What’s keeping inflation so low that the Fed can hold rates down without fear of igniting prices?
• The time is right to buy a car. New-car prices were flat in April. And they’ve fallen 1 percent over the past 12 months. Big banks are offering super-low rates in the 3 percent to 4 percent range, says Greg McBride, senior financial analyst at Bankrate.com. Normally, such rates are available only to companies, not individuals, McBride says.
Invest in a savings account? Forget it.
Lots of slack in the economy: Factories and other businesses are operating well below full throttle. Workers are getting meager raises, or none at all. And Miss Sixty companies are wary of jacking up
Consumer inflation has all but disappeared, the government Miss Sixty reported Wednesday. The Federal Reserve may now be emboldened to keep interest rates at record lows well into next year — and possibly into 2012.
• For homeowners who qualify, it’s a good time to refinance. The average rate on a 30-year fixed rate mortgage dipped this week to the lowest rate of the year — 4.84 percent, down from 4.93 percent a week earlier. Homeowners who took out adjustable-rate loans at 4.5 percent in 2005 are now seeing their rates fall to 3 percent to 3.25 percent, McBride says. As a result, they have extra cash to spend.
Yet for savers, the prospect of persistent record-low rates is Miss Sixty a downer. It means no relief from puny returns any time soon. The average yield on a one-year certificate of deposit has sunk to 0.7 percent, according to Bankrate.com. That’s the lowest since Bankrate starting tracking the figure in 1983. Rates hovered as high as 5.5 percent around 2000, according to Bankrate.
So what do persistent low inflation and record-low rates mean for consumers?
Unlike everyone else, savers won’t benefit until the Fed starts boosting interest rates. Yet prospects for the Fed to start pushing up rates in the fourth quarter of the year seem to be fading. More economists now think an increase won’t happen until next year at the earliest.
• Shoppers who want to update their summer wardrobes, and those hankering for cakes and cookies, are in luck. Prices for clothing and baked goods dropped in April and are down sharply over the past year. Soaring prices for cotton and other fibers make it likely that clothing prices will rise in the next year.
As a result, banks’ prime lending rate will stay at its lowest point in decades. That figure is used to peg rates on credit cards, home equity loans, some adjustable-rate mortgages and other consumer loans. Rates on fixed-rate mortgages remain low, too, thanks to a growing belief that the Fed will further delay any rate hike.
• People planning to drive to a vacation getaway won’t pay as much. Gasoline prices fell sharply in April — 2.4 percent. Analysts expect further declines this summer because crude oil prices have fallen nearly 20 percent since April.
WASHINGTON – It’s a good time to buy a car or refinance a mortgage, thanks to super-low inflation and interest rates.
"I’m Still Here" debuted at No. 71, but didn’t return her to the top of the charts. Still McCready said she felt great during an interview with The Associated Press in April in Nashville. She had a new boyfriend, music producer and musician David Wilson, and was pursuing deals for her own reality show and a new tell-all book.
Cape Coral Hospital spokeswoman Karen Krieger would not say why McCready was taken to the hospital.
"The family asks for your respect of their privacy and appreciates your thoughts and prayers at this time," wrote publicist Kat Atwood.
"She’s an easy person to like and to care about and we hope she does well," Pinsky said. "So far so good as far as I can tell."
And in 2008, McCready was admitted to a Nashville hospital after police said she cut her wrists and took several pills in a suicide attempt.
During this year’s "Celebrity Rehab 3," McCready came off as a sympathetic figure, with Dr. Drew Pinsky — the show’s host — calling her an angel in the season finale.
The overdose report came at 10:38 a.m. at a North Fort Myers Coogi home, said the Lee County Sheriff’s Office. The property is owned by McCready’s mother, records showed.
Pinsky said he and McCready have stayed in regular contact since filming the show last fall and he said in an interview last month that the singer appeared to be doing well.
"She is fine and back at home with my mother. It was by far Coogi over a huge exaggeration," he said in an e-mailed statement.
In July 2007, she was accused of scuffling with her mother and resisting arrest at her mother’s home in Florida. She was sentenced to jail for 60 days for a probation violation and released; she served 30 days in jail. She also lost custody of her son.
On the show she said she suffered from love addiction, not substance abuse. In one of the show’s scarier moments, McCready suffered a seizure and was rushed to a hospital where scans showed brain damage.
