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Show r PAGE 6 JDaUtjcrofo SATURDAY, JANUARY 19. BUSINESS EDITOR Grace ieong gleongheraldextra.com' 344-231- 0 THE DOLLAR EXCHANGING IjOciU Industiy news & NOTE S Dow Jones Final 12,099.30 -- 59.91 : Nasdaq Final 2340.02 : -- 6.88 S&P 500 Gold Silver Final Per ounce $880.80 $1.70 Per ounce $16,138 $0,208 1325.19 -- 8.06 ; 2008 Yen Euro Pound Canadian dollar Mexican peso Friday Thursday 106.67 $1.4622 $1.9559 1.0282 10.9150 107.00 $1.4673 $1.9713, : 1.0299 10.9436- - Nutraceuticals Nu Skin EnterNu Skin completes $25M stock buyback prises Inc. received about 202,000 shares in a final settlement of a November agreement to buy $25 million of its common stock from investment firm IP. Morgan Securities. Through an accelerated share repurchase program, the company was able to retire about 1.48 million shares at an average purchase price of $16.90. Technology Home building in Utah hits new low terms of its breadth across the Department reported ThursThe residential downturn country and in its severity," day that construction began ' has yet to create a huge drag said Mark Zandi, chief econoon 1.35 million.new homes and on Utah's economy as it has Despite a strong start, 2007 mist at Moody's Economy, closed as one of the worst done in other states, said Mark " apartments last year, down com. "I in '24.8 Wasatch don't think we for have 2006. from Knold, chief economist for the. years history percent seen anything like this cer.The national drop was the Front home building. Utah Department of Workforce Services. But it is clearly Builders took out permits for tainly since the Great Depresworst in 27 years and the sion homes and back then, housing -largest ever. The record de- slowing job growth. 9,877 new single-famil- y was much less tf a factor in The number of cline was a 26 percent drop in here last year the lowest jobs terms of the overall economy number since 1993, according 1980, when high interest rates grew by 4.5 percent in 2007, because fewer people owned to industry watcher Construcdown almost half a percent across the country made it diftheir owii homes." ficult for many to buy homes. from the preceding year, action Monitor. And the nearly The drop is especially steep 36 percent drop in permits cording to Workforce Services Analysts say a major conwhen the state's population is statistics. .. tributor is tighter lending between 2006 and 2007 is the Knold said about 2,200 taken into account. Between standards put in place last year worst since 1990, when the Utahns in construction filed for service began tracking activity 1990 and today, the state grew after the nation's subprime. from 1.7 million to 2.7 million in the state. lending debacle, in which many unemployment benefits in De"I think this Housing downborrowers with poor credit got cember 2007 up from only people. loans that ended in foreclosure. 1,300 a year before. turn will be unprecedented in Nationally, the Commerce THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ' Om- Omniture completes acquisition of San Diego firm e niture Inc., an Orem analytics solutions provider, completed a $394 million acquisition of Visual Sciences Incv of San Diego; After the transaction closes, shareholders of Visual Sciences, a real-tim- e analytics solutions provider, will own about 13.7 percent of the combined company on a pro forma basis. And Omniture will have more than 1,000 employees, more than 4,000 customers and 14 offices worldwide. Visual Sciences' employees will continue to be located in their San Diego and Herndon, Va., offices. All Omniture employees located in the San Francisco Bay Area includwill join ing the Visual Sciences and Offermatica teams Omniture's San Francisco office. Under the deal, several Visual Sciences executives will assume senior management positions at Omniture. Aaron ' Bird will join Omniture as general manager of the Discover OnPremise product line, Ray Rauch will head up the HBX Migration Services team and Brian Sullivan will operate as general manager of Omniture Site Search & Publish. Visual Sciences' CEO Jim Maclntyre will continue to work with Omniture through a transition period. Once the integration is completed, he will leave the company to pursue other interests. real-tim- second- . How Will you Spend your rebate? People Oh the Move Salt Lake Chamber names new The Salt Lake COO Chamber's Board of Governors named Natalie Gochnour its . new chief operating off icer. Gochnour, who had served for the past two years as the chamber's vice president for policy and communications, replaces Craig Peterson. Peterson, who is joining the Governor's Office of Economic Development as program director for the Utah International Trade and Diplomacy Office, had served more than 12 years as the chamber's COO. Gochnour will be responsible for the management of a staff, a proactive public policy agenda to improve Utah's business climate, and supervision of networking events like A Giant In Our City and the ' - Ml Business-to-Busine- ' Expo. .' V Prior to joining the Chamber staff, Gochnour spent two years in Washington, D.C., as