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PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- After some disappointments among Nike's prospects, the company is looking to men's basketball for one of those big medal moments companies crave from the Olympics.

Basketball is the top sport in China and other developing markets where Nike hopes to win over consumers. With the U.S. men's team's advancement to the semifinals in Beijing after a 116-85 victory over Australia Wednesday, the time may be right for the swoosh.

Nike says its sees this year's games -- which drew the company's largest Olympics investment ever -- as a success. It created a new product for every sport and outfitted 22 of the 28 federations.

In U.s men's basketball, Nike outfits 11 of the 12 players, including NBA superstar Kobe Bryant, who has spent several summers in China building relationships and is mobbed wherever he goes. His is the top-selling jersey in China.

Bryant just had his best game of the Olympics, scoring 25 points against Australia. But Nike has seen better games for big wins.

Some of its top athletes, most notably Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang, faced unexpected disappointments. And Nike lost the spotlight to competitors such as Speedo, which endorses Michael Phelps and created the famed LZR Racer suit, and Puma, which outfitted Jamaica's Usain Bolt, who swept the 100- and 200-meter sprints.

"We are about sticking by athletes through thick and thin, through injury and poor performances," said

NEW YORK (AP) -- With oil prices seesawing, the dollar bounced back against the euro and the pound Wednesday after a two-day drop.

The 15-nation euro slipped to $1.4741 in late New York trading from $1.4768 Tuesday, while the British pound fell to $1.8615 from $1.8660.

The U.S. Energy Department said Wednesday a big gain in imports drove crude inventories up by a hefty 9.4 million barrels in the week ended Aug. 15, a figure much higher than analysts expected.

Light, sweet crude for September delivery rose near $115 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Earlier in the session, it climbed as high as $117.03 before the inventory data was released, then fell as low as $112.61, only to rebound again.

Investing in oil futures has been a hedge against a sliding dollar, but oil's weekslong drop has helped support the dollar. The prices of the two have tended to move in opposite directions.

Meanwhile, shares of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continued to sink Wednesday on worries that the government-chartered companies will need a bailout from the Treasury Department, a move that could wipe out shareholders' equity.

The dollar dropped earlier in the week as crude futures surged, the financial sector worried Wall Street and the U.S. government said wholesale prices jumped higher in July.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Investors are betting that time is running out for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Shares of the mortgage finance companies lost more than a fifth of their value on Wednesday as fears mounted that the companies will soon need government support and any bailout would hang stockholders out to dry.

Since Monday, stock in the two companies -- which together hold or guarantee half the U.S. mortgage debt -- have plunged nearly 40 percent and are now trading at lows not seen in nearly two decades.

"There's a big negative feedback loop and there's no way out of it," Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co. analyst Paul Miller said in an interview. "As the stock falls more and more, it's more likely the government steps in and more likely equity holders get wiped out."

Fannie Mae's chief executive sought to reassure investors that no bailout is imminent.

"They haven't offered anything and we haven't asked for anything," Fannie Mae CEO Daniel Mudd said in a public radio interview Wednesday morning. "I don't anticipate that they will do that."

Mudd said the company's financial position "remains very strong," and that he intends to remain the CEO.

Executives with McLean, Va.-based Freddie Mac met with Treasury department officials on Wednesday morning, according to two sources familiar with the meeting who were not authorized to discuss its

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Hewlett-Packard Co.'s fiscal third-quarter profit jumped 14 percent, beating Wall Street's expectations, as strong laptop sales and a robust international presence lifted the technology bellwether.

The Palo Alto-based company's results, reported after the market closed Tuesday, signaled that HP is still holding its ground as the world's No. 1 seller of personal computers even with stronger competition from Dell Inc. and Apple Inc. and aggressive price cuts.

HP said it earned $2.03 billion, or 80 cents per share, in the latest period, up from $1.78 billion, or 66 cents per share, a year earlier.

Excluding one-time charges, HP's profit was 86 cents per share, three cents higher than the average estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.