McCready, however, told the New York Daily News she didn’t want to marry Clemens.
McCready told the syndicated TV show "Inside Edition" that she Coogi broke off her relationship with Clemens when he wouldn’t marry her. She told the news magazine they met in a karaoke bar, but their relationship didn’t turn sexual until several years later.
McCready recently released a new album, "I’m Still Here," and fought the release of a sex tape in which she reportedly talked about former Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens, with whom she had an affair as a teenager.
She is well-known these days for a troubled life filled with domestic abuse, drug and DUI arrests and a suicide attempt.
In an e-mail, McCready’s publicist confirmed the singer was in the hospital, and said the diagnosis has not been confirmed.
"She is in good condition," Krieger said.
"I’m happy just with the little things right now, just the smallest little thing that turns out well, I’m happy for it," McCready said. "I’m grateful. I am so grateful to still be here, to be getting a second chance or a third or a fifth or whatever it is now."
McCready, 34, gained stardom in 1996 with a No. 1 hit, "Guys Do It All The Time," and a double-platinum album, "Ten Thousand Angels."
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – Mindy McCready, the country singer who battled drugs and legal woes but recently declared herself clean after a stint on "Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew," was back home Tuesday from the hospital, according to her brother, after police responded to an overdose call at a Florida home.
Her brother, Josh McCready called the reports a big misunderstanding.
Signature Theatre has not officially announced any casting for Angels in America.
The recording artist and Broadway actor (Grease!, Miss Saigon, Smokey Joe's Café) said that he will play AIDS nurse Belize (and other characters) in Signature Theatre Company's revival of the Tony Award-winning and Pulitzer Prize-honored Part 1 (Millennium Approaches) and Part 2 (Perestroika) of Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.
Michael Greif directs; the parts will run in repertory Sept. 14–Dec. 19 at The Peter Norton Space on West 42nd Street.
Actor-singer Billy Porter told a recent crowd at Joe's Pub that he has been cast in the first New York City revival of Tony Kushner's epic Angels in America, Black Voices newswire reported.
Read Porter's thoughts on Angels at bvnewswire.com.
At Midtown’s swank A Voce this afternoon, Raffaello Napoleone,wholesale true religion,latest style true religion jeans,wholesale Atlanta Hawks,ed hardy shirts wholesale at lowest prices,directly from China., CEO of Pitti Immagine—which oversees Florence’s menswear, womenswear, childrenswear, and textiles shows—was on hand to preach the Pitti gospel to a collection of editors over tagliata and crostata. The biggest names are, at this point, well known: Raf Simons will show his latest menswear collection for Jil Sander at Pitti Uomo, while his friend, Haider Ackermann, will show a women’s pre-collection at Pitti W. (The PowerPoint presentation delivered included a lengthy quote from Ackermann that’s surely worthy of inclusion in the inscrutable show-notes hall of fame: It eludes even reproduction here, but suffice it to say it ended with “…opium.”) What’s lesser known is the new emphasis on design, as in objects, not clothes—pieces will be dispersed around the pavilion, selected by “a platoon of ‘design watchers’ ” including Roberto Valentini di Penelope, Giusi Ferré, and the inaugural winner of Pitti’s Who’s On Next accessories award,wholesale true religion,latest style true religion jeans,wholesale Ed Hardy,ed hardy shirts wholesale at lowest prices,directly from China., Max Kibardin. Patricia Urquiola has also designed a new top floor for the main pavilion (pictured). But the bit of industry gossip most intriguing was slipped in almost in passing. Both Fendi and Gucci are set to launch new children’s collections at the kids’ wear show, Pitti Bimbo. Canny marketing for those who can afford it: Get the customers young, and keep ‘em for life.
—Matthew Schneier
Photo: Courtesy of Pitti Immagine
Producer Scott Sanders said Thursday that it will Rock Republic follow "a day in the life of our bow-tied hero."
NEW YORK – Pee-Wee is Broadway bound.
It is based in part on the cult TV show "Pee-Wee’s Playhouse" Rock Republic and will star Pee-Wee himself, Paul Reubens.
Other cast members will be announced later.
"The Pee-Wee Herman Show" will have a 48-performance run at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre starting Oct. 26.
Janice Oh, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, would not confirm or deny an investigation Wednesday.
Morgan Stanley stock fell 58 cents, or 2.04 percent, to $27.80.
