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The Food and Drug Administration has approved a heart catheter used with a Stereotaxis Inc. system to treat irregular heartbeats, the St. Louis-based surgical device company said today. It expects shipments to customers will begin in the next few weeks.

The device is called the Navistar RMT Thermocool Catherer and it is manufactured by Biosense Webster, Inc., a Johnson & Johnson company.

The catheter is used with Sterotaxis’ Niobe Remote Magnetic Navigation System to destroy tissue that disturbs normal heart rhythms.

"The magnetic irrigated catheter’s approval is the tipping point for Stereotaxis technology," Mike Kaminski, president and chief executive of the St no faxing 1 hour payday loans. Louis surgical device company, said in a press release. "We are confident that this product introduction will be transformative for our company."

Bloomberg reported that Johnson & Johnson will pay Stereotaxis a 15 percent royalty on the sale of each ThermoCool device, which cost $1,000 to $3,000 each.

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European economic confidence fell to a record low in February, banks tightened access to credit and German unemployment rose, putting pressure on the European Central Bank to step up its response to the crisis.

An index of euro-region executive and consumer sentiment dropped to 65.4 from 67.2, the European Commission in Brussels said today. Lending to euro area households and companies slowed the most in more than five years, European retail sales declined and German unemployment rose for a fourth month.

“Today’s data has dashed any hope of a tentative stabilization” in the economy, said Jacques Cailloux, chief euro area economist at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc in London. “Any sense that the ECB may pause after a March rate cut can be thrown out the window. They will go very low and they will have to start embarking on additional measures.”

Europe’s deepening recession may prompt a rethink at the ECB, which has so far shown reluctance to follow the Federal Reserve and Bank of England and deploy new monetary policy measures. The downturn is also sparking concern about the fiscal health of some nations and the gap between German and Italy bond yields today widened to the most since 1997.

The International Monetary Fund already predicts the euro- region economy will contract 2 percent this year and IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said Feb 19 that the forecast may need to be cut.

The ECB argues that it needs to be careful not to cut rates too low and officials have struggled to agree on the best approach once conventional measures are run their course.

‘Lowest Limit?’

While the ECB has cut its benchmark rate by 225 basis points since October to 2 percent and President Jean-Claude Trichet has signaled it may reduce again next week, Germany’s Axel Weber says 1 percent is probably the “lowest limit.”

Trichet says no decision has yet been taken on whether the ECB will take steps such as creating money or buying government bonds. The Fed and Bank of England by contrast are already buying securities as part of measures to ease credit markets. The ECB next decides on rates on March 5 payday loans online.

Some ECB policy makers, including Austria’s Ewald Nowotny, are still counting on an economic recovery. He expects a revival “in the last quarter of 2009” and “positive if low” growth the following year. Executive Board member Juergen Stark forecasts a “stabilization” towards the end of this year as stimulus packages take effect.

Bank Aid

Europe’s governments have so far committed 1.2 trillion ($1.5 billion) in bank aid and about 200 billion euros in economic-stimulus packages, swelling budget deficits in some countries.

That in turn has stoked angst about some countries’ ability to meet their debt obligations as their fiscal situations deteriorate. Former Bundesbank President Karl Otto Poehl told Sky News in an interview broadcast today that smaller members of the euro region could default on their debt obligations.

The difference between German and Italian 10-year government bond yields widened to the most in almost 12 years today, with the spread increasing as much as four basis points to 161 basis points.

The euro-region economy contracted the most in at least 13 years in the fourth quarter, shrinking 1.5 percent, as companies scale back output and shed jobs.

German business confidence fell to the lowest in 26 years this month and BASF SE, the world’s largest chemical company, said today it will accelerate plant closures and eliminate at least 1,500 jobs. The number of Germans out of work rose 40,000 this month to 3.31 million, the Federal Labor Agency said today, pushing the jobless rate to 7.9 percent.

Concern about unemployment is in turn prompting consumers across Europe to keep their purses shut. European retail sales fell for a ninth month in February, the Bloomberg Retail PMI showed today.

Today’s data suggests that the first quarter “might not be that much better than the breathtaking deterioration that we saw in the fourth quarter,” said Nick Kounis, chief euro area economist at Fortis Bank NKL in Amsterdam.

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WASHINGTON–Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke told Congress yesterday the U.S. economy is suffering through a "severe contraction" and pledged to use all available tools to lift the country out of the recession that already has cost millions of Americans their jobs.

In testimony to the Senate Banking Committee, Bernanke said the economy is likely to keep shrinking in the first six months of this year. Housing, credit and financial crises – the worst since the 1930s – plunged the economy into its worst slide in a quarter-century at the end of last year.

