The good news: mortgage rates are down. The bad news: it's much harder to qualify for a refinanced loan these days.

What's more, the borrowers who need to refinance the most - because their adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) are resetting to higher interest rates - are among those having the most trouble winning approvals.

"I'm turning away about 60% to 75% of the clients who come to me for a refi," said Bob Moulton, president of Americana Mortgage Group on Long Island, N.Y. "Some don't have enough equity and others have bad credit scores."

During the boom years, lenders approved most anyone with a pulse. Not so today. Mortgage brokers recognize this and are now being very selective about the clients whose applications they choose to submit to the likes of Wells Fargo or Bank of America.

If an applicant has poor credit, or a home whose value is rapidly deteriorating, they're just not going to bother.

"If the person is Sweet Polly Purebread - good income, good assets, high credit score - there's money out there," said Moulton. "But if not, then it's harder."

Interest rates are way down - 5.67% is the going rate for a a 30-year fixed loan this week, according to

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The number of newly laid off workers filing applications for unemployment benefits dropped last week, but not enough to indicate that strains on the labor market are easing.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that 356,000 claims for jobless benefits were filed last week, a decline of 22,000 from the previous week. The decline only erased a part of the huge jump of 72,000 in claims of the previous week.

The four-week average for jobless claims rose to 335,000, which was the highest level in a month.

A severe slowdown in economic growth that has raised concerns about a possible recession has begun to affect the labor market. The government reported last week that the economy shed 17,000 jobs in January, the first monthly job loss in more than four years.

Analysts said the performance of claims in the past two weeks showed that a surprising decline in claims from mid-December to mid-January was a statistical fluke caused by difficulty in adjusting the numbers around holidays and the start of the year. They predicted further increases in jobless claims in coming weeks as more companies are forced to lay off employees.

"In this environment, simply cutting back on hiring will not be enough for companies to maintain earnings

When couples first marry or have a child, the transition can be a bit bumpy. But once you adjust to your new routine, you often end up happier than you were before. The same goes for couples in retirement. The first months are often fraught with conflict.

A 2007 Fidelity study of 500 married couples ages 33 to 70 found that in more than 3 in 10 couples, husbands and wives gave completely different answers when asked at what age they would retire, what they expected their lifestyle to be, and whether they intended to work in retirement.

Some advance planning can help couples ease into retirement. Here are some topics for discussion.

Be prepared for staying home together

After years of spending mostly nights and weekends with your spouse, seeing him or her all day every day can be stressful. "If they are both retiring at the same time, they are faced with perhaps having to be in each other's faces, especially couples who have had a history of marital conflict," says Amy Pienta, a researcher at the University of Michigan.

Couples need to rework their old routines. "They have not been together much during the day, and so they have to renegotiate how much closeness or separateness they want in their activities," says

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- Cisco Systems Inc.'s second-quarter profit matched Wall Street's subdued expectations, but shares of the world's largest Internet networking supplier plunged on signs that economic jitters will continue to hurt sales growth.

The San Jose-based company's guidance of 10 percent sales growth in the third fiscal quarter fell below the 15 percent projection by Wall Street analysts.

The forecast disappointed investors, who viewed it as a sign technology spending will continue to weaken as companies gird for a possible recession in the U.S.

Cisco executives acknowledged many companies are being cautious about investing in new Internet equipment, but they predicted growth will soon pick up again, helped by surging demand in emerging markets.

"It's important to keep in perspective that even in these economic times, we're seeing solid growth on a year-over-year basis," said Dennis Powell, Cisco's chief financial officer.

Powell said Cisco experienced sudden slowdowns in January in several markets in the U.S. and in European Internet service providers. Uncertainty about how long the slump will continue prompted the

If you are visiting a website like TradingMarkets, then there's a pretty good chance that you have already decided that trading stocks (or forex or options or exchange-traded funds...) is for you. But even those who have decided to start down this road often do not realize just how much stock trading has changed -- even over the last decade.

The good news is that this means that there are now more reasons than ever for you -- once you've fully funded your 401(k) or IRA, and built up your family's rainy day fund -- to begin trading. And because more traders than ever are looking to the equity markets as the markets they want to trade, it seems like a good idea to look at some of the specific reasons why you should trade stocks.

Commissions are Lower Than Ever

Compare the average per trade stock commissions of today with those from twenty or even ten years ago. The rise of the discount brokerage, followed by the rise of the online discount brokerage, has done as much as anything to bring stock trading to the masses.

