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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.

jtomich@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8320

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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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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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Two years after opening, Progress West HealthCare Center in O’Fallon, Mo., will expand with a new medical office building that will bring more general physicians and specialists to south St. Charles County.

Construction of the 60,000-square-foot office building is expected to be completed by the second quarter of 2010.

"It will allow us the ability to have our first expansion from hospital services," said John Antes, president of Progress West.

Antes said the new medical facility at the 72-bed hospital will provide additional outpatient services such as therapy, cardiac care and imaging. Looking ahead to 2010 and 2011, Antes said cancer care could be the next service provided at the hospital’s 48-acre campus.

Part of the $30 million project also will include a 40,000-square-foot data center to operate as the primary computer and data processing site for the entire BJC HealthCare system to replace a facility in midtown St faxless payday advance. Louis.

Both buildings are expected to meet requirements for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification.

Construction manager for the project is Clayco/Legacy and the architectural firm is Arcturis.

Progress West became BJC HealthCare’s 13th hospital when it opened in early 2007.

bbernhard@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8129

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Bank of England Governor Mervyn King may abandon his reticence to shore up the financial system as the economy slides deeper into a recession.

With the central bank set to cut the U.K.’s key interest rate to the lowest in history this week, King may soon be forced to follow the Federal Reserve and pursue other ways to pump money into an economy contracting for the first time since 1991.

King’s first course of action will probably be to expand the 200 billion-pound ($290 billion) program that allows banks to swap illiquid securities for government debt, economists say. That would suggest he will be more aggressive in helping banks after criticism from executives and former policy makers that he was too focused on the dangers of reckless lending.

“The balance between moral hazard and doing what’s necessary to get the economy back on track is shifting,” said Nick Kounis, chief European economist at Fortis in Amsterdam and a former U.K. Treasury official. “King has made a big deal in the past about not being too generous, and it would be quite a big U-turn for him.”

King’s Monetary Policy Committee will on Jan. 8 reduce its main rate to 1.5 percent from 2 percent, according to the median of 50 forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey of economists.

That would be the lowest since the bank was founded in 1694 to finance King William III’s war against France. The European Central Bank’s benchmark stands at 2.5 percent. Rates in the U.S. and Japan are close to zero.

Blame

King has been under fire since the credit crisis started in 2007 for being too slow to help the banking system. Lawmakers criticized the Bank of England, along with the government and regulators, for not doing enough to soothe the market tensions that led to the collapse of Northern Rock Plc.

In September, King refused to extend the Special Liquidity Scheme beyond its original October deadline until the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. forced him to reverse his decision. The program now runs until Jan. 30.

King “must shoulder some of the blame” for the near- collapse of mortgage lender HBOS Plc in the subsequent market turmoil, Keith Skeoch, chief executive officer of Standard Life Investments Ltd., said in September. Former policy makers Charles Goodhart and Willem Buiter have said it was a mistake for King to put any deadline on the liquidity program.

“I would hope they’ll be more generous,” said Michael Saunders, chief Western European economist at Citigroup Inc. in London. “I would hope they’d realize the cost of the emphasis on moral hazard is to throw a lot of fairly blameless households and businesses to the recession cash advance no fax.”

Recession

The Bank of England is now stepping up its response and joining Prime Minister Gordon Brown in encouraging banks to resume lending. British house prices lost almost a fifth of their value last year, HBOS said Jan. 2, and manufacturing contracted for an eighth month.

U.K. officials cut their main rate by 1.50 percentage points in November, the most since 1992, and have reduced it by a total of 3.75 percentage points since December 2007.

The dilemma facing King and other central bankers is that near-zero interest rates and still-frozen credit markets mean monetary policy now packs less of a punch, forcing them to look for other methods to spur lending.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke on Dec. 16 cut the rate for overnight loans between banks to a target range of zero to 0.25 percent, and the Fed said it would buy unlimited quantities of securities. Three days later, the Bank of Japan lowered the overnight lending rate to 0.1 percent from 0.3 percent and decided to buy corporate debt for the first time.

Wider Range

Bank of England officials may not be far behind after last month identifying a need “for further measures to underpin lending growth.” One option is to loosen the Special Liquidity Scheme’s terms by reducing the fees banks pay to participate, said David Tinsley, an economist at National Australia Bank in London.

King could also widen the range of securities that can be swapped beyond those originated before 2008 or scrap the program in favor of a bigger arrangement.

“The bank has been quite sharp in trying to keep some kind of moral hazard considerations,” said Tinsley. “Cutting the fees and removing the deadline for origination would be a powerful way of boosting liquidity.”

King told lawmakers in November that the Bank of England would cooperate closely with the Treasury were rates to fall close to zero.

Greater willingness by King to step beyond conventional tools shows the change in his thinking, says Roger Bootle, founder of Capital Economics and a former adviser to the U.K. Treasury.