Bernanke hoped the current recession will end this year, but said there were significant risks to that forecast. Any turnaround will hinge on the success of the Fed and the White House in getting credit and financial markets to operate more normally again.

"Only if that is the case, in my view there is a reasonable prospect that the current recession will end in 2009 and that 2010 will be a year of recovery," Bernanke said.

Among the risks to any recovery are if economic and financial troubles in other countries turn out to be worse than anticipated, which would hurt U.S. exports and further aggravate already shaky financial conditions in the United States.

Another concern is that the Fed and other Washington policy-makers won’t be able to break a vicious cycle where disappearing jobs, tanking home values and shrinking nest eggs are forcing consumers to cut back sharply, worsening the economy’s tailspin. In turn, battered companies lay off more people and cut back in other ways.

"To break that adverse feedback loop, it is essential that we continue to complement fiscal stimulus with strong government action to stabilize financial institutions and financial markets," Bernanke said.

In an effort to revive the economy, the Fed has slashed a key interest rate to a record low and U.S. President Barack Obama signed a $787 billion (U.S.) stimulus package of increased spending and tax cuts.

In addition, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has revamped a controversial $700 billion bank bailout program to include steps to partner with the private sector to buy rotten assets held by banks as well as expand government ownership stakes in them – all with the hopes of freeing up lending guaranteed personal loan approval. The administration also will spend $75 billion to stem home foreclosures.

Those and other bold steps – including a soon-to-be-operational Fed program to boost availability of consumer loans – for autos, education, credit cards and other things – should over time provide relief and promote an economic recovery, Bernanke said.

Radical actions by the government since fall, when the financial crisis intensified, have relieved some credit and financial strains.

"Nevertheless, despite these favourable developments, significant stresses persist in many markets," he said. "Notably most securitization markets remain shut … and some financial institutions remain under pressure.”

Although Bernanke didn’t mention names, troubled titan Citigroup Inc. apparently is in line for additional government help. How much depends on the health of the banks, how the economy evolves and the margin of safety regulators believe is needed, Bernanke said.

Critics worry the Fed’s actions have the potential to put ever-more taxpayers’ dollars at risk and encourage "moral hazard," where firms feel more comfortable making high-stakes gambles because the government will rescue them.

Stress tests on the nation’s biggest banks, which regulators will start conducting today, are designed to give regulators a better idea of how much additional capital and the type needed for banks to lend if the crisis were to grow worse than anticipated, Bernanke said.

The Fed expects the jobless rate, now at 7.6 per cent, to rise to close to 9 per cent this year, and probably remain above 5 per cent into 2011. The recession, which started in December 2007, already has killed a net total of 3.6 million jobs.

Fed policy-makers think a "full recovery" is likely to take more than two or three years, Bernanke said.

The Fed is "committed to using all available tools to stimulate economic activity and to improve financial market functioning," he said.

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Ameren’s 840,000 natural gas customers in Illinois will see heating prices decline further next month because of a continued weakening in energy demand.

Retail prices for natural gas, which makes up about two-thirds of customers’ bills, will go down 17 percent or 19 percent depending on the utility, St. Louis-based Ameren said. The price for Cilco and CIPS customers will drop to 64 cents a therm from 77 cents. AmerenIP prices will fall to 68 cents from 84 cents.

Natural gas demand has eroded, especially among industrial customers, as the recession lingers. Retail gas prices charged by Ameren’s Illinois utilities have fallen as much as 55 percent since their peak last fall personal loans for people with bad credit.

"We also recognize that the extremely cold temperatures that occurred in December and January meant that our customers used more natural gas this year than a year ago," said Scott Glaeser, Ameren’s vice president of gas supply.

Ameren utilities buy gas from producers across the country. Retail prices are adjusted monthly depending on changes in the wholesale market.

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Spot Runner once seemed an unbeatable value proposition for entrepreneurs seeking to maximize their marketing budgets. Launched in 2006, the Los Angeles company helps small businesses create video ads for as little as $499 and target them by zip code on local TV.

For a while Spot Runner thrived as more Main Street businesses abandoned the Yellow Pages in favor of broadcast and new-media advertising. (Print revenue for the old yellow books has been dropping steadily, from $15.2 billion in 2005 to $12.4 billion in 2008, according to market research firm Borrell Associates.) Spot Runner raised a total of $111 million in investment capital from companies such as CBS, WPP and Grupo Televisa. In early 2008, Spot Runner expanded into search-engine marketing, hoping to serve small businesses hungry for targeted ads on the Web empire payday loans.