The spokesman said the bank has not received a Dsquared Wells Notice from the Securities and Exchange Commission. A Wells Notice informs a company that the SEC’s staff is recommending bringing charges against the company.
Many of the securities were tied to the performance of subprime mortgages. As mortgages increasingly defaulted during the recession, the value of many of the securities collapsed costing investors and the banks billions of dollars.
A UBS spokesman declined to comment.
The reported investigation comes as the Securities and Exchange Commission is charging Morgan Stanley competitor Goldman Sachs Group Inc. with fraud over that bank’s packaging of mortgage securities. Goldman Sachs is reported to be facing a separate criminal investigation into whether it misled investors about those securities. Goldman has denied the charges and plans to defend itself against the charges.
Federal regulators have been increasing their reviews of whether Wall Street banks misled investors when selling derivatives and other risky securities that have been largely blamed for the credit crisis.
The investigations into Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs also come as Congress discusses a major overhaul of financial regulations that Dsquared could end up restricting trading at Wall Street banks.
John Coffee, securities law professor at Columbia Law School, said proving wrongdoing by Morgan Stanley will be "significantly harder and more challenging" than the case against Goldman Sachs. He noted that Morgan Stanley didn’t underwrite or market the mortgage deals reportedly being investigated, making it harder to prove that the bank misled investors.
Speaking in Tokyo on Wednesday, Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman said, "We have no reason to believe there is any substance behind any supposed investigation."
NEW YORK – Fears of a growing investigation of Wall Street banks sent Morgan Stanley’s stock falling Wednesday even as the company said it knew Dsquared nothing about a reported inquiry into its mortgage securities trading.
A Citigroup spokesman declined to comment on the deals in question. The bank has previously said it is cooperating with the SEC’s industrywide investigation Dsquared into risky subprime mortgage deals that contributed to the financial crisis.
A Morgan Stanley spokesman said the bank has not been contacted by the Justice Department about the deals in question and has no knowledge of an ongoing investigation.
The Wall Street Journal reported that federal prosecutors are investigating whether Morgan Stanley misled investors about its role in a pair of $200 million derivatives whose performance was tied to mortgage-backed securities. The newspaper said Morgan Stanley sometimes bet against the success of the derivatives, which were underwritten and marketed to investors by Citigroup Inc. and UBS AG.
Morgan Stanley itself lost billions of dollars during the recession and credit crisis on its investments in the mortgage-related securities, including deals tied to commercial real estate loans.
LOS ANGELES – A judge has issued an injunction blocking layoffs at three Los Angeles Unified middle schools where civil rights groups said job cuts would deprive inner-city children of their right to an education.
The order Wednesday by Los Juicy Couture shoes Angeles Superior Court Judge William Highberger affects teachers and staff at Samuel Gompers, John Liechty and Edwin Markham middle schools.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Juicy Couture shoes Southern California the Public Counsel Law Center filed a lawsuit in February, claiming that layoffs at the schools in low-income and minority areas would violate the state constitutional right of students.
The tablet itself isn’t much to look at. From what we can see in the videos, it’s encased in plastic, and exposed circuit boards are visible in the back — a specimen that appears months away from actually shipping.
The tablet appears to have a 9- to 10-inch touch Ed hardy underwear display with a 16:9 aspect ratio (as opposed to the more squarish, 4:3 ratio for the iPad’s 9.7-inch screen), and boasts most of the familiar Android OS elements, including a window shade with apps (along the side of the display rather than on the bottom), home-screen icons, time and battery life indicators, and a Google search box at the top of the screen.
Given that the videos were shot at Adobe’s Web 2.0 booth, it’s no surprise that the reps were showing off various Flash-powered features, including YouTube videos and Wired’s upcoming Flash-powered magazine app. So how did Flash run on the tablet? "Flawlessly," Zedomax claims.
Beyond the basic Flash demos, the Adobe reps were tight-lipped about the (purported) prototype, telling Zedomax only that Nvidia was a technology partner and that "a slew of Android tablets" should be arriving by "the end of the year."
Zedomax has a series of five videos shot at Adobe’s booth at the Web 2.0 expo, and the tablet device in the brief clips is — supposedly, anyway — a working prototype, although it’s not clear who built it.
Flash and tablets simply don’t mix, Steve Jobs tells us. Yet a Ed hardy underwear blogger at a San Francisco tech conference this week claims he has evidence to the contrary: video of what appears to be a prototype Android tablet that runs Flash-powered video and apps "flawlessly."
