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Seeking to appease deficit hawks, Senate Democrats scaled back unemployment benefits and Medicare physician reimbursement measures on Wednesday.

The revised jobs bill eliminates a $25 weekly supplement for the jobless that had been part of the last year’s stimulus act. Those currently receiving the supplement in their unemployment benefits check will continue to do so until they exhaust their extended benefits, or until the week of Dec. 7, whichever comes first. That cut will reduce the bill’s cost by $5.8 billion over the next decade.

The new version of the bill would also freeze a 21% cut to Medicare physician reimbursement rates only through November, instead of through 2011. This will reduce the bill’s size by $16.4 billion over 10 years.

The legislation, which has been stuck in the Senate for more than a week, originally came in at about $140 billion and would have added about $78.7 billion to the deficit. The revised bill would raise the deficit by $55.1 billion.

Lawmakers are hoping to vote on the bill as early as Thursday. But if Democratic leaders can’t rustle up enough support, the vote could be pushed back to next week.

The Senate’s actions mirror what happened in the House, which twice had to shrink its version of the jobs and tax extenders bill to secure enough votes among members wary of raising the federal deficit even further. Representatives ultimately passed a measure in late May that would increase the deficit by $54.3 billion.

The grab-bag legislation pushes back the deadline to file for federal unemployment benefits until the end of November, renews expired tax provisions, lengthens a small business lending program and adds to infrastructure investments.

It also increases the tax on money paid to managers of hedge funds and investment partnerships to ordinary income levels instead of the much-lower capital gains rate. Under the revised bill introduced Wednesday, investment fund managers would have to treat 75% of this money as ordinary income, beginning in 2011.

The revised bill further hiked a tax on oil that finances the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund to 49 cents, up from the 34 cents in the House version. The current tax is 8 cents. This measures is now projected to raise $18.3 billion over 10 years.

The revised Senate bill retained $24 billion in Medicaid funding to states, a provision the House had to jettison. President Obama and governors pressed lawmakers to keep the money, which many state officials have already included in their fiscal 2011 budgets, which begin July 1.

Senate lawmakers also voted Wednesday to include a measure in the bill that would push back the deadline to close on home purchases and still qualify for a federal tax credit of up to $8,000. Homebuyers would have until September 30, instead of June 30, to complete the transaction. The provision will cost $140 million over 10 years. 

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Stocks plunged around the world Tuesday as fear spread that Europe’s attempt to contain Greece’s debt crisis would fail. The euro fell to its lowest point against the dollar in a year.

The Dow Jones industrial average lost 225 points, its biggest drop in three months. The Dow and broader indexes each fell more than 2 percent. Meanwhile, Treasury prices rose on increased demand for safe investments.

Stocks have seesawed in the past week as European countries’ efforts to agree on a bailout package for Greece proceeded in fits and starts. An agreement finally came together over the weekend, but its ballooning size of $144 billion has investors worried that Europe would have an even tougher time assembling an aid package if a larger country such as Spain or Portugal were to get in trouble. Traders are concerned that problems in Greece and other countries could spill over to the rest of Europe and in turn, the U.S.

The stock drop was a reminder that it doesn’t take much to rattle investors who are on alert for anything that could disrupt the recovery. The avalanche of selling could continue while investors await answers on Greece. But analysts said most drops were likely to be mild because buyers had been using pullbacks as opportunities to buy.

Tuesday’s slump marked the fifth time in six days that the Dow rose or fell by triple digits. The market’s moves are reminiscent of the fearsome swings in the fall of 2008 and early in 2009 when investors panicked over how bad the recession would get.

Scott Fullman, director of derivatives investment strategy for WJB Capital Group in New York, said sudden turns in the market were to be expected as traders wrestled with concerns that stocks were overheated. "The market has kind of gotten itself into a volatile trading range," Fullman said.

Investors are worried that other cash-strapped European governments could also ask for emergency loans while the economy of the entire region is still recovering.

"It’s not as though even the strongest economies of Europe are doing particularly well," Mike Shea, managing partner at Direct Access Partners LLC in New York, said. "Why is a plumber in Germany going to bail out Greece or Portugal?"

Investors rushed to safer holdings such as Treasurys, pushing interest rates sharply lower. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell to 3.61 percent from 3.69 percent late Monday.

The Chicago Board Options Exchange’s Volatility Index, which is known as the market’s fear gauge, soared 18 percent. That is a signal that more investors are betting on big drops in the market.

