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U.S. consumers barely increased their spending on retail goods in April. The weak gain was affected by cheaper gas prices and possibly a mild winter, which may have encouraged consumers to make purchases in the previous two months.

The Commerce Department says retail sales rose 0.1 percent April. Retail spending had risen 0.7 percent in March and 1 percent in February.

Some of the drop was the result of lower gas prices business cards design. But excluding gasoline station sales, retail sales rose just 0.2 percent. That means consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of economic activity, got off to a sluggish start for the April-June quarter.

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Oil is now below $100 per barrel following a disappointing U.S. jobs report and warnings of a weakening world economy.

It’s the first time oil has dropped below $100 since February 13. Benchmark crude hit $99.99 in morning trading.

Prices are falling as Western nations plan talks with Iran over its nuclear program, easing fears of a protracted standoff in the Middle East.

Economists are also increasingly focused on weakening oil demand. American oil consumption has dropped 5.3 percent in the first quarter. World oil supplies are also growing.

Oil has crossed the $100 mark 21 times during the past year. It rose as high as $113.93 per barrel last April and fell as low as $75.67 per barrel on Oct. 4.

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Scotland Yard’s communications chief resigned Thursday, the third senior police figure to part with his job over the force’s failure to come to grips with Britain’s phone hacking scandal.

Dick Fedorcio stepped down after the force decided he would face disciplinary proceedings over a contract awarded to a former executive at Rupert Murdoch’s now-defunct News of the World tabloid. The Independent Police Complaints Commission ruled that Fedorcio had to answer questions over the decision to hire Neil Wallis, the former News of the World executive later arrested on suspicion of breaking into voicemails.

The links between senior members of the News of the World and Scotland Yard have come under particularly close scrutiny because both organizations insisted for years that there was no evidence of widespread phone hacking at the tabloid.

Those assurances fell apart after it emerged that journalists at the paper routinely broke into the phones of celebrities and other public figures to score scoops or get leverage. Three parallel police inquiries, a cascade of lawsuits, and a judge-led inquiry have since lifted the lid on a host of illegal practices, from large-scale bribery to computer hacking no fax cash advance.

The scandal’s fallout has shaken Britain’s establishment. The News of the World has been shut, the country’s press watchdog has been scrapped, and dozens of journalists, executives, and public officials have either resigned, been suspended or been arrested over their role in the scandal.

Among them are former Scotland Yard chief Paul Stephenson and ex-Assistant Commissioner John Yates, both of whom resigned in July. Fedorcio’s decision was announced Thursday, but he’d been on extended leave since August.

Politicians also have been drawn into the scandal. Kit Malthouse, London’s deputy mayor for policing and crime, was asked why he had challenged police about the resources they were pouring into the phone hacking investigation.

Malthouse, called before the judge-led inquiry on Thursday, defended his skepticism, saying that the phone hacking investigation is projected to draw in some 200 people by 2013.

“That’s the equivalent of eight murder squads,” he said.

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Stocks were mostly lower Wednesday on Wall Street following a bumpy start to the week.

The Dow Jones industrial average was down 45 points at 13,125 in the first two hours of trading, giving up an earlier gain of 20. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index was down three points to 1,402, and the Nasdaq composite was down less than a point at 3,073.

The declines were broad. Only three of the 10 industry groups in the S&P 500 index rose. Aluminum maker Alcoa led the Dow lower with a decline of 1.2 percent.

Hartford Financial jumped 4.3 percent after the company said it would get out of the annuity business and focus on property and casualty insurance, group benefits and mutual funds. Hedge fund manager John Paulson had urged Hartford to spin off businesses.

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters soared 8.3 percent. The company said it was expanding its partnership with Starbucks to sell Starbucks’ Vue coffee packs for use in Green Mountain’s Keurig single-cup machines. The news relieved investors concerned that Starbucks’ new single-cup Verismo coffee machine might be a competitive threat to Keurig.

FSI International, which makes equipment for producing microelectronics, jumped 10 percent after the company reported that orders skyrocketed in the latest quarter, helping the company beat analysts’ forecasts.

Baker Hughes fell 4 percent after the oil-field services company said its profit margin would fall below last quarter’s as companies shift from crude to natural gas exploration. Baker Hughes is facing shortages of raw materials used in its pressure pumping business, a decline in fleet usage and higher-than-expected personnel and logistics costs.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.32 percent from 2.36 percent late Tuesday. The dollar fell against the euro. Gold and crude oil prices rose slightly.

Stocks closed lower on Tuesday for only the second time in two weeks after two reports suggested an economic slowdown in China. Supercharged economic growth in China over the past three years has helped sustain the global economic recovery. The Dow closed down nearly 69 points, its biggest loss in two weeks.

