So ok it’s simple you know what you can do to obtain some cash, go do it, you know some way how you can save some money and APPLY them until it becomes second nature. SAVING MONEY is not rocket science it is a technique that yes some people are just awesome with it and others suck at it, but that does not mean you cannot learn the process.

Good Luck!

A Shit Storm is coming and its headed your way !