The euro again fell against the dollar as traders turned away from the currency used by 16 European Union countries including Greece. When investors start doubting a country’s economic strength, they tend to sell its currency.

Anthony Chan, chief economist at J.P. Morgan Private Wealth Management in New York, said that Greece’s troubles weren’t enough to spoil a global rebound but that investors were concerned that this small hole in the world economy would become bigger.

"My suspicion is that this won’t end up being large enough to really cause the kind of problems that the market is obsessed with," he said.

The dollar rose against other major currencies, especially the euro. The euro sank as low as $1.2994 in New York, its weakest point since April 2009. It was worth $1.3212 late Monday and had traded as high as $1.51 last November.

The stronger dollar is a negative for investors because it would cut into profits for U.S. companies with sizable foreign operations. When the dollar is up, overseas profits translate into less money. The rising dollar also makes it more expensive for foreign buyers to purchase commodities like oil. That hurts demand.

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A federal grand jury returned indictments against two Roseville residents, charging them with conspiracy to commit copyright infringement.

The indictment alleges that Nicholas Summerlin and Angelica Parson, both 22, sold illegal copies of Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection 3, Microsoft Office 2007, and Rosetta Stone language software. The software had a combined retail value of $561,430.

Both received a cease-and-desist letter from Rosetta Stone, but they allegedly kept selling their pirated software in 330 transactions in 2008 and 2009.

The Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Unit of the Sacramento U.S. Attorney’s office is prosecuting the pair, said a release from Benjamin Wagner, U.S. Attorney in the California Eastern District, based in Sacramento.

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Comparison shopping site Become.com on Monday named Charu Rudrakshi chief technical officer.

Rudrakshi will oversee the direction and management of Sunnyvale-based Become Inc.’s global technical operations.

The company said he has more than 20 years of experience in building diverse products, from backend servers to Web applications. He was vice president of engineering at Sunnyvale-based Yahoo Inc., and also worked at eBoodle.com, Verity, Yodlee and Clearwell Systems.

Become.com was founded in 2004 by Michael Yang, who was also a founder of comparison shopping engine MySimon in 1998.

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Despite signs that the real estate market might be lurching forward, prices are expected to fall further this year and next.

The average home price in the United States will fall by about 6% by September 2011, according to a joint report between Fiserv and Moody’s Economy.com. And that’s after plunging more than 27% in the past three years.

Most of the projected home price decline will occur during the usually slow summer months of 2010. After that, prices should begin to stabilize, according to Fiserv, and stay almost flat through fall of 2011.

The main reason for continued decline, according to Mark Zandi, economist and co-founder of Economy.com, is foreclosures — the same thing that’s plagued markets for the past three years.

"Foreclosure sales will pick up this spring as mortgage servicers figure out who can qualify for a modification and who can’t," said Zandi.

He figures there are at least 4.5 million mortgage loans either in foreclosure or clearly headed in that direction. When that additional inventory hits the market, it will provide numerous choices for buyers and encourage sellers to drop their listing prices.

The end of two federal programs, which have been propping up markets, will also tamp down prices.

The Federal Reserve has been purchasing mortgage-backed securities since early 2009, scooping up as much as $1.25 trillion worth. That has dampened rate increases by providing a ready market for the securities. But the Fed’s program lapses on March 31, when it cedes the playing field to private investors, who will almost surely demand higher rates.

Any resulting rise in rates will cause some buyers to withdraw from the market and others to look for lower priced homes guaranteed online payday loans. Either way, demand for homes drops and so do prices.

A month after the Fed bows out of the mortgage-buying market, the homebuyer tax credit will start to expire. To qualify for the $8,000 credit, homebuyers must sign a contract before April 30 and close by June 30. When the first date passes, many buyers are expected to vacate the market, weakening the demand for homes.

In a broader sense, home prices are ultimately decided by employment. "If [the job market] improvement is stronger than expected, prices will get better. If it’s weaker than expected, prices will be worse," Zandi said.

Worst of the worst

The worst performing market will be Miami, Fla. Moody’s projects prices there to drop a heart-stopping 29.2% by Sept. 30. That follows a 47.7% decline the metro area recorded in the past three years. Grand total: 64% drop.

