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MetroPCS Communications Inc., a wireless phone company known for its no-contract, prepaid service, posted a 2009 profit of $176.8 million.

The company credits an expansion into northeastern U.S. states and a broadening of its rate plans for its 2009 success.

Richardson-based MetroPCS (NYSE: PCS) posted an annual profit of $176.8 million, or 49 cents per share, on revenue of $3.5 billion in 2009. That is up from the company’s profit of $149 million, or 42 cents per share, on revenue of $2 cash advance america.8 billion in 2008.

For the fourth quarter of 2009, MetroPCS posted a profit of $33.1 million, or 9 cents per share, on revenue of $930 million. That compares to a profit of $14.6 million, or 4 cents per share, on revenue of $723.6 million for the fourth quarter of 2008.

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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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Since cratering at 12-year lows in March, the S&P 500 has staged a powerful rebound as investors turned what could have been an abysmal 2009 into the second best year of the decade for stock returns.

Between war, recession, corporate malfeasance, and the collapse of the housing market, investors have had a tumultuous 10 years. The S&P 500 plunged 23%, seeing its first losing decade in close to a century.

But the decade could have been even worse, if not for the turnaround in 2009.

In the just-completed year, the S&P 500 gained 23.4%, the Dow industrials gained 18.8% and the Nasdaq added 44%. That’s trumped only by 2003, when the S&P 500 gained 26.4%, the Dow added 25.3% and the Nasdaq climbed 50%.

Like 2009, 2003 marked a big turnaround for the stock market as the economy emerged from a recession brought on by the 9/11 attacks and the collapse of the tech bubble.

For 2009, the big recovery has come in the aftermath of the housing market collapse and credit crisis and the worst recession since the Great Depression.

Although 2009 gains are strong historically, gains are even more substantial since stocks bottomed in March at the height of the financial market crisis. Since closing at a 12-year low on March 9, the Dow has gained 59% and the S&P 500 has gained 65%. Since closing at a 6-year low on the same date, the Nasdaq has risen 79%.

All 10 S&P 500 economic sectors managed gains this year, with technology the leader, rising 62% versus a year ago. Materials took second place, rising 47.1% from a year ago. The biggest losers were telecom, up just 3.6% and utilities, up just 8.4%.

Gains this year were driven by several factors, notably the government injection of trillions in fiscal and monetary stimulus into the economy.

A weak dollar also played a big role, boosting commodity prices and shares as well as the stocks of big blue chips that do a lot of business overseas who benefit when the U.S. currency is weaker.

Investor psychology also contributed, as investors went from factoring in another Depression to a recession to an eventual recovery.

But the year ahead is unlikely to see similar gains, either for the major indexes or the individual sectors, as investors look for signs that the slow-growing economy can charge ahead without unusual assistance.

"The biggest question is employment and whether the economy can start creating enough jobs to create a sustainable economic recovery," said Michael Sheldon, chief market strategist at RDM Financial Group business card design.

He said that as this issue works its way through the market, stocks could be vulnerable, particularly if the dollar continues to firm up, as it has through most of December. The other potential catalyst for a selloff later in the year ahead could be rising interest rates, although the Ben Bernanke-led Federal Reserve is unlikely to change its policy stance until the second half of next year.

"I think that prices will drift moderately higher in the year ahead, at least until Ben Bernanke decides to land the helicopter," said Mark Travis, president and CEO at Intrepid Capital Funds. "We could end up as much as 8% higher by this time next year."

Next year also starts what is likely to be a better ten-year period for Wall Street, after a rough decade.

The awful 00s: A tumultuous 10 years brought two recessions, two major wars, one contested presidential election, terrorist attacks in the U.S. and abroad, the credit crisis, the housing market bust and the near collapse of the financial market.

In light of the events that took place, perhaps its unsurprising that the stock market experienced its worst decade in nearly a century. The S&P 500 plunged 23%, seeing its first decade of losses in 90 years. Compare that to the 1990s, when the S&P 500 gained 316%.

The Dow lost 8% this decade after gaining 418% in the 1990s and the Nasdaq, still reeling from the bursting of the tech bubble, is down 44% in the 10-year period. In the 1990s it gained 794%.

For a look at the best and worst stock performers of the decade, click here

The best-performing sector of the decade was energy, up 104%, according to Standard & Poor’s. That’s roughly the same gain it made in the 1990s, but in that decade, nine of the S&P’s 10 sectors added at least 100%, with utilities the lone exception. Utilities gained 37%.

In this decade, only half of the ten sectors gained, with the rest sliding. Telecom and technology were the two worst performers of the decade, notable in that both were stars of the 1990s, in particular tech. Telecom lost 66% in this decade after gaining 223% in the 1990s. Technology lost 57% this decade after gaining 1,148% in the 1990s, the decade it defined. 

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After a 38-day trip through bankruptcy, small business lender CIT Group emerged on Thursday and says it’s ready to charge back into the lending fray. Its next challenge: Rebuilding relationships with customers damaged by the bank’s struggles.

The Melting Pot once counted CIT (CIT, Fortune 500) as one of its preferred lenders. The fondue franchise has 145 restaurants in 37 states, and opened more than a dozen new outposts each year in 2007 and 2008. But as CIT’s troubles deepened, its lending to franchise operators — once a core part of its customer base — came to a near standstill.

None of the seven Melting Pot franchises that opened this year borrowed money from CIT, or any other national bank: "We didn’t do one loan with a major player," said Dan Stone, director of franchise development for Tampa, Fla.-based Melting Pot.

The CIT account representative that worked with Melting Pot has left. "Even if things turn around, we’ve lost that relationship and knowledge of our concept," Stone said. "We have to start over again."

CIT will be starting over with many customers. In 2008, it was the top lender through the Small Business Administration’s flagship financing program, investing $771 million to fund more than 1,200 loans. But this year, as CIT struggled unsuccessfully to avoid bankruptcy, its lending dried up. In the SBA’s 2009 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, CIT funded just 142 loans, totaling $105 million.

Now CIT says it’s ready to reopen its coffers. The bank announced this week that it has $500 million in funding available to make SBA-backed loans this year. To win back potential customers, CIT plans to waive packaging fees for the loans for 90 days starting Monday.

Given that CIT was the No. 1 SBA lender in the U.S. for nine years straight, people should have no qualms about seeking financing from the company now that it’s back in the lending business, said Chris Reilly, president of CIT Small Business Lending.

"We have the infrastructure to lend that much money," she said. "The team and I are pretty confident the demand is out there. Realistically, I think there is going to be a lot of competition for loans."

Financing the retail supply chain

While the SBA-backed loan program took a hit, CIT Group’s factoring business — a type of financing that lets companies borrow against their customer invoices — remained relatively unscathed.

An estimated 2,000 manufacturers rely on CIT’s factoring services to finance the goods they supply to some 300,000 retailers. That cash pipeline kept operating through the past year and was unaffected by CIT’s bankruptcy. But there, too, CIT has some rebuilding to do.

The company pumped $23 Same day payday loans.7 billion through its factoring business in the first nine months of 2009 — down 32% from the same period a year earlier. The weak retail environment reduced demand for CIT’s services, but customers have also expressed wariness about running credit balances with a financially strapped lender. In a recent regulatory filing, CIT said that the uncertainty surrounding its business resulted in a "virtual standstill" in signing new business last quarter.

Meanwhile, existing customers took steps to shield themselves from CIT’s risks. Hooker Furniture, a home furniture manufacturer in Martinsville, Va., changed the terms of its financing agreement with CIT in July, when it heard the company was considering bankruptcy. Hooker now retains ownership of its customer invoices. Hooker also immediately drew down its entire available credit balance with CIT in July, to avoid losing access to the money.

"It’s a better situation for us going forward," said Larry Ryder, Hooker’s executive vice president of finance and administration. But with those new safeguards in place, Hooker is happy to remain a CIT customer, he said.

Many customers, like Hooker, changed their financing terms and drew down their credit lines in recent months, CIT said in its filing. The company held credit balances of $898 million for its factoring clients as of Sept. 30, down from $3 billion nine months earlier.

But analysts think CIT has a fighting chance to get back onto solid ground.

As far as bankruptcies go, CIT’s was relatively short, and the company was savvy in structuring its reorganization plan, particularly in terms of debt, said Brian Charles, an equity analyst with New York-based brokerage firm RW Pressprich & Co.

The company has not only reduced its debt by $10.5 billion, but has pushed out the maturity of its remaining debt to 2013 and beyond, he said, buying CIT time to reinvest in the parts of its business that will be most profitable.

"They can work off of its existing portfolio and realize the cash flow from that without having to worry about debt maturities in the near term," Charles said. "This gives them the ability to put that back into the business."

The money is ready to flow again. Now CIT has to convince borrowers that it’s back in the game.

"We as a company would be willing to work with CIT again," said Dan Stone of Melting Pot. "But I could understand if some franchises were hesitant and, if given the option of going with a local bank that hasn’t had as much difficulty, would do that instead." 

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Here’s a conundrum for yield-seeking investors: What buys and then gets rid of stocks, behaves like a bond fund and is taxed like a stock fund?

Answer: A specialty fund that mimics the returns of a bond portfolio while spinning off capital gains.

Recent new offerings of these bond fund alternatives, both launched in November, include Claymore Advantaged Canadian Bond ETF (CAB/TSX) and Renaissance Corporate Bond Capital Yield. Similar financial engineering is occurring in the fixed-income portions of some balanced funds.

Simply put, here’s how interest is transformed into capital gains: First, the fund buys stocks. Then it sells the stock portfolio in what’s called a forward agreement.

The counterparty, commonly a bank, agrees to pay a future price that’s tied to the returns of a bond index or bond portfolio. This enables interest to be re-characterized as capital gains.

Som Seif, president of Claymore Investments Inc., says the returns of his firm’s exchange-traded fund are not related in any way to the equities that are bought and then sold forward. "The equities are only there for the purpose of providing the tax efficiency," Seif says.

If you’re investing in an RRSP or other registered account, your decision is simple. Avoid these funds, since there’s no advantage to receiving distributions in the form of capital gains. But in a taxable account, you’re better off receiving capital gains, which are not taxed as heavily as interest.

As the Claymore ETF’s prospectus warns, there are risks associated with derivatives. These include the risk that the counterparty in the forward agreement may default on its obligations.

However, such risks are low, since the fund managers generally deal with very creditworthy institutions. The Claymore ETF’s counterparty, for instance, is Toronto-Dominion Bank.

Taxes are always an important consideration when investing in a nonregistered account paydayloans. But the investment in a virtual bond fund must stand on its own merits, the risks should be understood by the investor and the fees should be reasonable.

The pioneer of this genre is Mackenzie Financial Corp.’s Mackenzie Sentinel Managed Return Class, first offered in March 2002. It’s not a pure play on fixed income, since Mackenzie portfolio manager Chris Kresic maintains a 10 per cent weighting in stocks to give the fund a little more growth potential. He sells forward all the rest of his stocks, using the proceeds to obtain bond exposure.

The fund’s performance has generally lagged that of Mackenzie Sentinel Bond, the more conventional fixed-income fund that Kresic runs. Over the past five years, the gap in returns is about 80 basis points (0.8 per cent) on an annualized basis.

Both funds have roughly the same management expense ratio, so MERs don’t explain the performance disparity. What has made a difference is contrasting bond exposures and counterparty costs.

Mackenzie Sentinel Managed Return is mostly exposed to Government of Canada bonds, which are lower-yielding than the corporate bonds that normally make up a substantial portion of the holdings of Mackenzie Sentinel Bond.

Also exerting a drag on the performance of the virtual bond fund are the fees charged by the counterparties to the forward agreements. These fees are reflected in the prices the counterparties are willing to pay for their forward purchases.

Though forward agreements don’t get factored into MERs, their effective cost would typically be in the range of 25 to 50 basis points. Investors take heed: This alone will offset some of the tax advantages of holding a bond fund substitute rather than the real thing.

rudy.luukko@morningstar.com

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Dubai’s debt crisis may not sow lasting global contagion, but it may color a 2010 investment landscape where asset managers will likely differentiate more between risks rather than embracing them indiscriminately.

The global market sell-off after last Wednesday’s Dubai bombshell on delaying debt payments from its state-owned conglomerates lasted only two days. World stocks have bounced back 2.5 percent this week.

For all the ripples this aftershock of the credit crisis will create, the direct material impact of any debt rescheduling on international banks or governments outside the region pales in comparison to an event like last year’s bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, for example.

Of the $26 billion affected by the rescheduling, analysts reckon no more than 50 percent is held by global banks, and individual lenders can absorb that sort of hit. Credit ratings firm Moody’s said on Tuesday it saw no reason to alter international bank ratings due to developments.

But while there’s little rationale for direct contagion, the implications may seep through market psychology for many months to come.

The event was a reminder of the excessive leverage the world is still trying to shed and triggered what many investors, including giant U.S. bond fund Pimco, saw as a much-needed correction to 2009’s surge in risky assets and emerging markets.

