Eurozone Bailout Reports Give US Markets a Boost

Comstock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- The markets shook off a weak start Tuesday to finish the session well into positive territory.
 
The Dow surged into triple digits, closing up 180 points. The Nasdaq added 43, and the S&P gained 24.

News that France and Germany reached an agreement to raise the sum Europe's bailout package to over $2.7 trillion helped push the markets higher at the end of the day's trading, The Wall Street Journal reports. But, according to the WSJ, a conflicting report from the Dow Jones Newswires says eurozone leaders are still discussing the amount of the rescue package.
 
As for the U.S. economy, the head of the Federal Reserve says one of the big lessons learned from the financial crisis is that central banks must have a dual role. Ben Bernanke told an audience in Boston that they must control inflation, while supporting the banking system.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Boom Town: What Brings Thousands of Jobs to One Ohio Town?

The Severstal Wheeling North Works Steel Plant sits empty on the edge of Steubenville, Ohio. The Severstal mill has halted production and has laid off all but a few employees to keep safety and security watch. Operating utilization at US steel mills has dropped to 43 percent, a level not seen since the Depression. Rick Gershon/Getty Images(STEUBENVILLE, Ohio) -- Steubenville, Ohio, may not look like a city sitting on a multi-billion dollar industry. Unemployment there reached 15 percent in 2010, and a now-shuttered steel mill -- which was once the lifeline of the Steubenville economy -- is now just a painful reminder of what used to be.

While the old way is gone for good, a new way has already changed lives.

Two huge shale formations -- the Marcellus and Utica -- lay underneath a five-state region. Steubenville sits right on the epicenter of the Marcellus formation, ready to absorb all the new positions needed to open new and repurposed old wells.

While the formations have been around for centuries, only in the past 10 years have people realized how deep they run. In the past decade the area has been prepped for drilling, which is expected to begin in Steubenville this spring.

With the new influx of job opportunities, many are relocating to Steubenville, hoping to land a well-paying, stable job. Louis McGowan, a Navy veteran who served in the war in Afghanistan, was born in the area but left for Texas in search of work. The new jobs boom allowed him to do something he never believed he'd be able to do: come home. He hopes to be one of the first in line when drilling begins.

In a matter of months, rigs will begin to dot the landscape, and current and former residents -- like McGowan -- hope the money will line their pockets.

More than 300 new jobs have already come to the Steubenville area. And as many as 10,000 more are expected in the next three years. If jobs keep growing at this pace, every adult in Steubenville could be working by April.

"I rolled the dice with everything I had," McGowan said. "It's either make it or bust."

But the environmental impact of fracking -- the process of injecting sand, water and a chemical gel to crack open the shale -- is controversial. Environmentalists say the action of pulling natural gas from the ground can spoil groundwater. But it's a risk the people in Steubenville are willing to take.

Hope stretches throughout Steubenville, a city nestled deep in Appalachian Ohio, and even into the nearby hills of the Wetherell family's property, where family members hope natural gas below ground will mean new life for them.

Their land, once a dairy farm, will soon be leased to a drilling company for thousands of dollars.

"It's peace of mind ... knowing that when the money comes we'll be able to put money away for college for the kids, pay off some debts," said Monica Wetherell.

No one in Steubenville can remember the last time anyone heard of a job that paid as much as $77,000 a year coming to town, but those jobs are coming. There could be more than 200,000 of them in Ohio in the next few years.

The boom doesn't end with the drilling jobs. There were bright spots visible all over the town. A few weeks ago, Scaffidi's restaurant needed only 25 seats. Now, there are seven times more people coming in for lunch. The boom is also expected to mean more businesses, more teachers and more hotels.

Everyone seems to be cashing in.

Jim Berry's company ships sand to the drill sites that just moved to the area. He hopes to employ as many as 80 local residents in a year's time.

How badly does this area need the jobs? "It needs it really bad," said John Weber of the Ohio Workforce Department. "The whole Appalachian area needs it. The state of Ohio needs it really bad."

So do the McGowan's.

"I just want to work. That's about it....I want to work."

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Poll: Washington to Blame More Than Wall Street For Economy

Spencer Platt/Getty Images(NEW YORK ) -- Considering the exhaustive media coverage the  Occupy Wall Street movement has garnered, the findings in a new USA Today/Gallup Poll may come as a surprise. Although some Americans may be Occupying Wall Street, more than double the number that blame companies for their economic plight blame the federal government more: 64 percent of Americans blame Washington, versus the 30 percent blame Wall Street for the poor economy, the poll reveals.

