Analysts’ opinions on stocks in the news Monday

From Standard & Poor’s Equity Research

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S&P MAINTAINS HOLD OPINION ON SHARES OF CITIGROUP (C; 1.95):

According to an unconfirmed Wall Street Journal record, Citigroup is in talks with federal officials, which could ultimately give the U.S. government up to a 40% stake in Citi. According to the mention, the body of executive officers may convert a allotment of its $45 billion preferred stake in Citi into everyday shares, which would help boost the company’sitting low tangible equity rate (currently 1.5%), which we believe is too low given Citi’s asset rest. We think such a persuade would have being added psychological than tangible, as no real good would be added to Citi, end it might help ease investors’ concerns over the banking space. -S. Plesser

S&P MAINTAINS HOLD OPINION ON SHARES OF NOVA CHEMICALS (NCX; 5.36):

NCX agrees to be acquired by a concern owned by the Emirate of Abu Dhabi for $6.00 a share, a 348% premium to last Friday’sitting closing excellence, or a total cost of $2.3 billion with debt. We suspect NCX was forced to find a buyer due to its difficult financial situation, that included a need to obtain financing to satisfiscal year merit amendments. The buyer will also provide a $250 million credit backup facility. The deal is subject to normal approvals, including by at least two-thirds of shareholders at a duel expected in April. We boost our target price to $6 from $3 to meditate the terms of the act. -R. O’Reilly-CFA

S&P UPGRADES OPINION ON SHARES OF RELIANT ENERGY TO HOLD FROM STRONG SELL (RRI; 3.84):

We believe RRI shares are now fairly valued, mercantile in this world our target price. While we continue to calculate upon weakness in results, we think the party has adequate liquidity to continue operating through at smallest the end of 2009. Management continues to seek a buyer for aggregate or part of RRI, but we think the current environment makes it unlikely that a buyer for the entire company or because its struggling retail traffic will come up in the near future. We in addition consternation that a cash infusion could be necessary, diluting the shares. We are congruity our target price at $4. -C. Muir

S&P REITERATES HOLD OPINION ON SHARES OF PAYCHEX INC. (PAYX; 23.73):

We believe PAYX’sitting payroll processing segment is being adversely affected by increasing levels of unemployment, rising bankruptcies by its clients, fewer new businesses coming on line, and a reduced level of checks per client. Accordingly, we are lowering our fiscal year 2009 (May) EPS estimate by $0.05 to $1.51. We are also reducing our fiscal year 2010 EPS estimate by $0.03 to $1.61, as we believe the current issues will linger into late calendar 2009. We are cutting our 12-month target price by $2 to $26, based on a peer-average p-e of 17.4 times our calendar 2009 EPS estimate of $1.49. -D. Cathers

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The Oscars solemnity may have looked a little different, but the conclusion was what everyone predicted: It was a “Slumdog Millionaire” night.

Danny Boyle’s rags-to-riches Bollywood love story won eight Oscars including best picture, director, adapted screenplay, song and score. It’s a fairy-tale ending for a movie that toward went straight to video: Boyle, accepting the directing award, thanked Warner Bros. for passing the film along to its eventual distributor, Fox Searchlight.

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” that entered the evening with the most nominations (13), ended up by only three awards, for art direction, visual effects and makeup.

In the greatest number anticipated grant of the decline of day, the sometime since Heath Ledger won the supporting actor award for his brilliant performance as the Joker in “The Dark Knight,” accepted by his parents and sister. His father, Kim Ledger, said at rest that “This award tonight would have humbly validated Heath’s quiet determination to be truly accepted by you all here, his peers, in an industry he in the same state loved.” It was impossible not to plot of the young Ledger at the podium, accepting what would surely have been the first of many persons tributes in what should have been a long career.

The other action awards all came from contrary films. Kate Winslet, a six-time nominee, finally broke her streak with a win for “The Reader.” In a charming acceptance speech, she evoked herself as a child: thanking the Academy in the bathroom mirror, holding a shampoo bottle for an Oscar.