Other disastrous performances will be turned in by the Hanford, Calif., metro area, where prices are projected to plummet 27.2% through Sept. 30, 2010 following their 36.9% drop for the previous 36 months. Ft. Lauderdale and West Palm will also register steep drops.

There’s some good price news coming out of California’s Central Valley for a change; prices will begin to emerge from their free fall toward the end of this year.

In Merced, for example, which crashed and burned by 71.8% in the past three years (through last September), they’ll only fall only another 6.2% in the next six months before bouncing back with a rise of 10.1% by Sept. 30, 2011. 

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Senate Democrats are expected to take up President Obama’s call and start rolling out their employment creation package by week’s end.

With the balance of power shifted in the Senate, Democrats have moved away from introducing a comprehensive bill similar to the $154 billion legislation passed by the House in December. Instead, the Democrats will likely push through smaller measures in stages.

"First of all, we do not have a jobs bill," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, on Tuesday. "We have a jobs agenda that we’re working on."

At the top of the list: Renewing existing highway legislation for a year, which is expected to result in one million jobs, Reid said. Also, enacting small business and job creation tax credits. And extending Build America Bonds, a stimulus measure that helps states and municipalities fund capital construction projects.

The president’s fiscal 2011 budget, unveiled Monday, would direct $50 billion to job creation measures, including clean energy initiatives and road projects.

"Infrastructure is where the jobs are, and we need to move in that direction rapidly," Reid said.

Coming next: Enacting the president’s Cash for Caulkers proposal, which would subsidize making homes and buildings more energy efficient, and extending the stimulus grants for surface transportation.

The first job creation bill was unveiled on Wednesday. The measure, promoted by Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, would absolve any private-sector employer who hires a worker who’s been unemployed for at least 60 days of paying the 6.2% share of the employee’s Social Security payroll tax for the rest of 2010.

Also, employers who keep these workers on the payroll continuously for a year would be eligible for a non-refundable $1,000 tax credit on their 2011 tax returns.

"This proposal isn’t about more and more government spending; it’s about tax relief to get employers hiring again," Hatch said.

Democrats’ other measures, however, aren’t likely to get as warm a reception from the GOP. Already, several Republican senators have come out against using TARP bank bailout funds to jumpstart lending to small businesses and raising taxes on the wealthy.

"If you’re in business now and you’re trying to figure out what the future is, you’re looking at health care taxes, you’re looking at capital gains taxes going up, dividend taxes going up," Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. "If you are a small business and pay taxes as an individual taxpayer, your taxes are going up. So, is that a great environment in which to expand employment? I think the answer is no."

Since Obama outlined his job creation push in his State of the Union speech last week, he has traveled up and down the East Coast promoting his small business initiatives. These include jumpstarting small business lending by giving $30 billion in TARP funds to banks and providing these firms with a $5,000 tax credit for each addition to their payrolls.

"Today, one in 10 Americans still can’t find work," Obama said in Nashua, N.H., on Tuesday. "That’s why jobs has to be our number one focus in 2010. And we’re going to start where most new jobs start — with small businesses." 

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In the aftermath of a severe earthquake in Haiti late Tuesday, Twitter is playing a critical role in collecting donations to help disaster victims.

Fundraising efforts by the American Red Cross and rapper Wyclef Jean were two of the top 10 trending topics on Twitter early Wednesday. Both organizations asked Twitter users to text a number to make a donation that would be added to their cell phone bills.

The International Federation of the Red Cross estimated that 3 million people were affected by the 7.0-magnitude quake, the center of which was located near capital city Port-au-Prince.

Twitter lit up with posts from around the globe, including some tweets from Haitians who had no other way to communicate amid the chaos. Donation efforts on the site mobilized quickly amid the first natural disaster to strike since the social media site took off.

At about 6:30 p.m. ET Tuesday, the American Cross tweeted that it was pledging an initial $200,000 to assist those affected.

Shortly after midnight, @RedCross updated: "You can text "HAITI" to 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross relief efforts in #haiti." The "hashtags" denote topics, and users can search the Twitterverse for keywords.

Wyclef Jean, a musician formerly of the popular group The Fugees, used his account @Wyclef to post news updates and quickly raise funds low interest rate personal loans.

Jean, who is from Haiti, founded Yéle Haiti in 2005 to build global awareness for the country, the poorest in the Western Hemisphere. At about 6:30 p.m. ET, he tweeted: "Please text "Yele" to 501501 to donate $5 to YELE HAITI.Your money will help with relief efforts. They need our help..please help if you can."