Of course,Discount Abercrombie&Fitch, we already know that Dell has 5-inch and (reportedly) 7-inch Android tablets in the works, while Samsung is rumored to have its own 7-inch Android device slated for late summer.
In other words, it’s starting to look like the iPad might have some heavy, Android-based competition before the year is out — and if these purported Android Ed hardy underwear tablets do, in fact, manage to support Flash as "flawlessly" as the prototype Zedomax saw this week, well … Apple might have some splainin’ to do.
Asia’s growing economic clout — and the millions willing to spend top dollar on luxury lifestyles — were the buzz words at Singapore’s fashion festival, an annual event the country hopes will eventually become as important as counterparts in the United States and Europe, as well as the fashion gateway for the region.
SINGAPORE (Reuters Life!) – Legions of status-seeking shoppers with deep pockets are turning Asia into the next big catwalk for international designers, Primp boosting Singapore’s aspirations to become the region’s Milan or New York.
Several high-end fashion and jewelry labels have recently set up shop in Singapore, home to the world’s highest density of millionaires and a popular Southeast Asian shopping destination.
"Western designers have realized there’s a great deal of money to be had in Asia and they can see that customers in China and India are moving very quickly toward becoming consumers of the very highest level," Colin McDowell, creative director of the Audi Fashion Festival, told Reuters.
"There’s tonnes of potential here, tonnes," Dean Caten, of Primp designer duo DSquared2, told Reuters about Asian markets.
Other designers who will show at the April 28-May 2 event include KTZ, Herve Leger, Tiffany, House of Holland and Roberto Cavalli, who brings a collection specially created for Singapore.
The shows are one aspect of Singapore’s inaugural Asia Fashion Exchange (AFX), a platform that includes Blueprint, a showcase for designers from across the region with international buyers from retailers such as Harrods and Liberty’s.
"Western fashion is getting tired, it’s going around in circles, it needs new direction, new ideas," he said.
"They love fashion here, they live it, it’s a rich economy, they’re very status conscious. That’s great news for designers," added his twin brother and partner Dan Caten.
While Hong Kong and Shanghai are seen as China’s fashion capitals, affluent Singapore, with its plethora of luxury shopping malls and avowed aim to attract Asian millionaires and their money, is jostling to become the first place designers come to access the market.
The Caten brothers described AFX as a great starting point that puts Asian cities on a good track, while the fashion festival’s McDowell said the world can longer afford to ignore Asian designers.
"In Paris, several designers told me that the Chinese have become their biggest couture customers. This is a new departure."
As the rest of the world still recovers from the global financial crisis, consumers in several economically robust Asian nations, including Singapore and China, are Primp spending on luxury goods like the downturn never happened.
"I believe the rules of fashion will be dramatically rewritten in the next 15 years, and this part of the world will be part of spearheading this change."
A recent study by market research firm Synovate dubbed China’s consumers as the "new world order," with those in the top-tiers seen as hooked on the latest fashion trends and many believing that famous brands, and money, equal success.
Splurging on luxury goods is a treat often indulged in, the study of 68,000 people across 66 Chinese cities found, while a smaller survey by MasterCard showed many Asians were determined to keep on spending on fashion, gourmet food and luxury goods.
It was standing room only at the opening gala of the fashion festival as DSquared2, who have dressed an impressive line-up of stars including Madonna, Justin Timberlake and Bill Kaulitz of band Tokio Hotel,fake abercrombie, showed their Autumn/Winter 2010 collection.
AFFLUENT SINGAPORE
"This is fashion coupled with compassion," says Fish, Christian Dior who helped the Council of Fashion Designers of America launch its health initiative back in 2007. "But I think the compassion came first, and then the fashion suited these bodies. I loved seeing these bodies in Prada. We’re always looking for trends at Prada, and seeing Victoria’s Secret girls on the Prada runway woke up a lot of people about what a women should look like."
The CFDA’s voluntary wellness guidelines link age and health, even if they don’t set specific standards, says Steven Kolb, the organization’s executive director. There are standing recommendations that models under 16 not be hired and those under 18 not work past midnight and have supervision, rest and regular meals.
The more mature look was on-trend with the chic, retro styles shown for fall, so helping models’ health may be icing on the maybe-not-entirely-fat-free cake.