Then came the credit crunch. "Everybody’s getting hit hard, particularly local businesses," says Spot Runner president John Gentry.

Spot Runner laid off 165 employees late last year, reducing its staff to around 200. Instead of working directly with individual entrepreneurs, the company has recently concentrated on deals with national small business networks such as Century 21, the real estate chain, and Stuller Inc., a jewelry manufacturer and distributor that serves nearly 40,000 retailers.

One reason for tapping the networks: Without a Yellow Pages-size sales force, it’s hard to reach individual small business owners.  

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Poor loan-to-value ratios are spreading. The volume of property owners with debt that exceeds value is high, according to the latest Business Pulse survey, the nonscientific weekly online poll from the Tampa Bay Business Journal .

Of the 379 respondents to a question about whether property owners are ‘underwater’ on their home debt, 46 percent, or 173 said they were, and 22, or 5 percent said they were flat. Just under half, 49 percent or 184 respondents, said they didn’t owe more than their property was worth.

Of those that are underwater, a 37 percent majority said they owe between $50,001 and $75,000 while 26 percent owed between $1,000 and $25,000. One-fifth of the respondents owe $100,000 or more.

Of those who still have equity, 39 percent said it is shrinking fast while 61 percent said it is stable or growing.

In comments from readers, one said his underwater condition has worsened over the last two months by 500 percent.

“I have offset this somewhat by having a home inspection aimed at gaining credit for wind mitigation features present in my home,” said reader Michael Manning. “It reduced my insurance premium by 33 percent,” he said.

For reader Tom Kay, he has acquaintances that are almost desperate to sell their homes because they simply don’t want to pay significantly increased property taxes and insurance premiums following their purchases made between 2004 and 2006, which have not significantly declined despite the decline in underlying value no fax needed payday loans.

“In my case, I bought a house previously homesteaded, and following my purchase with a ‘new’ homestead, the property tax tripled and the insurance cost more than doubled,” Kay said. “They haven’t lowered the assessment or the insurance premium yet to reflect the real-world diminished value of the property.”

Reader Maximillian Boehmer said he works in lending and has people calling every day believing their house is the only one in town that hasn’t decreased in value.

“You cannot escape this economic crisis through denial,” he said. “We are all in this together, and hope as you may, you are not immune. You may have equity in your home, but trust me the house isn’t worth what it used to be.”

Tampa area home prices were down 20.9 percent for 2008 and 32.4 percent since the July 2006 peak, according to numbers released late last month in the S&P/Case-Shiller home price index.

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WASHINGTON — You’ve lost your job, and your mortgage company is threatening foreclosure. Then, when it seems like things can’t get any worse, the tax man comes calling. What’s a person to do?

Don’t ignore the Internal Revenue Service.

"The most important thing for people to do even if they owe money is to go ahead and file that return," says Terry Lemons, senior spokesman for the IRS.

The average refund last year was $2,429. "That’s a lot of money for people who are facing hardship," he said.

In these tough economic times, taxpayers may find they’re due a larger refund than they expected.

The IRS considers taxation a "pay as you go" system, said Bob Meighan, vice president for the Consumer Tax Group, part of Intuit Inc., which publishes the tax preparation software TurboTax. "Most Americans are current in tax liability as they are earning income."

But if your annual income declined because you lost a job or had other changes in your financial situation, your tax bill is likely to be lower, and you could be due a larger refund.

You might find yourself eligible for a broad range of credits for which you didn’t qualify before. Among them: the Earned Income Credit, education credits and the Recovery Rebate Credit.

The stimulus checks people received last year actually were an advance payment on the Recovery Rebate Credit. Initial eligibility was determined based on 2007 tax returns.

If your financial circumstances changed, you may qualify for the rebate now, even if you didn’t when the initial payments were made.

If you did get a check, you also may qualify for an additional credit if you added a child to your family in 2008.

Through 2008, Treasury processed more than 118 million stimulus payments totaling about $96 billion. The IRS expects about $10 billion in Recovery Rebate Credits in 2009.

The credits are $600 for those filing individually, $1,200 for joint filers and $300 for each child.

The Earned Income Tax Credit was designed to help low-income workers by offsetting part of their Social Security and Medicare taxes. Since it boosts take-home pay, it is meant to provide an incentive to work. The maximum income limit is $41,646. That declines based on filing status and the number of children in the household. The maximum credit for 2008 is $4,824, up from $4,716 in 2007.

Lemons says the IRS is paying close attention to the hard times and wants Americans to take advantage of every credit and deduction due them.

For those who owe back taxes, the IRS is offering some assistance.