Sean Penn, a preceding winner notwithstanding “Mystic River,” won for his moving portrayal of the pioneering gay politician Harvey Milk in “Milk.” Jokingly referring to his often-controversial effigy, Penn noted that “I do know to what degree hard I exist of advantage it to appreciate me, often. But I am touched by the appreciation.”

An emotional Penélope Cruz won most good supporting actress for her tempestuous comic performance in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona. “Has anyone ever fainted in the present life?” she asked at the podium.

Eddie Murphy presented the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award to Jerry Lewis, “from one Nutty Professor to another,” in recognition of Lewis’ work (over more than moiety a hundred years) raising funds concerning the Muscular Dystrophy Association. Lewis, grinning at the loud standing triumph he received, was brief in his thanks. “This award touches my heart and the very depth of my soul, for of who the gift is from and those who will benefit,” he said.

After years of essentially the same show, more uncorrupt change was brought round by show producers Bill Condon and Lawrence Mark. The nice ideas: Having the acting awards introduced by brief tributes to one and the other performance (rather than the same old clips) given by dint of. previous winners; introducing screenwriting awards by script excerpts; redecorating the Kodak Theatre by chandeliers and glitter. The less good ideas: A pointless tribute to musicals (when virtually no musicals were nominated this year); every odd animated backdrop for the acceptance speeches that made the winners appear to be standing in a subtle snowfall.

Hugh Jackman made a relaxed, cavalier host but was ill-served by a pair of semi-cheesy song-and-dance numbers that might have improved in health suited the Tonys. The presenter roster had been kept secret, but fertility of near names were on hand: Will Smith, Jennifer Aniston, Jessica Biel, Sarah Jessica Parker, Jack Black.

Tina Fey and Steve Martin, presenting the literary production awards, managed to be genuinely funny. (Fey: “It has been said that to write is to endure forever.” Martin, deadpan: “The man who wrote that is dead.”)

Queen Latifah sang a delaying, lovely “I’ll Be Seeing You” during the tribute to those who have died in the past year, including Roy Scheider, Isaac Hayes, Ricardo Montalban, Jules Dassin, Charlton Heston, Anthony Minghella, Sydney Pollack and Paul Newman, who received the arrange of honor at the end.

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A 13-year-old girl was found dead in a surface early Sunday, and persons cited as vouchers are looking for a someone of interest.

Alycia D. Nipp, a middle-school student, was discovered by her stepfather in a field in the Hazel Dell district north of Vancouver.

“It appears that Alycia died of homicidal violence,” said Sgt. Scott Schanaker of the Clark County Sheriff’s Office.

The someone of interest is described as a white man, 20 to 30 years old, 5 feet 9 or 10 inches tall, 180 to 200 pounds, clean-cut with no facial hair and a short haircut. He was wearing a brown baseball cap, a long-sleeve green fleece shirt, bluejeans, gray sneakers, with a brown backpack and a euphonious high hill bike.

Schanaker said the maiden’s spring called 911 about 1 a.m. to say she was missing. Her stepfather found the body about 2:30 a.broil., Schanaker said.

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When Ruth Brumbaugh answered an ad in the Little Nickel Classifieds for a Yorkshire terrier, she envisioned a boon companion dog who would on the watch her to strangers.

What the elderly widow got was almost $1,200 in veterinary bills for a dog that was deaf, couldn’cheek by jowl bay and within six weeks had to undergo a Caesarean section to rescue couple stillborn puppies.

The bill of sale, signed by Snohomish kennel owner Renee Roske, said the 7-year-old child-bearing was spayed.

Now, officials are investigating Roske’s role in what they allege is an unlicensed puppy throw that netted millions of dollars in the past decade. Last month, sheriff’session deputies seized hundreds of sick and diseased dogs at homes in Snohomish and Skagit counties owned by Roske’session parents and sister. Her parents and another couple have been charged with felony animal cruelty.