The Dow is still up 1.6 percent this month and 7.7 percent so far this year. Other indexes are up even more in the year to date: The S&P 500 is up 11.7 percent, the technology-focused Nasdaq composite 18.1 percent.

In a research report Wednesday, Goldman Sachs analysts urged investors to dump bonds and put money into stocks. The report argues that the weak economic growth in the United States and Europe is not universal, and that the 2010s could be the strongest period for world growth between 1980 and 2050.

It also argues that, while Japan’s two decades of economic stagnation in the 1990s and 2000s are a tempting comparison to what the U.S. and Europe face today, Japanese stocks were far more overvalued before Japan entered its decline.

“We think it’s time to say a `long goodbye’ to bonds, and embrace the `long good buy’ for equities as we expect them to embark on an upward trend over the next few years,” the report says.

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U.K. jobless claims rose more than economists forecast in February and a broader measure of unemployment remained at the highest rate in 16 years, underscoring the weakness of the labor market even as the economy shows some signs of recovery.

Unemployment-benefit claims climbed by 7,200 from January to 1.612 million, a 12th straight monthly increase, the Office for National Statistics said today in London. The median forecast of 28 economists in a Bloomberg News Survey was for a gain of 5,000. Unemployment (UKUEILOR) measured by International Labour Organization methods held at 8.4 percent in the three months through January, the highest since 1995.

The data may fuel arguments from opposition politicians that Prime Minister David Cameron is cutting government spending too fast to tackle the deficit and comes after the economy contracted in the fourth quarter. While some indicators signal the economy returned to growth this quarter, consumer confidence remains weak on concern that job cuts may continue.

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After more than 12 hours of talks, the countries that use the euro reached an agreement early Tuesday to hand Greece euro130 billion ($170 billion) in additional bailout loans to save it from a potentially disastrous default next month.

The deal is expected to bring Greece’s debt down to 120.5 percent of gross domestic product by 2020 _ that’s around the maximum that the International Monetary Fund and the eurozone consider sustainable.

The euro surged as the news of a deal broke early Tuesday. The accord should take some pressure off the 17-country currency union that has been battling a serious debt crisis for two years.

Without the deal, Greece was facing a potentially calamitous default next month and possibly being forced from the eurozone. The talks stretched into the early hours of Tuesday as ministers wrangled over how to cut Greece’s debt to a level that it could eventually pay back while not raising their own commitments.

In the end, the country’s private creditors were asked to take substantially more losses on their holdings than previously anticipated, cutting Greece’s debt by an estimated euro107 billion.

“It’s no exaggeration to say that today is a historic day for the Greek economy,” said Greek Premier Lucas Papademos, who rushed to the meeting to lend weight to his country’s pleas for help.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the prime minister of Luxembourg who also chairs the meetings of eurozone finance ministers, said Greece’s private investors _ mostly banks and investment funds _ have been asked to take a face value loss of 53.5 percent on their bonds.

On top of that, Greece’s public creditors _ central banks and the eurozone countries _ also agreed to give Greece a break on its debt.

The eurozone countries will cut the interest that Greece has to pay for its first package of bailout loans to 1.5 percentage points over market rates from between 2 percentage points to 3 percentage points currently, cutting both its debt load and limiting the need for new rescue loans.

At the same time, the European Central Bank and the national central banks in the 17 countries that use the euro will also forego profits on their Greek debt holdings, again reducing the costs for Greece.

EU economic affairs commissioner Olli Rehn says Greece’s new compliance with the terms of a new bailout will be ensured by a separate account containing enough money service its debt for three months.

That close monitoring was demanded by some members of the eurozone who are frustrated that Greece has not always enacted painful reforms and budget cuts on time.

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The Obama administration’s corporate tax reform plan will end “dozens and dozens” of tax breaks, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Tuesday as he defended the White House’s election-year call for higher taxes on the wealthy.

Within days, the administration is set to unveil a blueprint for revamping the corporate tax system aimed at leveling the playing field for all companies, which pay wildly differing levels of taxes, while lowering the top corporate tax rate.

Companies are clamoring for a cut in the top 35 percent corporate tax rate but disagree about how to how eliminate special tax preferences that benefit selected industries.

Geithner spoke before the Senate Finance Committee a day after President Barack Obama unveiled a $3.8 trillion budget-and-tax proposal that called for aggressive government spending to boost the economy and higher taxes on the rich.

“We think they can handle it. We think they can afford it,” Geithner said.

The budget proposal is seen as a campaign document, with few elements expected to win approval this year in a divided U.S. Congress as elections approach in November.

Republicans criticized Obama’s budget, saying it chooses winners and losers and moves away from tax reform.