Taxpayers who lost a job, rely solely on Social Security or welfare, or who face "devastating illness or significant medical bills" may be able to have collection actions suspended.

For those facing financial hardship, missing a payment on an installment agreement with the IRS won’t necessarily result in suspension of the agreement. The agency said people should call the IRS to discuss their situation.

The IRS has put together a series of answers to "What If" questions to help taxpayers in financial distress. They can be found on its website at www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=201853,00.html.

Don’t forget, tax experts say, that unemployment insurance benefits are taxable as income. If you didn’t opt to have federal or state income tax withheld or file estimated taxes, you could find yourself with a tax bill that you cannot pay no teletrack payday loans.

"However, the expenses that you incur to find a job are deductible to the extent that you can itemize," provided you are not looking for a job for the first time, Meighan said.

People struggling financially also could find themselves with a bigger tax bill if they withdrew money from an Individual Retirement Account or 401(k) and didn’t have taxes withheld. There also is a 10 percent penalty if you’re under 59

The Obama administration is hammering out a program to subsidize mortgages in a new front to fight the credit crisis, sources familiar with the plan told Reuters on Thursday, boosting financial markets.

In a major break from existing aid programs, the plan under consideration would seek to help homeowners before they fall into arrears on their loans. Current programs only assist borrowers that are already delinquent.

Wall Street stock indexes quickly retraced earlier losses on the report, with the blue-chip Dow Jones industrial average jumping 245 points, or 3.0 percent, to close just 6 points lower on the day. Earlier in the session, stock prices had been testing lows seen last November on investor worries about the economy.

Under the evolving plan, sources said homes would undergo a standardized reappraisal and homeowners would face a uniform eligibility test.

The administration may also lower the trigger level that decides who would be eligible for relief. Under an existing program, loans are reworked if a borrower is spending more than 38 percent of their gross income on their mortgage.

In an interview, James Lockhart, the regulator who oversees government-controlled mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, told Reuters the industry was eager to have a standardized loan modification standard.

“I’ve talked to all the major servicers — both the big bank ones and the big independent ones — and they are all ready to go, they’re chomping at the bit,” Lockhart, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, said direct lender payday loans. “The other thing they’re asking for standardization.”

However, he declined to speculate on any plans the administration may be considering. The Treasury Department, which is taking the lead role in financial rescue efforts, did not respond to a request for comment.

EFFORT TO LOWER RATES

A rising wave of U.S. mortgage delinquencies has saddled the global banking system with big losses that have led banks to recoil from lending, choking economies around the globe.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner this week outlined a plan to take up to $1 trillion in bad assets off the banks’ books in the hope of restarting lending.

He also vowed the administration would spend $50 billion to combat foreclosures.

Geithner said on Thursday the administration would soon put a housing program in place that uses “a mix of incentive and persuasion” to get mortgage companies to rewrite loans.

“The key elements of the strategy are going to bring mortgage interest rates down to help avoid the foreclosures that we can reasonably expect to avoid,” he said.

Late mortgage payments and home foreclosures hit record highs last year. Foreclosure filings eased last month, but were still 18 percent higher than a year ago, industry research firm RealtyTrac said on Thursday. 

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OTTAWA – Home building sagged last month as sales of existing houses fell and the number of dwellings on the market rose.

Housing starts fell to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 153,500 units in January, down 10.9 per cent from 172,200 in December, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. said Monday.

Seasonally adjusted urban starts fell 15.6 per cent from a month earlier to 126,700 on an annualized basis, with urban multiple starts down 12.2 per cent to 76,700 and single-family home starts crumbling 20.2 per cent to 50,000.

Excluding seasonal adjustments to take account of slow mid-winter construction activity, CMHC said the actual number of starts nationally slumped to an annualized rate of 99,444, down 35.8 per cent from the unusually strong January 2008.

Unadjusted starts in urban areas fell 40.4 per cent from a year earlier to an actual number of 8,287 for the month, CMHC estimated, while the actual number of rural starts increased 36 per cent year-over-year to 1,043 no faxing payday loan.

The agency said overall starts declined across the country, with a lot of the steam coming off the hot market that had prevailed in most of the West.

"To a certain extent, the decline in housing starts coincides with recent developments in the existing home market," stated Bob Dugan, the Crown corporation’s chief economist.

"Reduced sales and increased listings in the existing-home market have led to reduced spillover demand in the new-home market."

On a seasonally adjusted basis, January’s starts were down from December by 30.3 per cent on the Prairies, 29.1 per cent in British Columbia, 14.6 per cent in Ontario, 8.6 per cent in Atlantic Canada and 1.4 per cent in Quebec.