About an hour later, it seemed the system had been overwhelmed with people looking to give aid. @Wyclef posted a message: "Our 501501 Yele donation system is down. It will be fixed shortly please standby."

As the day progressed, more celebrities tweeted to urge their followers to donate. Actor Rainn Wilson of "The Office" posted on his Twitter account to support the organization Planting Peace, which works primarily with orphanages in Haiti.

"House" star Olivia Wilde tweeted that she will send personalized videos to those who donate $100 or more if they email her their electronic receipts.

To follow CNN’s Twitter feed devoted to breaking news in Haiti, click: http://twitter.com/cnnbrk/haiti  

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I’ve been writing about investing for nearly a quarter of a century. And if I’ve learned one thing after counseling Money readers through three recessions, three stock market crashes, and two derivatives debacles (yes, two: 14 years before the recent flare-up with mortgage-backed securities, derivatives tripped up several government income and money-market funds), it’s this: Savvy investing need not be complicated. Just focus on what’s most important to stay on the path to financial success and filter out all the noise along the way.

To do just that, follow this four-step program:

1. Don’t obsess over the "best" investments.

Cable-TV investing shows may make you feel like a slouch if you’re not constantly searching for hot new investments. But I’ve seen too many Next Big Things turn into the Next Big Letdowns — limited partnerships in the ’80s and, recently, mutual funds that replicate hedge fund strategies, to name two.

In reality, smart investing is more about assembling a group of tried-and-true assets that give you diversification than trying to predict tomorrow’s top gainers. "I’d rather have mediocre funds in the right mix of categories than great funds without an underlying allocation strategy," says Charlottesville, Va., financial planner David Marotta.

The reason is that asset classes, more than individual picks, drive your long-term returns. Creating a well-rounded portfolio isn’t that hard. Marotta figures you need only five or six funds that cover key assets such as large and small U.S. stocks, foreign shares, and bonds — plus maybe another that invests in natural resources, real estate, or other inflation hedges.

2. Think long term, not year to year.

Birthdays and anniversaries are the milestones of our lives. So it’s not surprising that we tend to think in annual terms when gauging our portfolios. Yet it’s dangerous to think of investing as a sprint rather than a marathon.

Why? If you’re seeking the best gains over the next 12 months, you’ll naturally gravitate toward more volatile investments because they’ll give you a better shot at big short-term gains. But your odds of picking those winners year in and year out are extremely slim.

"It’s like someone on a hot streak at the roulette wheel," says York University finance professor Moshe Milevsky. "You know it’s not going to last." What’s more likely to happen is that you’ll end up in investments that go down just as quickly as they went up.

3. Keep a tight rein on costs.

When was the last time you heard someone brag about his razor-thin mutual fund expenses? Probably never. That’s because high returns are a lot sexier than low fees.

Still, you’re better off paying as much attention, if not more, to what your funds charge than to past performance. "The probability of a manager outperforming going forward is small," says Financial Engines chief investment officer Christopher Jones. "But fees are far more predictable." And remember that every dollar you pay in fees reduces the returns you get to keep — and that can add up over the long haul.

To gauge the effect of costs, I used Morningstar’s database to sort all large-cap stock funds with 15-year records into four groups, based on expenses. I then compared each group’s average annualized 15-year returns. Result: The higher a group’s fees, the lower its average return. This mirrors an analysis that Burton Malkiel and Charles Ellis (two heavyweights in the investing world) include in their new book, The Elements of Investing.

4. Keep a tighter rein on yourself.

During my career at Money, I’ve seen stock prices fall more than 20% in a single day (Oct. 19, 1987) and twice drop by roughly half over longer periods (March 2000 to October 2002 and October 2007 to March 2009).

But if those crashes led to similarly steep losses in your portfolio, you can’t blame the market entirely for your misfortune. More often than not, to paraphrase Shakespeare, the fault is not in the markets, but in ourselves. When things are going well we tend to get overconfident and plow more money than we should into risky assets, making us overly vulnerable to downturns. And when a setback inevitably arrives, says Santa Clara University economist Hersh Shefrin, "We bail out and focus so much on safety that we’re not positioned to capture gains when the market turns around, which it typically does very quickly."