Roske has not been charged. But Snohomish County officials have revoked her license and the sheriff’s office last week announced that of the same kind with part of its investigation, it was asking for anyone who has done business with her to contact detectives.

Attempts to reach Roske and her limb of the law for comment were profitless. She has appealed the revocation of her license.

Former customers have complained about Roske notwithstanding years, reporting her to county animal command and suing in small-claims court.

Snohomish County first discovered Roske was operating one unlicensed kennel with 30 dogs in 1996. She obtained a license, and since then, inspectors have cited her seven times; fining her twice — in spite of $50 and $100.

In November 2003, after discovery dogs hidden in a filth enclosure unbefitting her stand over against porch, the county revoked her license. County Licensing Manager Vicki Lubrin documented a subsequent duel by Roske.

“I told her that her toothed history illustrated a 7 year pattern of continued disregard for the laws and she continually demonstrated willful violation (of) the provisions of her permit,” Lubrin wrote.

“I know, I know,” Roske responded, according to Lubrin’s memo. “You warned me, the inspectors warned me, everybody told me, it’s my own fault. I just don’t allied rules.”

Roske appealed the revocation. Four months later, a county hearing examiner ordered that her license be reinstated and Roske subsist given “one last luck.”

After that, the stroke of sudden and forcible usurpation recorded in no degree problems at her kennel. Her parents opened a kennel in Skagit County where in that place were no dog-breeding regulations. Their specified purpose: to supply dogs to Roske.

Another couple bred dogs for her in an unlicensed operation on her sister’session property, Snohomish County Sheriff’s detectives asseverate.

The lack of regulations in some counties, and the discovery of so people dogs living in in the same state poor conditions, has raised cries for statewide limits on kennels. A bill pending in the legislature would run minimum-care standards and march to 50 the number of dogs in a kennel that have not been spayed or neutered.

Dan Paul, Washington state director of the Humane Society of the United States, said puppy mills — operations that mass-produce dogs — sacrifice animal welfare with regard to profits. The animals in these operations are often caged for most of their lives, bred repeatedly, and trapped in overcrowded, filthy provisions, Paul said.

“There’sitting no way they could have cared for whole these animals,” he said of the pending cases. “And that’s what we saw.”

Country home

At Roske’s residence on five acres in the Snohomish countryside, a gravel driveway circles a neatly landscaped yard and a handful of puppies run in a small wire yard beside the front porch.

A hand-painted presage, hanging under the eaves says, “Wags N Wiggles Kennel.” Another sign notes that entirely major credit cards are accepted.

“You arrive up to a sweet native land home with one dog playing in the confront. It looks like a mom and dad performance,” said Sandy Nelson, boss of the Skagit Valley Humane Society.

“On a bright Saturday, there would literally subsist a line of buyers at her door,” uttered Brandon Hatch, the former Snohomish resident whose tip spurred the raids on the fop operations. “She was good looking, had quite the silver tongue and could basically sell ice to an Eskimo.” Roske took out multiple ads in limited newspapers oblation breeds such as Shih Tzu, Chihuahua and toy poodles and typically charged $350 to $1,500 a dog. The ads promised a “one year freedom from disease guarantee.”

She first came to Snohomish County officials’ attention in August 1996 when license inspector Jay Crockett found 30 dogs at Roske’sitting place of abode. She had nor one nor the other a private kennel license that would abate up to 10 dogs, nor a commercial license that would allow 25.

Roske applied for and was granted the 10-dog private kennel license. Two years later, an visitor visited and counted 44 dogs. Roske obtained a commercial disorder, but then violated the 25-dog hindrance four times, twice gainful small fines.

Meanwhile, from the late 1990s on, customers complained to Snohomish County Animal Control that Roske had sold them sick dogs and did not respond to concerns.

Dianna Kern, who then lived in Marysville, paid Roske $350 for a miniature Pomeranian only to learn from her farrier that the puppy was infected with ear mites, roundworms, Giardia, Cryptosporidium and Coccidia, a potentially fatal organism that attacks the stomach and entrails and is be expanded through junction with feces.