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The U.S. Senate is slated to vote early next week on an economic stimulus package totaling at least $780 billion that President Barack Obama said is needed to prevent the economy from sinking into a deeper recession.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, scheduled a key procedural vote for 5:30 p.m. Washington time on Feb. 9 after a dispute over the measure’s size was resolved yesterday. If the procedural hurdle is cleared, Reid said a vote on the bill would take place on Feb. 10.

If it passes, lawmakers will attempt to reconcile the Senate bill with an $819 billion stimulus bill the House approved last month. Democratic congressional leaders are pushing to deliver a final bill to Obama by the end of next week.

The agreement reached on the Senate bill’s size by Democrats and three Republicans prompted Reid to express confidence the Senate would approve its bill. “We are passing a bold and responsible plan that will help our economy get back on its feet, put people to work and put more money in their pockets,” he said.

Throughout this week, a bipartisan group of more than a dozen lawmakers has been demanding cuts to the bill as its size grew to more than $900 billion. Senator Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat who led the push to reduce that total, said after yesterday’s accord was reached that he and other lawmakers worked “line by line, dollar by dollar” to cut more than $100 billion.

‘Jobs, Jobs, Jobs’

The plan they produced is “about jobs, jobs, jobs,” he said.

The $780 billion compromise plan that Nelson and the other lawmakers announced didn’t include the cost of other changes that had been made to the bill earlier this week. Those amendments included tax cuts aimed at boosting the housing and auto industries.

Republicans estimated the bill’s cost would total about $827 billion. And the Senate’s top Republican, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said most of his colleagues continue to oppose the bill because, in their view, it emphasizes government spending over tax cuts.

“The president said originally he had hoped to get 80 votes” in the Senate, said McConnell. “It appears that the way this has developed, there will be some bipartisan support but not a lot.”

Earlier yesterday, the Labor Department reported an increase in unemployment in the U.S. and Obama stepped up his call for Congress to complete work on a stimulus plan. The jobless rate rose to 7.6 percent last month from 7.2 percent in December, the Labor Department reported, adding urgency to the congressional talks. Payrolls fell by 598,000, the biggest monthly decline since December 1974.

Delay ‘Inexcusable’

Obama said it would be “inexcusable” for Congress to get “bogged down in distraction, delay or politics as usual” over the stimulus legislation “while millions of Americans are being put out of work fast cash without a hassle.”

Also before the Senate agreement was announced, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said she was “very much opposed to the cuts that are being proposed in the Senate.” These included reductions in spending for education.

The Senate agreement pared from the bill $20 billion for school construction, $2 billion to expand broadband access in rural areas, $3.5 billion to make federal buildings more energy efficient and $200 million for NASA. It also reduced a proposed subsidy that would allow the jobless to buy health insurance through their former employers.

Tax Cuts Dropped

Tax cuts worth $18 billion were dropped from the measure. The accord also reduced the income cap for workers who would benefit from Obama’s $1,000 payroll tax credit, to $140,000 for married couples and $70,000 for singles from $150,000 and $75,000, respectively.

“This compromise greatly improves the bill,” said Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican. Republican Senators Olympia Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania announced they also would support the package.

Democrats, who control the Senate with 58 votes, need support from at least two Republicans to gain the 60 votes needed in Monday’s procedural vote and bring the bill up for approval.

During debate on the bill yesterday, lawmakers approved on a voice vote an amendment to fix the troubled HOPE for Homeowners program. That initiative was created last year to let homeowners struggling with subprime loans refinance into fixed-rate loans backed by the government.

Terms Too Tough

The program, designed to help 400,000 borrowers, has refinanced just two dozen mortgages since October because, lawmakers said, the terms to enroll were made too tough. The amendment would cut fees for borrowers and provide additional incentives for loan providers. It would also require the Treasury Department to devote at least $50 billion in the Troubled Asset Relief Program to stem housing foreclosures.

Another amendment adopted on a voice vote would require financial institutions that take money from the TARP program to repay the cash portion of bonuses topping $100,000 that were paid to employees for work last year. “This amendment makes it clear that it’s not enough to say that the excessive bonuses are wrong — it requires that companies pay those bonuses back to our taxpayers,” said Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat.

Lawmakers also approved an amendment imposing tougher restrictions than the House imposed on how money in the stimulus bill could be spent. The House measure bars stimulus funding from going to casinos, aquariums, zoos, golf courses and swimming pools. The Senate amendment also would bar the money from going to museums, arts centers, theaters, highway beautification projects, stadiums and parks.

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