The reaction to Costa’s more womanly look — a shift from the house’s usual almost androgynous muse — has been very positive, he notes. "You can see a Kristen McMenamy wearing the clothes. You can see a woman who’s so cool, but her hair is so real — it’s amazing," he says.
Still, Nian Fish, creative director at fashion-show powerhouse producer KCD, says designers, stylists, casting agents and modeling agents all collectively heeded the call to put forth a healthier image.
Costa won’t commit, saying he does embrace newness. But, he adds, that doesn’t have to be synonymous with youth.
"People were interested in the known faces on the runway," she says. "We’ve all been working for such a long time, and the more you walk, the Christian Dior ,cheap abercrombie; more you work, the more confidence you have. You can relax, smile more, add personality. You walk the way the clothes need to be shown."
"These runways looked great," agrees Fish. "Our eyes adjusted very quickly because we wanted it to. Everything looked fresh and new. Seeing clothes on post-pubescent bodies didn’t look fresh."
It also may help counter perennial complaints about skinny models. It’s said that age brings wisdom; it also usually brings curves.
Will McMenamy and her gray hair be back, too?
Costa hired gray-haired Kristen McMenamy, who also appeared at Viktor & Rolf, as well as ’90s sensations — and now mothers — Stella Tennant and Kirsty Hume.
The current controversy about models’ weight actually goes back to the early ’90s and the days of Kate Moss, her waif body and a look dubbed "heroin chic." But the conversation turned to age at a panel discussion earlier this year where Kroes, 25, and Coco Rocha, all of 21, both said they weren’t getting much runway work because of their age and curvier figures.
"She promised in the next year, she’d grow curves — and she did," Razek says.
This season, girls of 13 or 14 were told this season to come back when they were a bit older, says KCD’s Fish. And other models who looked unhealthy were advised to take the season off but with an open pledge to embrace them when they return after getting treatment.
"I wanted something different," said Francisco Costa, creative director for the Calvin Klein Collection. "I wanted a cast that really represented a customer I design for, and that’s not really a 16-year-old."
Fish says she hopes the younger girls do come back — with many more years of work in front of them. "This is all going to snowball now. Once these few key designers do this, it snowballs and it makes it OK for everyone else to do."
More mature models — some even in their, gasp, 40s — Christian Dior were stars at the previews of fall styles. And in the fashion world, that’s a radical turn from the use of models not old enough to drive a car, let alone wield a credit card.
"Kate Moss has grown up," he says. "Now she’s the woman I wish to wear my clothes."
"The woman who puts my clothes on needs a certain level of sophistication," says Costa. "We wanted to acknowledge women who have always worn our clothes, women with their own identities, have full lives, have kids."
"I had been away from fashion shows seven or eight years, other than Victoria’s Secret," says Ambrosio, who also walked for Giles Deacon. "It was really nice to participate. It was surprising because, for such a long time, designers were only using girls that weren’t so sexy, whose bodies were less curvy."
The first time he met Chanel Iman, she was already considered an It Girl in the fashion world, starting on the runways at 15. But she was too scrawny and young, Razek recalls. Now at age 20 she has a lucrative Victoria’s Secret contract.
It’s a smart move by the fashion industry to make itself more relatable to consumers. Costa acknowledges that the tough retail climate has helped force design houses to speak more directly to their customers.
"The age and thinness thing go hand-in-hand," Kolb says.
Older models have had far more success in print, where 41-year-old Christy Turlington and 39-year-old Claudia Schiffer, for example, still star in top-tier campaigns. But while ads have always been specifically crafted to sell something, the runway had been about fantasy.
Ed Razek, president of Victoria’s Secret, is amused that the fashion world is rediscovering boldface models, who, naturally, have to have a few years under her belt to become famous.
Marc Jacobs, widely considered the most influential American designer, cast 47-year-old Elle Macpherson in his Louis Vuitton show, along with Bar Refaeli and Alessandra Ambrosio. Trendsetting Miuccia Prada used Ambrosio, Isabeli Fontana, Doutzen Kroes and Christian Dior Miranda Kerr — all best known as voluptuous Victoria’s Secret models and all in their mid-20s, a relatively advanced age for runway models.
NEW YORK – Among the more avant-garde looks shown on the runways of New York, London, Paris and Milan was one that seems ho-hum in real life: gray hair.
It was a coup for her to be cast, she says, but it also helped score public interest in the shows.