While 54 percent say the economic system is personally fair to them only 44 percent say it is not.  And though 78 percent say Wall Street bears a great deal or a fair amount of blame for the economy, 87 percent say the same about Washington.

This poll not only brings to light the frustration shared by the majority of Americans, but also the disagreement over how to change the status quo.  

It shows that although most Americans are paying attention to the protest movement, they don’t know enough to take a clear position, as 43 percent don’t know enough to say whether they support the movement’s goals. Not helping is the fact the "Occupy" movement itself has no clear goals: interviews with protesters nationwide show they range from eco-activists to communists to anarchists and just about every fringe group in between.

When it comes to the fairness of the economic system, 49 percent of Americans without a college degree say it is unfair, while only 34 percent of college graduates do.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Goldman Sachs Experiences First Quarterly Loss Since 2008

in Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- Just after the Occupy Wall Street protest celebrated its one-month anniversary, third quarter earnings season continued with Goldman Sachs, which reported its second quarterly loss in its history as a public company.

This loss was greater than expected and marks the company’s first quarterly loss since its fourth quarter in 2008.

It is unclear how the Volcker rule, which proposes to ban banks with insured deposits from "high-risk," short-term trading with its own funds, will affect banks' financial results. David Hilder, analyst with Susquehanna International Group, said Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley may exit the banking business if compliance regulations of the Volcker rule are implemented.

The rule is expected to be implemented next year.

Hilder said those two banks are less dependent on deposits as a source of funding than other banks.
Investment banking client activity may have slowed due to uncertainty in the global economy, especially in Europe, which has led to lower profit expectations for banks more heavily invested in the capital markets.

Meanwhile, Bank of America reported a six percent increase in profit. Citigroup also reported increased earnings Monday, and Morgan Stanley will release its quarterly report Wednesday.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Desperate Times: Older Workers Are Taking Kids' Temp Jobs

Stockbyte/Thinkstock(PARAMUS, N.J.) -- Holiday retail jobs that used to go to high school kids are being snapped up by job-seekers in their 40s and 50s. Guys with master's degrees are selling rubber noses, and counting themselves lucky to be employed, says Paul Buccola, manager at a Party City store in Paramus, N.J.

Buccola says he has five such career people working for him now. How many did he have this time last year? "Zero." He calls it "a direct reflection of the economy."

Employers nationwide say they are seeing the same phenomenon: Older people, some of whom have been out of work for two years or more, are swallowing their pride and foraging any kind of jobs that they can get, part-time, seasonal or otherwise.

"It's a growing trend," says Bill Coleman, vice president of research for RetirementJobs.com, which he describes as a combination job-board and advocacy group for job seekers over 50. Interest in part-time work, he says, "goes up as the stock market goes down. People living off their 401(k)s see the balance drop and realize they have to do something. A little supplemental income is exactly what they need."

Estimates vary for how many temporary jobs will be added to the economy this holiday season, but most agree the pie will be about the same size as last year. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says it may shrink by 1 percent. That means every job taken by an older worker comes at some other job seeker's expense, including the young.

Should older workers feel guilty for shouldering aside the high school or college students? No, says Coleman, who dismisses this as an unproductive line of thought for older job seekers. He dismisses the suggestion that oldsters are taking bread out of youngsters' mouths, saying of the young, "Their parents will fill that void."

Carl van Horn, director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers' Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, says, "One thing I can tell you: Workers in this climate don't agonize over who else's job they're taking. For one thing, they don't know. And for another, they just don't think about that. Why should they? It's the employer's decision."

He notes that the impact of the recession has been especially hard on people over 55, who have the lowest re-employment rate of any age group.

Older workers possess attributes employers value, especially when it comes to part-time retail jobs: They're highly reliable, says van Horn, and they tend to have a better work ethic than the young. The fact that a job is temporary lessens their resentment of the fact that it is paying them a fraction of what they earned before the recession hit.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Late Payments on Credit Cards Jump in September

George Doyle/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- Call it a sign of troubling economic times: for the first time in more than two-and-a-half years, more consumers are falling behind making credit card payments.

Five of the six largest credit card issuing firms say the number of payments late by 30 days or more rose in September.

The rate of increases were all very small, but late payments -- or delinquencies -- are considered an indicator of potential defaults by consumers.  Until last month, the rate had been falling.