For example, Obama wants to end a manufacturing tax break for oil and gas companies, but expand it for high-tech companies. “Obviously not everyone is going to be playing by the same set of rules,” Republican Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona said.

Geithner said it was a “fair question.”

He said the Obama plan would “wipe out a very substantial, dozens and dozens of special tax preferences,” in the corporate code, but keep a “very limited” number targeting incentives for “creating and building stuff in the United States.”

Senators from both parties said Obama needs to use the bully pulpit to push major changes to the tax code.

The last time major rewrite of the U.S. tax code came in 1986 under the leadership of Republican President Ronald Reagan.

“The key in 1986 was of course the presidential bully pulpit and that the executive branch every single time out talked about how you had to fit the pieces together,” Democratic Senator Ron Wyden said.

Obama said earlier he was “hopeful” of a deal on extending a 2 percentage point cut in the payroll tax paid by workers, which will expire at the end of the month without a deal between sparring lawmakers.

FISCAL CLIFF

The payroll tax extension is the first among many deadlines approaching in coming months that could hamper the fragile economic recovery.

At the end of the year, individual tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush are set to expire. In addition, $1.2 trillion in automatic budget cuts across all government programs are set to kick in as part of last summer’s deal to raise the debt ceiling.

“A perfect fiscal storm is waiting at the end of the year,” Senator Max Baucus, Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee said.

Geithner agreed that the combination of the deficit reduction measures and higher taxes would hurt the economy.

But he said the administration is proposing to extend the bulk of the tax cuts so that only the wealthiest would be impacted. “The impact of that tax reform would be very, very modest,” he said.

Geithner rejected Republican suggestions that the administration should make drastic cuts to government spending even though the U.S. deficit has soared to $1.3 trillion and the federal debt has topped $15 trillion.

“That would damage economic growth,” Geithner said.

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In a letter to investors included in Facebook’s IPO filing, CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined his philosophy for running what has become a multi-billion-dollar business. At core of that philosophy: Love your hackers.

"We have cultivated a unique culture and management approach that we call the Hacker Way," Zuckerberg wrote in the filing. "There’s a hacker mantra that you’ll hear a lot around Facebook offices: ‘Code wins arguments.’"

It’s a line that captures the spirit of the company’s engineering-driven culture, where all-night coding sessions and "hackathons" are popular.

"The best idea and implementation should always win — not the person who is best at lobbying for an idea or the person who manages the most people," Zuckerberg wrote.

It’s become common for tech entrepreneurs to include these kinds of missives in their IPO filings. The documents are half-warning, half-plea: ‘Hey shareholders, here’s the culture you’re about to buy into. Please don’t break it.’

Groupon’s () quirky founder Andrew Mason opened his company’s filing with a note on his management views: "Life is too short to be a boring company."

In 2004, Google (, Fortune 500) co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin cautioned shareholders that they would manage for the long haul, not the short term, and laid out their now-famous "Don’t be evil" mission.

"We aspire to make Google an institution that makes the world a better place," they wrote.

Zuckerberg struck some of the same notes in his own letter. "We don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services," he wrote.

Zuckerberg’s stake is worth at least $16 billion

But the founder who built Facebook’s prototype from his dorm room at Harvard mainly stuck with the notion that code conquers all.

"Instead of debating for days whether a new idea is possible or what the best way to build something is, hackers would rather just prototype something and see what works," he wrote.

It’s an approach that explains both Facebook’s constant upgrades, and its equally routine privacy kerfuffles. Especially in its early years, Facebook tended to launch new features and then hash through all of their implications after the fact.

It’s an approach that’s literally built into the company’s foundation.

As Zuckerberg put it: ‘We have the words ‘Done is better than perfect’ painted on our walls to remind ourselves to always keep shipping."  

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Cass Informations Systems reported fourth-quarter 2011 net income of $5.5 million, or 53 cents per share, compared with $5.1 milllion, or 48 cents per share, in the corresponding period of 2010.

For the year, Cass–a Bridgeton-based provider of invoice payment and information services–reported record net income of $23 million, or $2.21 per share, compared with $20.3 million, or $1.95 per share, in 2010.

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One year after Egypt knocked global finance off the agenda at the World Economic Forum, Arab officials returning to Davos may struggle to drum up interest in the region.

Across North Africa, where uprisings ended the autocratic rule of three men, economic growth has stalled, stock markets have slumped and Egyptian bond yields are at a record, with the nine-month treasury bill at 15.802 percent. Foreign direct investment in the Middle East and North Africa last year was the lowest since 2005.

Failure to lure investments threatens to hinder the transition to democratic rule and may spark more deadly protests, while energy-rich states, such as Saudi Arabia, may struggle to diversify their economies and cut the world