Investors have become accustomed to HP offering conservative guidance and topping those forecasts by a few pennies per share, so HP's strong results for the May-July period and a fourth-quarter outlook that was slightly better than analysts expected weren't much of a surprise.

Still, HP's optimism about its prospects despite a tough economic environment in the U.S. and parts of Europe helped lift the stock.

HP shares rose $1.25, or 2.9 percent, to $44.94 in after-hours trading after the results were reported

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Whether or not the government is actually on the verge of taking over mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, investor fears that a bailout is imminent could turn such a worst-case scenario into reality.

Amid renewed concern that shareholders will wind up with nothing if the government intervenes to bail out the troubled companies, shares in the mortgage finance giants tumbled Monday to the lowest levels in nearly two decades.

Fannie Mae's stock slid more than 22 percent, or $1.76, to $6.15 on Monday, while shares of Freddie Mac fell 25 percent, or $1.46, to $4.39.

"Some of these things become self-fulfilling prophecies because market confidence is so fragile," said Karen Shaw Petrou, managing partner of consulting firm Federal Financial Analytics in Washington.

However, a more likely scenario, analysts say, would stop short of nationalizing the two companies and would take the form of emergency loans to Fannie and Freddie from the Federal Reserve or Treasury Department.

The Treasury Department late last month gained the authority to boost Fannie and Freddie through an investment or a loan should the companies need their finances propped up due to soaring losses from bad mortgages.

The new government power, enacted by Congress after the companies shares plunged to levels not seen

The typical American retires at age 63. Those fortunate few who have traditional pensions, retiree health insurance, and a fully loaded 401(k) will probably be fine. But if you haven't saved enough to fund 30 years of retirement--and most baby boomers aren't even close--the obvious solution is working longer. (The other possible solution is to reduce your standard of living). But how much longer will boomers need to work to finance a secure retirement?

"For those workers who can work, the way to a secure retirement is to keep working until 66," says Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College and coauthor of Working Longer: The Solution to the Retirement Income Challenge. Social Security currently replaces 39 percent of preretirement income for the average earner retiring at age 65 after the Medicare Part B premium is automatically deducted. But those who retire at the same age in 2030 can expect Social Security to replace only 30 percent of earnings, according to Munnell's calculations. "Retirees in 2030 will have to work two to four years longer to maintain today's level of replacement income," she says.

It turns out that Munnell's estimate is a conservative one. Marc Freedman, founder and CEO of the think tank Civic Ventures and author of the book Encore: Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life, says that boomers should try to work until at least age 70. The share of households prepared for retirement would nearly double from 31 to 60 percent if early boomers currently between the ages of 54 and 63 delayed retirement from age 65 to 70, according to a McKinsey & Co. analysis. And Tamara Erickson, author of Retire Retirement: Career Strategies for the Boomer Generation, says baby boomers

NEW YORK (AP) -- J.C. Penney Co. reported a 36 percent drop in second-quarter profits Friday and issued a downbeat outlook for the current quarter as shoppers cut back on clothing spending in a tough economy.

The Plano, Texas-based department store chain said it earned $117 million, or 52 cents per share, in the three-month period ended Aug. 2, compared with $182 million, or 81 cents per share, a year earlier.

Total net sales fell 2.5 percent to $4.28 billion from $4.39 billion. Same-store sales, or sales at stores opened at least a year, fell 4.3 percent. Same-store sales are considered a key indicator of a retailer's health.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected earnings of 50 cents per share on revenue of $4.28 billion.

Penney said it expects third-quarter earnings to be in the range of 70 cents to 75 cents per share. A poll by Thomson Reuters projects 76 cents per share. The company also predicted that total sales would drop by a low-single digit percentage and that same-store sales would drop in the mid-single digits in the same period.

"In this difficult consumer environment, we have continued to focus on tightly controlling all aspects of our business, and our second-quarter results show the benefits of our approach," said Myron "Mike" Ullman, chairman and chief executive, in a statement.

The company reported that comparable-store inventory levels at the end of the second quarter were