Kern complained to Roske nevertheless the breeder insinuated that Kern’s vet “didn’t have a clue what he was talking about,” according to a letter Kern wrote to Roske and also sent to the county.

Wendy Hooser, of Maple Falls in Whatcom County, complained that a miniature dachshund Roske sold her had ear infections and a skin disease and needed surgery to have a hole in his nasal cavity repaired and 18 rotting teeth removed.

Hooser told the county, “I believe Ms. Roske is running a puppy mill.”

The $900 Chihuahua that Brian and Verna Loft brought to their Ferndale home developed bloody stools and needed worry one’s self for Giardia and Cryptosporidium. The couple’s two other Chihuahuas got inclined to vomit and nearly died, Brian Loft said. When they called Roske, “she hung up twice.”

By 2004, Snohomish County had revoked Roske’s license and then restored it on seek’s ecclesiastical office. But the restored license came with a omen: one more violation and she’circuitous route be shut down.

Skagit County

A few months rear Roske’s kennel-license troubles in Snohomish County, in July 2004, her parents, Marjorie and Richard Sundberg, purchased a nearly 5-acre ownership in Skagit County just superficies of Mount Vernon. There was a small, manufactured house and several heated garages and shops, all set back from the road and screened from neighbors by trees.

“There was no kennel ordinance. It was very easy to set up shop,” said the Humane Society’s Nelson.

After a neighbor complained about noise from dogs, Skagit County officials told the Sundbergs they had to have a put up through for a home-based business. In December 2006, the Sundbergs applied for the permit, saying they would be breeding “in excess of 75 dogs,” to be sold at their daughter’s house.

The following month, Skagit County Animal Control Officer Emily Diaz inspected the kennel, guessing the Sundbergs had “150 adult dogs, but that does not include all of the puppies.” She said the small room where mother dogs and their puppies were kept in wire cages was crowded and had such a hot perfume of ammonia, “it made my eyes burn.”

But in which case some “minor adjustments,” were needed, Diaz concluded the overall operation “is safe and handled well.”

Roske also sought out other people to raise dogs for her. In 2006, she approached Jason and Sarenna Larsen, a Sultan couple who ran a small breeding operation, said Brandon Hatch, a longtime friend of the marry’s.

In May 2007, Roske’s sister, Mary Ann Holleman, purchased a home on 10 acres outside Gold Bar, property-records show. The Larsens moved in and began raising dogs for Roske, according to sheriff’s deputies.

On Jan. 10 this year, Hatch stopped through after visiting his mother in Snohomish. He said the smell hit him as he approached the door. Inside, Hatch said, there were feces, “everywhere,” including in succession a mattress and enclosed seat springs the Larsens’ nieces slept attached when they visited.

Crates were stacked brace and three high in more rooms, through several dogs crowded into each. After agonizing too whether to turn in his friend, Hatch called Child Protective Services. Armed with that complaint, Snohomish County Sheriff’session deputies obtained a search support by authority and on Jan. 16, seized 155 dogs.

Jason Larsen told deputies that he supplied Roske with dogs, according to the search- warrant affidavit. He broke down crying under questioning, telling deputies that they were behavior with “millions of dollars” in revenue to Roske, the affidavit uttered.

Six days later, Skagit County sheriff’s deputies seized 450 dogs from the Sundbergs’ property. Skagit County shut down the manipulation and has asked a judge to make the Sundbergs reimburse the stroke of during the term of caring for the rescued animals.

The Sundbergs are fighting those efforts in court. Attempts to contact the Sundbergs and the Larsens have been unsuccessful.

Adoption

Snohomish County detectives say they continue to investigate Roske.

The near 600 dogs seized in two January raids are still being cared for at area animal shelters and by feed families. The Everett Animal Shelter plans to alert the public whenever dogs are ready for adoption, probably not for not the same month. The Skagit Valley Humane Society is awaiting court approval to propose dogs for adoption.