Lower commissions are not just a boon for investors and traders in general. The lower cost of doing the business of trading stocks actually makes certain trading strategies possible for the average trader. Some trading techniques, including many shorter-term trading strategies, require traders to make several trades

LONDON (AP) -- Oil company BP PLC on Tuesday unveiled plans to speed up cost-cutting and restructuring, including shedding 5,000 jobs, as it seeks to improve competitiveness with industry peers after reporting disappointing annual net profits.

BP aims to shake off the remnants of a turbulent year in which it lost its chief executive and was fined millions of pounds for environmental crimes and fraud.

"We are absolutely determined to transform our downstream business as a whole," said BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward. "It will not happen overnight, but we believe that the performance gap with our competitors can be progressively narrowed in the next few years."

The London-based company reported a 53 percent rise in fourth quarter net profit to $4.4 billion, as soaring oil prices underpinned an 29 percent rise in revenue to $81.5 billion.

However, over the full year net profit fell 5.5 percent to $20.8 billion, despite a 6.2 percent rise in revenue to $291.4 billion.

In contrast, Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Europe's largest oil company, last week reported a 23 percent rise in full-year earnings to a record $31.3 billion while Exxon Mobil posted the largest ever annual profit by a

China is urbanizing. Oil platforms are going up in the world's oceans. And Brazilian automakers are ramping up for a growing middle class.

The world's steel producers are trying to keep up.

Companhia Siderurgica Nacional (NYSE:SID - News), Brazil's third-largest steel producer, is stepping up to the challenge.

The Rio de Janeiro company expects to spend $6 billion over the next six years to add new steel mills. The new mills will add 9 million tons to its current crude steel capacity of 5.6 million tons a year.

It's also investing in its mines and ports to increase its iron ore export capacity.

But even as global demand rises, CSN is looking first to its expanding domestic market. About three-quarters of sales are within Brazil.

In addition to expanding its core steel and mining business, CSN is building a cement plant to supply booming Brazilian construction markets.

"The middle class is growing, and the consumption is growing as well," said Jose Marcos Treiger, head of

Come 2010, Roth IRAs may become the retirement plan of choice for all Americans. That year, Uncle Sam will lift the income limits on Roth IRA conversions that have precluded taxpayers with modified adjusted gross income of $100,000 or more to convert their traditional IRA to a Roth IRA.

What's more, the government will even allow taxpayers the chance to report their conversions on their 2011 and 2012 tax returns, in effect giving Americans the ability to delay full payment of any tax due until 2013.

Roth IRAs, unlike traditional IRAs, are funded with after-tax dollars. And withdrawals from Roth IRAs, unlike traditional IRAs, are tax-free under certain conditions (after five years and after age 591/2). As with traditional IRAs, the money inside Roth IRAs grows tax-free. But one big difference between Roth IRAs and traditional IRAs is this: Roth IRA owners don't have to worry about required minimum distributions.

Now, pundits are forever debating whether Roth IRAs are a good deal or not.

But in general, the wags say that taxpayers who qualify and who think they will be in a higher tax bracket when they are retired should consider Roth IRAs. Others experts who advocate for something called tax diversification say taxpayers should consider Roth IRAs if only because it gives them the ability to take

NEW YORK (AP) -- Lingering hopes that the U.S. economy might avert a recession withered Tuesday after the nation's service sector -- its banks, travel companies, contractors and stores, among others -- shrank for the first time in five years.

It was unwelcome news for many investors, who were beginning to believe that the Federal Reserve might engineer a way out of the worst economic slowdown since 1991. Stocks tumbled, with the Dow Jones industrial average losing 370 points, its biggest point drop since August.

Much of the talk was not about whether there would be a recession, but about how bad it might be.

"The number's so terrible it's almost beyond belief, especially among the optimists," said Scott Anderson, senior economist at Wells Fargo & Co. "I think the writing's on the wall. More and more economists are talking about recession, and whether it'll be a severe or mild one."

The January reading from the Institute of Supply Management "was about as big a shock as you can probably get," said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Commerce Bancorp.

Anderson said he believes January may end up being the official start of a recession. Many businesses

Dear Dr. Don,
I would like to know how consumers should go about closing "open accounts," especially if one now has multiple accounts due to banks buying out other banks or creditors.

Recently, I've read on Bankrate.com that closing accounts can lower your credit score. How should one handle these unused accounts? Is there a magic number as to how many to close per month or year without gravely affecting one's good credit score?
-- Marie Multiple

Dear Marie,
A balancing act is involved when deciding whether to hold on to accounts you don't use (just to keep your credit score high) or to close those unused accounts.

Keeping the accounts open helps maintain a low ratio between outstanding balances and available credit lines -- that's called the credit utilization ratio. Not bumping up against your credit limits shows you're not running out of available credit. Lenders like borrowers who aren't desperate.

The length of time the account has been open also influences your credit score. Having a clean payment history on an account with a 10-year history is more valuable to your credit score than a clean payment

HOUSTON (AP) -- Suppose Exxon Mobil decided to return the favor and buy you a tank of gas. Then again, why stop there? The oil giant turned a profit last year fat enough to buy a fill-up for every car, truck and SUV in America -- four times.

Beating its own record to rack up the largest annual corporate profit in American history, Exxon Mobil Corp. said Friday it earned $40.6 billion for the year, reaping the benefits of crude-oil prices around $100 a barrel.

Exxon Mobil also topped its own record for profit in a single quarter, posting net income of $11.7 billion for the final three months of the year -- about $1 billion more than the same period in 2005, the previous quarterly record.

The annual profit was enough, at $3 a gallon, to buy nearly four 15-gallon fill-ups for the roughly 243 million registered passenger vehicles on American roads. Put another way, it's almost equal to what Microsoft has offered to buy Yahoo outright.

And the quarterly profit alone is about the same as the size of the entire economy of Iceland or Namibia. The previous record for annual profit was $39.5 billion, posted by Exxon Mobil in 2006.

Chevron Corp., No. 2 behind Exxon Mobil among U.S. oil companies, also had its best year ever in 2007

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Unable to topple Google Inc. on its own, Microsoft Corp. is trying to force crippled rival Yahoo Inc. into a shotgun marriage, betting nearly $42 billion that the two companies together will have a better chance of tackling the Internet search leader.

Microsoft's audacious attempt to buy Yahoo, spelled out in an unsolicited offer announced Friday, shows just how much Google threatens the world's largest software maker's grip on how people interact with computers.

For Yahoo, the bid represents another painful reminder of how missed opportunities and mismanagement combined to open the door for Google to supplant it as the Internet's main gateway, decimating its stock price in the process.

Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft is trying to avoid a similar fate at Google's hands as more people access services and computer programs online instead of relying on packaged software applications.

Although Microsoft remains the world's most valuable technology company, its position will become more precarious unless it can cultivate a more loyal Internet audience and generate more online ad revenue to subsidize the free services taken for granted on the Internet.

Microsoft is acutely aware of the upheaval that can be caused by a pivotal shift in technology, having

CINCINNATI (AP) -- The nation's biggest advertiser is running some options for the nation's biggest football game.

Procter & Gamble Co., with a nearly $8 billion global annual advertising budget, has already aimed some brand promotions, using celebrities, online sites and contests, at football fans and families as the Super Bowl approaches on Sunday. But Tide detergent is going for the big play.

The six-decade-old brand has bought its first Super Bowl commercial, one of the 30-second ads on the Fox television network estimated to be going for some $2.7 million this year. It will feature Tide to Go, a cleaning pen that moved Tide beyond the laundry room in 2005.

Making the call on whether to pay big bucks for Super Bowl TV time or use their budget on other outlets is one of the key huddles that marketing teams can have each year. It's a national must-see event, with over 90 million men, women and children of all ages and demographics gathered in front of their TV sets.

And best of all for advertisers in this age of media fragmentation and digital video recorders fast-forwarding through commercials, the ads are part of the viewing fun.

"People look forward to the commercials," said Gary Stibel, who heads the New England Consulting Group

TOKYO (AP) -- Nissan reported a 26.6 percent jump in October-December profit Friday and kept its full year forecasts despite looming worries about a U.S. slowdown and an unfavorably strong yen.

Profit at Nissan Motor Co., which has an alliance with Renault SA of France, rose to 132.22 billion yen ($1.24 billion) for the fiscal third quarter from 104.46 billion yen the same period the previous year.

Quarterly sales climbed 18.2 percent to 2.770 trillion yen ($26.03 billion) from 2.343 trillion yen, partly boosted by brisk sales of the Rogue crossover vehicle in the U.S.

Earnings at Japan's No. 3 automaker, which also makes the Z sportscar, Altima coupe and Infiniti luxury models, could be endangered in coming months amid worries about slower American consumer spending.

Also, a weaker dollar, which has dropped recently to about 106 yen from 114 yen last year, eats into the revenue from U.S. exports for the Japanese.

But so far demand for Nissan vehicles has remained strong in the U.S. and in emerging markets such as the Middle East, China and Russia. Even in the domestic Japanese market, the company boosted its market share, it said.

"Despite the headwinds that affect our industry, Nissan has benefited from the success of the new products launched during the past 12 months," said Nissan Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn, who also heads