“King’s been on a remarkable intellectual journey over the last year or so,” he said. “He probably placed too much emphasis on moral hazard for too long. I don’t think you can accuse him of conservatism after what he’s been saying recently.”

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European Central Bank President Jean- Claude Trichet urged banks to start lending again after policy makers put them on to the “the path'' of recovery by pumping record amounts of cash into money markets.

“I expect the banks to normalize their relationships, meaning that they start lending to each other and that they lend to their clients,'' Trichet said in an interview on French radio RTL late yesterday. The banking system is “on the path to normalization,'' he said.

The cost of borrowing dollars in London fell last week for the first week since July after the ECB offered lenders as many euros as they wanted and joined counterparts in promising unlimited dollars as well. Central bankers and governments have stepped up efforts to end the 14-month-old credit crunch that's threatening to tip the global economy into recession.

“We're facing a very important market correction which is lasting,'' Trichet said, declining to say the credit crunch is over. “We are facing a very serious systemic liquidity crisis.''

As well as offering unlimited amounts of dollars and euros to banks, the ECB this month cut interest rates for the first time since 2003 and loosened rules on the collateral it will accept from banks when making loans. European governments including those in France, Germany and Spain committed 1.3 trillion euros ($1.7 trillion) to guarantee bank loans and take stakes in lenders.

Still, in a sign the crisis continues to reverberate, the Netherlands yesterday put 10 billion euros into ING Groep NV after the biggest Dutch financial-services company said it expects its first quarterly loss.

Lehman Collapse

Trichet said policy makers are acting to give banks the ability to refinance and boost their capital after September's collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. prompted lenders to hoard cash. That sent the cost of credit surging, hurting the economy by choking off money to consumers and companies.

ECB council member George Provopoulos said the central bank “remains vigilant and will do what is needed'' to both reduce inflation and ensure stability in markets, according to an interview with To Vima newspaper published yesterday. Colleague Ewald Nowotny told Austrian state broadcaster ORF-TV that, while the crisis should be “under control'' by the middle of next year, the economy will suffer for longer.

Trichet criticized investors for creating the crisis by behaving with too much “short-termism,'' which he blamed for amplifying the rise and the decline of markets. He said that having mis-priced risk, financial markets should now be subjected to greater transparency and regulation to curb their volatility electronic check payday advance.

Review Financial System

“We said there was an underestimation of the risks and of the price to be paid for these risks,'' he said. The crisis “must force us to review the entire international financial system.''

ECB council member Erkki Liikanen told Finnish state broadcaster YLE TV1 yesterday that regulation will be strengthened across borders. “All national regulators of banks operating across borders must join forces,'' he said. “It will be a part of EU legislation and I'm sure it will even be agreed on a multinational level beyond that.''

While the ECB this month cut its benchmark rate by a half- point to 3.75 percent, with inflation still almost double its 2 percent limit, Trichet said its focus is “entirely oriented to ensure price stability.''

“We will always, at any moment, do what is necessary so that I can continue to say to our citizens `you can have confidence, you will have medium-term price stability','' Trichet said. Such a goal should lend confidence to financial markets as “there's now more than in the past the recognition of the fact that price stability'' helps expansion and hiring, he said.

`Important Slowdown'

The ECB president described his 15-nation euro-area economy as being in a “very, very important growth slowdown,'' driven by tighter credit and also by this year's record fuel and food costs. Nowotny predicted the growth rate next year “will be significantly below what we have in 2008.''

Such an outlook explains why investors expect the ECB to cut its benchmark rate to 3.25 percent by the end of the year, Eonia forward contracts show.

The ECB, which next releases economic forecasts in December, in September predicted growth of 1.4 percent this year and 1.2 percent in 2009. With the crisis worsening, the International Monetary Fund this month said it expects the euro-area to grow 0.2 percent next year, the weakest since the single currency began trading in 1999, after 1.3 percent in 2008.

Trichet acknowledged his own central bank had taken on risk by boosting liquidity and accepting lower-rated securities for loans.

“We're taking risks and we've made decisions that increased our risks, because we were facing a systemic liquidity crisis of first importance,'' he said. The ECB is an “inspirer of confidence,'' Trichet said.

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Same store sales slumped 11 percent at Gap Inc. in July.

The San Francisco clothing seller (NYSE: GPS) had sales of $998 million in the four weeks ended Aug. 2, down from $1.05 billion in the same period a year ago.

Retail watchers consider same store sales, which compare performance only at stores open at least a year, to be an important gauge of a company’s health.

They fell in every Gap business unit during July — down 6 percent for Gap North America, down 8 percent for Banana Republic and down 16 percent at Old Navy pay day loans. International same store sales fell 9 percent.

Sabrina Simmons is Gap’s chief financial officer.