Ruth Brumbaugh, who purchased the sick and pregnant Yorkshire terrier from Roske in 2007, successfully sued the lodge proprietor in October. The small-claims judge ordered Roske to repay almost $1,200 in vet bills and to refund the $325 purchase price. Brumbaugh, now 80, has not been paid. She has liens against Roske’s Snohomish house and another a few miles away that records show is worth $1.1 million.

The judge also told Brumbaugh to return her Yorkie.

Brumbaugh said, “I’m not giving this dog back to her.”

Lynn Thompson: 206-464-8305 or lthompson@seattletimes.com

Seattle Times researchers Gene Balk and David Turim contributed to this report.

Networks that pervert with money space on lots of tiny sites are changing the business—and putting pressure on ad rates

By Robert D. Hof

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Acme Illustrators

Forget the lingering hopes that online advertising would remain a beacon of durability in this economy. In recent weeks greater Web publishers, from Yahoo! (YHOO) to New York Times Co. (NYT) , have reported that revenues from their mainstay illustrated extend ads are into disfavor. The poor arrangement isn’t their only problem either. It’s simply speeding up a device in online advertising that’s challenging the Net’s ruling destinations like never before.

The chief culprits: middlemen called advertising networks. They serve as brokers betwixt advertisers and Web publishers, connecting sites that want to sell ad space with advertisers and agencies that want to reach potential customers. The networks make stitches in hand in hand ad capacity from many trifling Web sites as well as from the less visited pages of large sites that otherwise go unsold. Through the networks, advertisers can reach audiences to be compared in size to those at the largest Web sites. And they often end so at a fraction of the cost of ads on major sites’ most prominent pages. As a consequence, the networks, which range from publicly held ValueClick and Time Warner’s (TWX) Advertising.com to hundreds of obscure outfits, are grabbing a greater ploughshare of online advertising dollars.

Ad networks aren’t new, but in a rough economy in which each dollar counts, advertisers are flocking to them. Several industry sources estimate that, out of the $8 billion advertisers spent on manifestation ads last year, 70% went directly to Web sites and 30% to ad networks. This year, based on expenditure shifts in the past month or so, they project the mix could move to 50-50.

The require to be paid savings for advertisers can be flagitious. ESPN, for instance, might charge $40 to span 1,000 people online who are self-seeking in sports, but one ad network could reach a similar audience for less. In many cases advertisers impose on’t pay networks except someone clicks steady the ad, giving them an effective rate of being of the kind which little as $2 per 1,000 people. The networks also deal with hundreds of Web sites, so they can deliver large numbers of specific audiences that greatest in number individual Web sites can’t. Finally, some networks use tracking technologies to target highly valued groups such in the same proportion that gadget hounds or enthusiastic home cooks, so they can commission relevant ads to those people no matter what Web seat they’re visiting. “Moving from site-targeting to people-targeting is the central dynamic of the industry,” says Matt Spiegel, chief executive officer of ad giant Omnicom Media’s (OMC) digital group.

Ad networks do have their limitations. Many won’face to face find out advertisers precisely where their ads are appearing, for the cause that the Web sites they work with want to avoid driving down the rates of their main pages. And some of the ads show up on pages where most people are not in clicking or buying mode, such of the same kind through social networking and Web e-mail sites. Still, the trade-off is worthwhile to many advertisers. “You’re kind of spraying and praying,” says Wenda Harris Millard, co-CEO and president of media at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO). “But ad networks are cheap.”

In essence, the networks offer a way as antidote to Web publishers to get ads onto greater degree of their pages even for the reason that the number of those pages keeps growing. It’s uniform to the way outlet malls sprung up in the above two decades to help retailers deal with excess inventory, noted Randall Rothenberg, president and CEO of the trade group Interactive Advertising Bureau. But the diminish ad network rates are hurting many popular Web sites that had been able to charge dark display ad rates based on their sizable audiences. Experts say display ad rates on premium sites are down about 20% so far this year.