The banking industry is still recovering from a big rise in defaults during the 2008 financial crisis.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Global Stocks Tumble Amid Latest Chinese GDP Report

Hemera Technologies/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- Ahead of Tuesday's opening bell, a new cause for concern has popped up for global investors: China's economic growth has slowed down.

The country reported on Tuesday that its third quarter gross domestic product increased 9.1 percent from last year, but still fell short of its 9.5 percent rise in the previous quarter.

The news sent U.S. stock futures down Tuesday, a day after Wall Street experienced its biggest drop in two weeks.

On Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 247 points, the Nasdaq fell 53 and the S&P 500 lost 24.

Overseas, European markets are trading lower on Tuesday and Asian ones closed with big losses.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng took the biggest hit, plunging 4.23 percent, while China's Shanghai Composite dropped 2.33 percent.  Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 fell 2.07 percent, Japan’s Nikkei index lost 1.55 percent, and South Korea’s Kospi shed 1.41 percent.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Facebook Sued for Allegedly Tracking Users after They've Logged Off

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images(OXFORD, Miss.) -- A Mississippi woman has sued Facebook in federal court, accusing the social network of violating federal wiretap laws to track her online activity, even when she wasn't logged onto the site.

Facebook denies the allegations, but it has conceded in the past that it inadvertently tracked users through so-called cookies -- small files a website sends to your computer when you visit.  It has said it fixed the problem before the Mississippi suit was filed.

"Leading up to September 23, 2011, Facebook tracked, collected, and stored its users' wire or electronic communications, including but not limited to portions of their Internet browsing history even when the users were not logged-in to Facebook," reads the complaint by Brooke Rutledge of Lafayette County, Miss.  "Plaintiff did not give consent or otherwise authorize Facebook to intercept, track, collect, and store her wire or electronic communications, including but not limited to her Internet browsing history when not logged-in to Facebook."

It is not the first lawsuit of its kind -- there are suits in Kansas, Kentucky and Louisiana -- and Facebook is not the only large company to be accused of violating visitors' privacy.  But the issue has spread since Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced the site's new Timeline and Ticker features in September.

"All your stories, all your apps, a new way to express who you are," Zuckerberg said at the introduction.

Facebook sent ABC News a one-line statement in response to the suit: "We believe this complaint is without merit and we will fight it vigorously"

Copyright 2911 ABC News Radio

Kinder Morgan to Buy El Paso for $21.1 Billion

Tim Rue/Bloomberg via Getty Images(HOUSTON) -- The pipeline company Kinder Morgan agreed to buy El Paso corporation for $21.1 billion on Sunday, marking a huge deal in the booming natural gas business. 

The new company would be the largest operator of natural gas pipelines in the country with the new deal.

This decision comes as the industry gears up for new natural gas production blasted from shale rocks. Drilling and producing oil and gas from shale and other tight rocks has taken off in the last five years as Exxon and oher major energy companies have purchased smaller players with more sizable stakes in the shale fields. The fracking technology is controversial but could be a huge source of future revenue for the energy industry.

The combined company is expected to move more than 1.9 million barrels of fuels a day and will also operate the only oil sands pipeland that services the West Coast.

Kinder Morgan insists that this decision will pay off for shareholders and expects to begin raising its dividend next year.

The new company will keep Kinder Morgan’s name.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Lowe’s Closes 20 Stores, Cuts 1,950 Jobs

Alex Wong/Getty Images(MOORESVILLE, N.C.) -- Home improvement giant Lowe’s Cos. said Monday it will close 20 underperforming stores in 15 states and cut 1,950 jobs.

Half of the locations closed Sunday while the others will be shut in a month, the Mooresville, N.C., company said in a statement. Lowe’s, the number-two building supply chain after Home Depot, said the move will allow it to focus on its more profitable locations.

Before the closures, Lowe’s operated 1,725 stores.

Lowe’s will only open 10 to 15 stores in North America annually beginning in 2012, rather than the 30 it had expected to open.

The stores affected by Monday's announcement are located in Los Banos, CA; Biddeford, ME; Old Bridge, NJ; Westminster, CA; Ellsworth, ME; Batavia, NY; Denver, CO; Ionia, MI; N. Kingstown, RI; Aurora, IL; Rogers, MN; Emporia, VA; Oswego, IL; Claremont, NH; S. Tacoma, WA; Chalmette, LA; Hooksett, NH; Brown Deer, WI; Haverhill, MA; and Manchester, NH.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio