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Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown has filled one of the several key vacancies in his administration - without leaving City Hall.

Brown tapped Brendan Mehaffy as the executive director of the Buffalo Office of Strategic Planning, one of the city's primary economic development agencies.

Mehaffy is an attorney in Buffalo's law department. With his appointment, effective March 29, he will be paid $82,257 annually.

Mehaffy replaces the embattled Brian Reilly, who resigned late last year. The department had been run on an interim basis by Drew Eszak, a respected planner.

Brown said he hopes Mehaffy's appointment will bring some stability to a Buffalo office that has been something of a revolving door. Last year, Brown recruited Buffalo native Michael Kimelberg to head the department, but Kimelberg - in a surprise move -decided to remain in Seattle.

Mehaffy's appointment comes just weeks after Brown pledged to update Buffalo's antiquated zoning codes and to merge the Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency and Buffalo Economic Renaissance Corp. into a single, one-stop entity.

"This is an exciting time in our city's history with a variety of development projects changing the city's landscape," Mehaffy said.

Mehaffy holds a bachelor's degree in economics from SUNY Binghamton, a master's degree in urban regional planning from the London School of Economics and is a graduate of the University at Buffalo's School of Law.

"His knowledge of land use planning and project development was honed through both his academic and professional experiences," Brown said. "Brendan has been the city's point person on several high profile projects, including negotiations with the county to return the operation and maintenance of city parks back to Buffalo."

The Buffalo Niagara Partnership, who helped Brown with his search, recommended Mehaffy.

Brown still has to fill other high level administrative vacancies including police and fire chief.

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SunPower Corp. hired Jim Pape to run its residential and commercial business group as part of a reorganization of responsibilities at the company.

Howard Wenger, to whom all SunPower’s business units previously reported, is now president of just the utilities and power plants business group.

The San Jose solar power company (NASDAQ: SPWRA) gave both Pape and Wenger greater responsibility for all profits and losses in their business units.

“Our new business groups have full responsibility for the business results for their groups, not just sales, or just construction,” said company spokeswoman Helen Kendrick no fax needed payday loans.

Pape’s position — president of residential and commercial — is a new job at the company. No one else was hired directly as part of the reorganization, Kendrick said, although existing employee teams will be assigned to the new business groups.

Pape worked previously at Trane Commercial Systems.

SunPower, led by CEO Tom Werner, has a large facility in the rehabbed Ford Point factory in Richmond.

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Charter Communications Inc. President and Chief Executive Neil Smit, the highest-paid executive in St. Louis, plans to leave the company to run rival Comcast Corp.

Smit, whose resignation from Charter is effective Feb. 28, will become president of Comcast Cable Communications in Philadelphia, The Wall Street Journal reports.

He will be replaced at Charter on an interim basis by Chief Operating Officer Michael Lovett.

Smit joined St. Louis-based Charter as CEO in 2005 and recently led the company’s financial restructuring through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy fast cash advance.

Smit ascended to the top of the Business Journal’s annual list of St. Louis’ highest-paid executives. With $7.4 million in cash compensation for 2008, Smit unseated Edward Jones Managing Partner James Weddle from the perch he’s held for the past two years. Smit rang up his chart-topping payday despite Charter’s staggering $2.45 billion loss last year and subsequent bankruptcy filing.

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Only 20 percent of Oregonians have earthquake insurance, even though Oregon is among the states at highest risk for a major earthquake, according to a survey by the state Department of Consumer and Business Services.

Standard home owner policies do not cover earthquakes, but optional earthquake coverage is readily available and relatively inexpensive, the department said.

“Consumers may want to think about their ability to rebuild if their house is destroyed in an earthquake,” said Cory Streisinger, director of the Department of Consumer and Business Services. “Insurance should be weighed as part of other earthquake preparations.”

Jan. 25 will mark the 310th anniversary of the last major Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake, magnitude 9.0, centered 75 miles offshore. That temblor damaged the coastline from Northern California to Southern British Columbia, according to the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries.

A 10,000-year geologic record shows these mega-quakes occur every 300 to 600 years, putting Oregon within the window of a major earthquake, said James Roddey, state earth sciences information officer.

Damaging earthquakes have also occurred within the past 16 years in different parts of the state, causing tens of millions of dollars worth of damage.

The Department of Consumer and Business Services Insurance Division last year surveyed 20 insurance companies that account for 80 percent of the home owner insurance premiums in the state.

It found:

• Home owners generally can buy earthquake insurance as an addition to their policy or as a separate policy. The few companies that do not offer earthquake insurance in Oregon typically refer clients to a company that sells stand-alone earthquake policies.
• Earthquake coverage is relatively inexpensive — often less than $300 a year for a $300,000 wood-frame home. Masonry homes are more expensive to insure.
• Owners of older houses may need to bolt their homes to the foundation or make other seismic upgrades before they can buy earthquake insurance.

Earthquake coverage generally features high deductibles. These typically amount to 10 percent or 15 percent of the amount covered by insurance. A home owner with a house insured for $300,000 and a 10 percent deductible would pay $30,000 before the policy would pay. Coverage for contents is separate.

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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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Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez has threatened to expel Japanese carmaker Toyota unless it produces an all-terrain model of 4×4 vehicles used for public transport in poor and rural areas.

The fiery socialist, in a speech late on Wednesday, also said he would not hesitate to expel and expropriate plants from other Asian and U.S. automobile companies operating in Venezuela if they failed to share technology with locals.

"What’s this that Toyota doesn’t want to make the ‘rustic’ model here?" Chavez said, during a ceremony in Caracas to hand owners the keys to economically produced cars that Venezuela’s government has imported from Argentina.

"We must force them. And if they don’t, then they should leave and we’ll bring another company in … The Chinese want to come and they make ‘rustic’ models."

During a decade in power, Chavez has nationalized large swathes of the Venezuela economy — including the oil and power sectors — as part of his "21st century revolution" but has so far left car manufacturing relatively untouched.

He turned on Toyota, the world’s biggest automaker, when a transporter said there was a scarcity of all-terrain models to serve people in under-privileged areas.

Caracas’ poor mainly live in hillside slums, while many rural areas lack decent roads, meaning tough 4×4s are the main means of transport.

Chavez ordered his Trade Minister Eduardo Saman to carry out a "severe inspection" of Toyota, and warned other companies they must start sharing technology with Venezuelans.

"You tell the people at Toyota that they have to produce this model and we are going to impose a quota, and if they don’t meet it, we will punish them," he told Saman, adding that the state would not hesitate to expropriate Toyota’s facilities and pay appropriate compensation.

Car industry in trouble

Following Chavez’s speech, Toyota has asked the Japanese government to verify the true intentions of his remarks as he has not contacted the company on the issue, Toyota’s Tokyo-based spokesman Yuta Kaga said on Friday.

Spokesmen for Toyota’s Venezuelan unit, which operates an assembly plant in the eastern state of Sucre, were not available to comment on Thursday.

But a source at the company said Toyota had stopped assembling the model in question — which he identified as Land Cruiser 70 — in 2007, with the government’s full knowledge.

It planned to import instead, but had not received the necessary licence, he added.

"The government was informed, it can’t be a surprise," the source said, adding that most Toyota managers were on holiday but were communicating with each other about Chavez’s speech.

In addition to Toyota, Japan’s Mitsubishi as well as Hyundai and General Motors have assembly plants in South America’s top oil-exporting nation, whose people are known for their love of cars.

"Companies who come here to set up must be ready to transfer technology to us," Chavez said.

"If they don’t want to, they should go away. I invite them to pick up their things and go," he added, saying companies from allies like China, Russia, Belorussia and Iran were ready to take their place.

Lack of access to dollars at the official exchange rate, and labor disputes, have combined with a recession to hit the automobile industry hard in Venezuela this year.

According to latest figures from the Venezuela Automobile Chamber, car sales in November were down 40 percent at 10,075 units, compared with the same month last year. 

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Critics say a $139 million settlement reached this week between securities regulators and eight big financial institutions is small potatoes.

Don’t be fooled.

I think this settlement is a big enchilada.

It’s not far behind the $205 million paid by five mutual fund managers in 2005 to settle complaints about short-term trading of fund units.

Both cases showed that investors have rights that can’t be trampled upon by large financial firms.

In 2005, fund managers agreed they should treat investors’ money as carefully as if it were their own.

They were failing to protect the interests of long-term investors by letting short-term traders take away some of their profits.

In the current case involving third-party asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP), there were several key principles at stake for investor rights. These principles include the following:

Investment advisers should not sell products they don’t understand.

Two firms were selling ABCP to smaller retail investors.

Cannacord Financial Ltd. will pay $3.1 million and Credential Securities Inc. will pay $200,000 under a deal with the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada. IIROC said the two firms did not do enough homework on the product in order to learn about its complexities and underlying risks.

They relied primarily on the credit rating provided by Dominion Bond Rating Service, an agency whose work was paid for by the issuers of the rated securities.

Interviews with several advisers working for these firms showed they knew nothing about the issuers or the composition and structure of the product, IIROC said.

Some advisers were representing it to their clients as a safe and secure product that was similar to a T-bill, guaranteed investment certificate or a term deposit.

Investment dealers should disclose known risks of products to investors.

Two firms were selling ABCP after learning of its risks from the product issuer.

CIBC World Markets will pay $21.7 million and HSBC Bank Canada will pay $5.9 million under separate deals reached with the Ontario Securities Commission.

They were dealing with an ABCP issuer, Coventree Inc., which had said that its average exposure to U.S. subprime mortgages was 7.4 per cent.

But in late July, Coventree sent an email to all dealers noting that its exposure to subprime mortgages in some conduits was as high as 42 per cent.

Coventree did not put any limits on disclosing information in its email, the OSC said.

But neither firm notified investors of the risks.

"CIBC continued to sell Coventree and certain other third-party ABCP from July 25 to August 3, 2007," the OSC said.

"During that period, CIBC sold $245 million to investors who may not have been aware of those issues."

HSBC sold $172 million in ABCP to clients who didn’t know about the risks that it had been made aware of during the same period.

Short-term credit products can be as risky as stocks.

ABCP was sold under an exemption from securities rules that allowed it to avoid much of the disclosure required for other securities, such as company shares.

The Canadian Securities Administrators has proposed that distributors of asset-backed short-term debt should have to issue a prospectus, similar to stock issuers.

It also wants to reduce reliance on the use of credit ratings in securities legislation.

I think both recommendations should go ahead.

Few investment products are safe and secure any more, even short-term debt.

Meanwhile, buyers aren’t protected in a system in which sellers rely on endorsements from for-profit commercial agencies.

eroseman@thestar.ca

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Uncle Sam is getting picky.

Despite two wars, President Obama’s 30,000 troop surge in Afghanistan and the Army’s goal to swell its ranks by 15,000 this fiscal year, potential recruits are finding that it’s a lot tougher to sign up.

"Military recruiting is through the roof," said Mackenzie Eaglen, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. "In fact, they’re turning people away."

The dismal job market has put the armed forces in an enviable position. Unemployment is at a 26-year high of 10.2%, and the U.S. economy has lost 7.3 million jobs since the start of 2008. This has prompted many Americans to consider the military for work, despite the prospect of armed combat in Afghanistan or Iraq.

"It’s just like any industry, when there’s a glut of employees vying for a certain number of jobs, the employer can be a little bit more choosey," said Army spokesman Wayne Hall, a civilian at the Pentagon. "That’s just the nature of supply and demand."

The Department of Defense said that all branches of the armed services — the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps - met or exceeded recruitment goals in fiscal year 2009, which ended Sept. 30. That’s the first time that’s happened since 1973, when the draft ended and U.S. forces withdrew from Vietnam.

Raising the bar

"We have tightened up our standards," said Army recruiting spokesman Douglas Smith, a civilian at Fort Knox, Ky. "There are types of waivers that we are currently not considering that we have considered in the past."

The Army is no longer giving second chances to recruits who fail the alcohol and drug tests, as it did during the height of the Iraq war several years ago, said Smith, nor is it providing waivers to overweight recruits or high school dropouts. The Army also no longer overlooks criminal infractions for even relatively minor offenses, like excessive parking tickets, he said.

"We’ve had such a dramatic increase in the unemployment rate in the last couple of years, it’s clear that’s had a dramatic effect," said Beth Asch, military recruiting expert for the Rand Corporation, a non-profit think tank based in Santa Monica, Calif payday loans for self employed. "It’s clear that they’re being picky. People who would have been marginal before are not being considered."

A more educated recruit

Applicants in 2009 were of an unusually high academic quality, according to the Army, which recruited 13,337 enlisted men and women with higher education, more than double the 2001 tally.

That included 523 recruits with master’s degrees and 19 with post-doctorate degrees, compared with 2001, when the Army attracted 117 recruits with masters’ degrees and none in the post-doctorate category.

The highly educated recruits probably entered the military as corporals or specialists making less than $22,000 a year, said Smith. Most enlisted personnel can expect to earn $1,568.70 a month by the end of their first year, which means an annual salary of $18,824.40, according to the DOD.

Asch said that workers at the top end of the educational scale are often involved in research, but a dearth in funding is prompting them to find work elsewhere, including the military.

"It’s really breathtaking, to get someone with a doctorate degree," she said. "That’s really unusual."

In it for the long haul

Sgt. 1st Class Marcus Pinkey, an Army recruiter in Carlisle, Penn. since 2002, said that some of the more seasoned recruits have an easier time adjusting to military life, because they’ve already experienced hardship.

"They know that it’s something that they have to do for the survival for their family," he said.

He added that the vetting has gotten tougher, to ensure that recruits are committed to a military life.

"The screening process is a little more stringent, to make sure that people want to stay in for a longer period of time, instead of just waiting for the economy to get better," he said. 

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The Japanese government may delay an economic stimulus package after members of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s coalition said the proposed plan was insufficient.

“It probably won’t come together” today, Mikio Shimoji, head of policy research at the People’s New Party, told reporters in Tokyo. The head of the Social Democratic Party, also a minority coalition member, said the government was still debating the plan.

PNP leader and Financial Services Minister Shizuka Kamei has urged for spending of at least 8 trillion yen ($90 billion). Hatoyama’s Democratic Party of Japan had planned a package of as much as 4 trillion yen, Finance Ministry officials familiar with the matter have said.

Kamei “won’t relent on the 8 trillion yen figure,” Shimoji said, adding “We’ve put negotiations on hold same day payday loans.” He said signs the economic expansion has been weakening mean the government will need to spend more than planned.

“We’re in deflation, so we need something quantitative,” Shimoji said. “We think that unless it’s around 8 trillion yen, the economy won’t respond. They have no choice but to bow down,” he added, referring to the DPJ.

“I think there’s a possibility it won’t happen today,” SDP leader Mizuho Fukushima told reporters at the Prime Minister’s residence in Tokyo.

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