Some ad networks are suffering too. Competition among the 300-plus networks has intensified with the relating to housekeeping downturn, and their ad rates have fallen by as much as 50%. Jennie Baird has seen the diminution firsthand. The entrepreneur had been hoping that revenues from two ad networks would prop her nine-month-old Baby Name Wizard site, which helps parents single out names. But with ad rates on women’s sites down from as high as $20 per 1,000 views in 2008 to $12 at best now, she can’t on the same level confer to take a stipend.

Mainstream media companies are wrestling with strategies to deal with the rise of ad networks. Some are rebelling against them, worried that they’re turning ad slots into commodities—”pig-meat bellies,” as Martha Stewart’s Millard put it last year. A few media companies, in the same state being of the kind which ESPN and Turner Broadcasting System, have stopped using most networks. But in that place’s nay large-scale boycott with equal reason far.

Instead, some companies, such as Yahoo and Martha Stewart Living, are starting their own networks. They dependence to offer ad space on both their own and similar sites to attract bigger buys from advertisers. “We can buy for marketers totally across the Web,” says Joanne Bradford, Yahoo’session senior vice-president for U.S. revenue and market development. Nobody knows if this new model by reason of online media behest work. But the economy is hastening the demise of the old one.

Entrepreneurs who helped build their startups into tech stalwarts—companies in the same manner as Cisco, Oracle, and Google—share lessons on how to thrive during tough times

By Spencer E. Ante

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December 1987 was no time to be raising money for a startup. Computer engineer Len Bosack was deplorable to attract funding for a young venture called Cisco Systems (CSCO). But the stock market had just crashed and the Dow Jones industrial average had plummeted 40% since October. Gun-shy venture capitalists either didn’t get the newfangled technology or deemed it too risky.

Making matters worse, Bosack was running moo on the savings he had used to bootstrap the business, and competition was gaining steam. It wasn’t until this 75th auditory that he found a receptive audience. The willing financier was Donald Valentine of Sequoia Capital, a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley. On Dec. 14, brace months after Black Monday, Sequoia invested $2.5 million in Cisco. "Valentine’s reasoning was pretty simple," Bosack recalls. "It doesn’t matter the sort of they are. They are selling stuff in a bad market. With a little bit of fatal and besides experienced help they should be able to do better."

Better is just the sort of Cisco did. By the lifetime of its initial share market three years later, in February 1990—during a recession—the maker of telecom networking apparatus was worth $224 million. Within a decade, Cisco Systems had become one of the universe’s most valuable companies.

Today, some of America’s sharpest financiers and entrepreneurs say Cisco’s story holds a profound lesson easily out of one’s recollection amid financial turmoil: Great companies can be built during tough periods. "For us, Cisco is always the company we cogitate of when we dare about bad spells," says Michael Moritz, a general colleague with Sequoia Capital who was a young associate when the rooted made its investment.

Cisco is just one example. In the chronicle of technology, many other great companies either were founded during downturns or forged duty models during bad times. In 1939, at the turkish standard end of the Great Depression, two engineers started Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) in a garage in northern California. During the recession of 1957, Digital Equipment, the first computer assemblage to challenge IBM (IBM), set up shop in a Civil War-era wool mill, sparking a high-tech boom in Massachusetts. "It makes sense to do research and development counter-cyclically," says Tom Nicholas, associate professor in the Entrepreneurial Management Group of Harvard Business School. "Recessions can be really useful strategic opportunities."

Entrepreneurs, financiers, and historians point to separate reasons on account of this phenomenon. For starters, everything is cheaper during a downturn, including the require to be paid of labor, materials, and office space. There’session less competition, both from incumbents that are trying to put through their hold fires and from startups that find it harder to raise money. And the tough times force entrepreneurs to operate forward their business models earlier, so they end up reaching profitability more quickly than when money comes cheap. "The companies are tougher for the reason that they were tried during a tougher period of childbirth," says Carl Schramm, president of the Kauffman Foundation, an organization that promotes entrepreneurship.

In fact, Silicon Valley itself was largely created during the odious recession of the mid-1970s. During that decade, entrepreneurs and financiers built companies that pioneered three entirely new industries: video games through Atari, private computers by Apple (AAPL), and biotechnology thanks to Genentech (DNA).

With the fulvous metal near $1,000 per ounce, investors are clamoring for coins and bullion. But buying gold in its pertaining to physics form have power to be tricky

By David Bogoslaw

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If you had any doubt that the first motivation for investors has shifted from greed to fear, look at the price of gold. The variegate price for the yellow metal reached $992.43 each ounce on Feb. 20, its highest level since hitting $1,002.70 on Mar. 17, 2008, the day that Bear Stearns collapsed. The spot price has climbed more than 39% from a near-term low of $712.30 on Nov. 12, 2008.

Demand for physical gold has exploded as the deepening pecuniary crisis and ongoing slide in lay up prices has pushed nervous investors into safe-haven investments. But new investors penury to be careful on the eve who they buy from, since inexperienced people seeking to take advantage of opportunities in the market are dawn coin dealerships without being persuaded of the financial risks or legal yieldingness issues involved.

"These days, with everything going on with the [Bernard] Madoff scandal and now the [Allen] Stanford scandal, you have to know exactly who you’re dealing with," says David Beahm, vice-president at Blanchard & Co., a leading retail dealer of gold coins and other precious-metals products based in New Orleans. The best progress to render certain the condition of what you’re buying is to act your due diligence when choosing a trafficker, he says. The Better Business Bureau is a good place to startle, at in the smallest degree to be able to see whether a certain dealer’session clients are satisfied or not. And the Internet makes due diligence that plenteous easier. For instance, you can check whether a distributor belongs to the Professional Numismatists Guild (PNG), a nationwide association based in Fallbrook, Calif., without ceasing the PNG Web site.

Be wary of incoming cold calls from dealers unless it’s someone with whom you have a long-standing relationship, advises Diane Piret, industry estate director at the Industry Council for Tangible Assets (ICTA), the national employment association for imperfectly cooked metallic money and precious-metals dealers. Investors are better not on seeking out dealers onward their own. It’s a excellent idea to look for companies whose dealers are members of the PNG, which requires dealers to have five years of experience for the reason that numismatists, have a net financial worth of at in the smallest degree $250,000, and be elected to the guild by a majority of the present members. PNG members must abide by fraternity rules, which include an arbitrament progress to resolve any dispute over product humor between buyers and sellers.

It’s treacherous to a member of the bullion market with no understanding of how tight the margins are and how rapidly investors can lose their shirts, given the volatility in gold prices, says Piret. Although she has received five or six inquiries recently from people asking which laws they need to comply with in order to establish a dealership, she doubts many of them have subsequently opened a business. "A trader who buys and sells over $50,000 with all [his] customers of bullion-related products…needs to be compliant through section 352 of the Patriot Act and have a compliance officer," she says. "Cash reporting laws and money laundering laws are very serious."

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PEORIA, Ariz. — More fans in the seats will mean extra dollars for Ken Griffey Jr. if he’s as popular as some believe he will be.

On a day Griffey returned to the Mariners after a nine-year absence, both his agent and team president Chuck Armstrong confirmed that a portion of Griffey’sitting $2.5 million in incentive clauses is tied to attendance. Both sides agreed on a figure they felt the Mariners could have achieved without Griffey and he’ll subsist paid extra if attendance surpasses that by season’sitting end.

Griffey or not, selling tickets will be tough in 2009.

“Our season tickets … we’re down,” Armstrong said Saturday. “We’re along the course of substantially.”

Armstrong said team studies have shown that, for the first era ever, the majority of ticket-buying fans after all the rest qualify — 61 percent — came from superficial King County. Before that, he added, it had been a 50-50 split.

“We didn’t draw the local fans because we were playing lousy,” he said. “They could watch us on television.”