Rather than swinging between euphoria in up markets and depression in down ones, you’re better off keeping your emotions — and strategy — on an even keel. Granted, achieving that Zen-like outlook is easier said than done. But the more you can maintain your equanimity and resist Wall Street’s entreaties to fiddle with your investments, the fewer mistakes you’ll make — and the more wealth you’ll end up with in the long run.  

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A group of General Motors of Canada dealers is suing the auto giant for millions in damages for alleged contract breaches and is seeking a court injunction to stop GM from terminating their franchises.

Eleven long-time southern Ontario dealers and one from Prince Edward Island filed a statement of claim in Ontario court on Thursday alleging that GM ended their franchise agreements in a "highhanded, oppressive and patently unfair" manner.

The dealers, including owners of Giles Chevrolet in Stouffville, Robinson Pontiac Buick in Guelph and Robert Slessor Pontiac Buick in Grimsby, say they want a permanent injunction to prohibit GM from ending their agreements and a declaration entitling them to remain open for at least another five years.

The claim says that unless the court rules in favour of an injunction and renewal of the agreements, the dealers "shall be destroyed."

The claim, which must still be proved in the Superior Court of Justice, is also seeking unspecified compensatory damages for loss of profit, goodwill, reputation, market share and business opportunities because of the alleged breaches, plus $1.5 million in punitive damages for each dealer.

Tony La Rocca, GM’s manager of communications, said he had not seen the 24-page claim and therefore could not comment.

The claim follows GM’s announcement in May that the company would close between 240 and 250 dealerships, or more than one-third of its Canadian store network, by the end of October 2010, when franchise agreements expire.

GM is also planning to trim its network by another 50 stores through attrition.

The moves are part of GM’s massive restructuring plan to cut costs and stay alive.

But critics have questioned the amount of savings and the damage to GM, which is still the industry leader here.

The federal and Ontario governments had pressed GM to reduce its dealer network as a cost-cutting measure before a deadline last May 31 so the company could qualify for more than $10.5 billion in loans.

The dealers’ claim says their franchise agreements state GM assured them that when the current deals expire next year they would have the opportunity to enter into new ones for another five years if the company found they fulfilled their obligations.

The claim says GM acknowledged that the 12 dealers, which have up to 54 years of service in their communities and poured millions of dollars into store upgrades in recent years, met all their obligations low fee payday loans.

GM introduced a "wind down agreement" that would pay most closing dealerships anywhere from a few hundred thousand dollars to more than $1.5 million under a formula related to 2008 retail sales.

Dealers who accepted the terms and compensation could not sue GM.

The claim says the wind down agreement is lengthy and complex and took months to prepare, but GM told dealers to accept or reject it within four business days.

"GM deliberately created an atmosphere of fear and oppression and denied the plaintiffs the opportunity to receive fair and meaningful legal advice and financial consultation to permit them to evaluate the purported termination," the claim says.

"It did so for the improper purpose of pressuring them into accepting a proposal which it knew was substantially less than they were entitled to and to engineer a release from its contractual, statutory and equitable obligations."

The claim adds the termination and wind down agreement "expropriates" the customer bases and local markets that the dealers built and provides them with no compensation for the breaches and loss of their livelihoods.

Furthermore, the claim says that even with a renewal option next year, the dealers will suffer irreparable damage to their operations, reputations and market share.

The claim says GM also refused to fill car orders for some dealers who face closure and encouraged customers to take their business to other store owners.

The claim says GM has also refused to provide the affected dealers with compensation for the discontinued Pontiac brand, but the company is doing it for remaining store owners.

The dealers say they also requested management reviews of the termination decisions but GM has dragged out the process without explanation.

More than 200 dealers have accepted the agreements and closed up shop, while GM and Chrysler dealer groups are still pressing lawmakers in the U.S. to pass legislation to reverse more than 2,100 terminations.

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Canadian auto parts maker Magna wants Herbert Demel, the head of its Austrian car development and assembly plant, to become head of Opel, a German magazine said, citing sources.

Carl-Peter Forster, the current head GM Europe, had been touted to become the head of Opel’s operating business with Demel assuming management of the Opel holding company, WirtschaftsWoche said on Sunday.

The magazine said Forster wants to leave the company bad credit payday loans.

Demel presently heads Magna-Steyr Fahrzeugtechnik in Graz, Austria.

Top officials from Magna and Opel said last week they were confident General Motors GM.UL would go through with the sale of Opel to Magna despite being held up by last-minute EU competition concerns.

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