While many may see this as a good opportunity to re-enter the market, they will likely be more choosy on their return.

“Fundamentals will become more apparent again. It’s the theme that will carry on in 2010. It’s going to become much more discerning. We do appreciate next year will be turbulent for investors,” said Rekha Sharma, global strategist at JP Morgan Asset Management.

CAVEAT EMPTOR

Growth-sensitive emerging market assets were the main beneficiaries this year of the wholesale shift out of low-risk, low-yielding money market instruments that took place since March of this year.

But the liquidity and growth landscape is set to change next year as Western central banks seek to time their exits from super-cheap money policies flooding the world and as many emerging economies attempt to frustrate speculative flows with a variety of controls, taxes and state intervention.

As a result, country-specific risks are rising in the face of recent capital curbs by the likes of Brazil and Taiwan.

Reflecting these rising idiosyncratic risks, for example, Brazil has moved to the top of Swiss bank UBS’s growth surprise rankings followed by China, Korea and Poland.

“We have, since October, been in a decidedly different phase of the recovery where differentiation increasingly matters. Recent events will only serve to intensify the market’s scrutiny,” Morgan Stanley said in a note to clients.

“If March-September was a beta trade — buy anything and it will go up — now it’s all about picking your spots. The run-on risks have increased as the scrutiny on sovereign balance sheets has intensified.” 

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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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The traditional start of the Christmas shopping season gets underway Friday, known to retailers as Black Friday, since it's the time they hope to be able to move those balance sheets from unprofitable (red) into the black.

Retailers have been battered by the recession, but have seen some signs of hope in recent months. According to the National Retail Federation, retail industry sales, excluding auto, gas and restaurant sales, were down 1.3 percent over October of last year and flat over September.

Prime Outlets in Grove City, about an hour north of Pittsburgh, will be kicking things off not long after shoppers have digested their Thanksgiving dinners. Its Midnight Madness sale starts, predictably, at midnight.

Michele Czerwinksi, senior marketing manager at Grove City, said the weather plays a big role in the turnout to the midnight event, but the crowds are generally in a good mood.

"This year, with the tough economy, people are really looking for values," she said. She arrives in Grove City at 9 p.m. Thursday, and doesn't quit until the following morning.

This year is the fourth time the mall has opened at midnight on Thanksgiving, and Czerwinski said it's become a tradition of sorts for some area families, who shop together.

Other area malls will be opening early, as well. Ross Park Mall, north of the city, opens its doors at 5 a.m., as does South Hills Village, south of the city. Monroeville Mall, to the east, kicks things off at 6 a.m., and the Galleria at Pittsburgh Mills will be open starting at 7 a.m. Friday.

Some consumers have already started their holiday shopping, according to market research firm The NPD Group. Twenty percent of those polled in NPD's annual holiday survey said they started their holiday shopping before Thanksgiving this year.

“This year while Black Friday is still an important business indicator, it is not an obvious one,” Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst with the NPD Group, said in a prepared statement. “There may be some panic when the rush seems lighter than past years, but based on our holiday market research that doesn't necessarily mean less business in the long-run.”

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Retailers heading into the traditional start of holiday shopping are facing consumers who are only a bit less gloomy than they were a year ago as they worry about a weak job market.

The latest snapshot from the Conference Board showed shoppers’ confidence improved only slightly in November, from October, but it’s stuck far below what could be considered healthy and is about half of the historic average.

The private research group said Tuesday that its Consumer Confidence Index edged up to 49.5, up from a revised reading of 48.7 in October. Economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected a reading of 47.7. That compares with a reading of 44 no checking account payday advance.7 in November 2008, a level that sank even lower before enjoying a three-month climb from March through May. But the road has been bumpier since June as rising unemployment has taken a toll on consumers.

A reading above 90 means the economy is on solid footing. Above 100 signals strong growth.

How consumers behave during the holidays and beyond will be key to how strongly the economy rebounds from the worst recession since the 1930s.

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Financially troubled San Francisco streaming music service imeem Inc. has been acquired by MySpace, according to numerous reports.

CNET News quoted sources valuing the deal at $8 million, with a $1 million payment in cash together with earn outs and accounts receivable. The company had raised more than $30 million in venture funding, according to CNET.

At least half of the company's 55 employees will lose their jobs as as a result of the acquisition, sources told CNET cashadvance. MySpace is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

Imeem is the fourth ad-supported streaming music site to go bust or sell for peanuts, CNET said.

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