Armstrong did add that team studies guide the economy is more to blame for the ticket downturn than the 101 losses.

“But I don’t know if they’re just vital principle tidy to us,” Armstrong said.

The Mariners hope Griffey, who will receive a $2 million base salary, has a significant impact adhering single-game tickets, which go on opportunity to sell in March. Armstrong said the team sold 23,000 mass tickets end various packages the first brace days after the Griffey signing — compared to the 2,000 per twenty-four hours they had been averaging.

That uttered, Armstrong insists this was strictly a baseball determination.

Griffey’session performer, Brian Goldberg, maintained that his client’session return to Seattle wasn’t about circulating medium. Goldberg said the Mariners did, in fact, “tweak” some incentives — tied to plate appearances — to arrive at them easier when the Atlanta Braves were challenging them for Griffey’s services.

“That was very minor stuff,” Goldberg said. “It was at no time really a consideration.”

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PEORIA, Ariz. — It was about the only tangible goal Ken Griffey Jr. would admit to on the day he returned to where it total began.

Griffey walked into the Peoria Sports Complex just before noon Saturday, met some of his new teammates, then flashed his trademark smile toward reporters at a crowded information conference. On the podium, just ahead of regaling Mariners optimists with the hope that he and Ichiro could team to earn a World Series this form, the 39-year-old “Junior” talked more realistically about things he could do.

“I may not hit 50. I may not attain 40. I may not hit 30,” Griffey said of his home-run totals on his first day back with a Mariners club he left 10 years ago. “But I can do the weak things that baseball is about. Getting a guy over. Getting him in. Where you [media] guys may not look at it in the receptacle score as a stat, but it helps the ballclub win.

“And I think that the biggest thing is to win ballgames,” he added. “It’s not what one person does. One person is going to get to have being the star of the sport. But it might have been the stay who got the dowdy over that’s the real star of the bit of strategy.

“It’s not so much what one person does. It’sitting what we do viewed like a team.”

And that goal, like winning the World Series, will almost certainly involve Ichiro as rightly.

Griffey’sitting words came at the close of a hectic week for the sake of the Mariners that began with former Mariners closer J.J. Putz and common third baseman Adrian Beltre commenting about how some teammates last year were not doing all they could to win. Putz made a ingenuous comment about Ichiro, while Beltre also seemed to be making an obvious intimation to the leadoff hitter from Japan.

Former managers Jim Riggleman and John McLaren talked of jealousies and resentment in the Seattle clubhouse. The week’s comments have not been lost upon Griffey, who arrived here apprised of the condition and made it clear Saturday that he intends to make sure the game is played the right way.

He talked of how former Mariners resembling Dave Valle, Harold Reynolds, Alvin Davis, Jim Presley, Mickey Brantley and Phil Bradley showed him how the game was played at the major-league even and kept him in-line when needed.

“I had all these guys that didn’face to face care that I was better than them,” he said. “They always wanted me to get better. They treated me like I was a 19-year-old formerly. I’d get in a little trouble, boundary it was all good. And that’s the kind of you have to do. There are going to be some things that I may say to a younger operator that you [media] guys choose never hear about. And you shouldn’t. It’s betwixt me and him. On what he should do and the kind of he shouldn’t do.”

Things could get a little trickier when it comes to Ichiro, the clubhouse’s ranking member and himself putting up numbers that could substantiate Hall of Fame worthy.

“I plan on having him take me to dinner at least four or five times a week,” Griffey said. “Being that I shelter’t been in the American League, I figure that there are more new restaurants he can take me to. …

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Used wisely, plastic can be a convenient tool through which you can establish and build up a sound credit chronicle. But while misused, a loan card can ruin your credit make a memorandum of, hobble your personal finances and even sever potential employment opportunities. To gain some insights about the ins and outs of credit cards and how to use them to their best advantage, Bankrate spoke with Ruth Susswein, deputy director of national priorities at Consumer Action, a general nonprofit advocacy and education organization.

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Q: When should a responsible son or daughter get a reliance card?