the associate administrator for public affairs at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and then as a counselor to the secretary at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. , Gochnqur also has 18 years of experience with the Utah state government, serving at various times as the Governor's deputy for Policy and Communications, deputy director of the Governor's Office of Planning and Budget, state planning coordinator and a state economist. .jff - i 1 ' i PAUL NATIONAL BRIEFING Wall Street up on early IBM results NEW YORK Wall Street advanced sharply Monday, with solid preliminary results from IBM encouraging investors to go back into the stock market after last week's rout. International Business Machines Corp., one of the 30 Dow Jones industrials, released preliminary earnings estimates r for the fourth quarter that were 24 percent above levels. The results also beat the forecast of analysts. year-earlie- Oil prices climb as demand expectations rise NEW YORK Oil prices climbed Monday as forecasts for blustery weather nationwide raised expectations that demand for energy will surge in the coming days. A declining dollar and rising political tensions in the Middle East contributed to the advance, apparently outweighing worries that a weakening U.S. economy could curb oil demand. Light, sweet crude for February delivery rose $1.51 to settle at $94.20 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Stocks of Local Interest Yesterday's performance of selected publicly traded companies SYM LAST CHANGE COMPANY SYM COMPANY LAST CHANGE 29.10 0.31 MYGN Myriad Genetics, ABSY ABSOIUTESKYINC 0.056 0.002 NATR NATURES ABX BARRICK GOLD CP 46.73 0.21 NETM NetManage. AEP AMER ELECTRIC 44.82 1.34 NOVl Novell, AIG AMER 52.05 2.22 NUS NU SKIN ENT INC AMD ADV MICRO DEVICES AA ALCOA INC POW INTL GROUP INC AMGN Amgenlnc BK Of AMERICA BAC BAM BROOKFIEID BU BALL CP C CITIGROUP CMCSK Comcast COST Costco CVX CHEVRON CP ASSET INC CORP ' 7.07 0.73 NWN NORTHWEST 0.25 0MTR Omniture. 3597 0.94 PCG 0.36 22.50 046 5.41 0.15 QWEST COMM 24.45 0,51 R2 RASER TECHNOLOGIES 12.49 1.63 16.90 0.45 SCOXQ SCO GROUP INC 0.052 0.035 6453 023 SHLD Sears 8943 0.50 83.46 0.71 Sfl SMITH INTL INC 58.61 189 15.14 0.05 SKYW SkyWesLrnc 24.70 404 026 290 0.56 SNTO SENTOCORP QUE STAR CP 009 4894 0.00 STR SY SYBASE INC 25.50 034 ERIC LM Ericsson 23 J8 H R BLOCK INC 4264 PFIZER INC 7402 GEN ELECTRIC CO 3.01 PG&E CP PFE 28.51 HR8 0 95 T AT&T 36.11 1.19 7.54 0.111 TGT TARGET CP 5010 016 34.31 1.10 TRV THE TRAVELERS CO 46.19 1.24 1806 6290 022 026 UDR UDRINC. 2027 UNH UNITEDHEALTH 54 40 009 004 103.40 2.30 USB US BANCORP 30.19 0.03 19.00 0.33 USEG U.S. 405 0.17 463 4093 2987 023 USNA USANA Health Sciences 39 90 191 UTMO Utah Meckal Products 083 0 37 VZ VERIZON COMMUN 042 048 182 10.68 WB WACHOVIA 07 0.15 WEN WENDYS 6480 1.83 WFC WELLS FARGO 2948 3909 3080 2416 2548 87 2.42 WMT WAl 47.58 0.10 5.54 0.06 INC Henry Schern IBM INTL BUSINESS MACH INTC JBIU Intel Corporation JetBlue Airways JCP PENNEYJCC0 JWN NORDSTROM LEE LEE ENTERPRISES IUV SOUTHWEST MCK MCKESSON MER ML CO CMN STK 51 MIR) MERRILL LYNCH 19.75 0 00 WNI SOOT MMSI Merit Medkal Systems 16 04 0.12 X UNITED STATES STEEL MSfT Microsoft Corporation 33.01 MICRON 010 038 XEL MU Z10N INC AIRLINES CORP TECHNOLOGY 12 644 Energy Corp. CP INTL INC MART STORES NUTRIT INTL 104 Consumers: Rebates would go to debt Ellen Simon the U.S. Treasury into Americans' savings accounts. This time around, while Is an extra some people may put the NEW YORK $800 in your pocket enough to. rebate toward a TV, change the course of the ailing item like a ' economy? many echo Ginger Scott, a home-healtPresident Bush, Treasury physical therapy in Kansas City, Mo. Paulson and worker Secretary Henry members of Congress seem to She says she wouldn't buy think so. Washington is talkanything exciting. "I think I had too much exing about issuing tax rebate checks in hopes of staving off citing previously," said Scott, 52. "Exciting will kill your a recession. And people around the budget." Instead, she said she'd pay off a credit card bill country, many of them strugand save what's left over. gling to pay bills, staggering President Bush on Friday under credit card debt or embraced as much as $150 bilworried about their financial lion in tax relief, most of it for futures, aren't about to turn them down. the individuals, to jump-star- t "I would probably take that economy. He said the country would be "just fine" if Conmoney and breathe a sigh of relief for one month," said Jen- gress passes the stirnulus. nifer Simon, who works at a While the administration is small communications firm in ' avoiding specifics, congressioLong Valley, N.J., and spends nal aides said the White House was considering rebates of $1,500 a month on child care. "It's not a permanent fix," up to $800 for individuals and she said, "but I wouldn't send $1,600 for married couples. it back." The checks could arrive by late spring. Taxpayers got smaller reIn interviews, Americans bates, $3(X) per person, under a similar plan in 2001. There gave a range of ideas for how is debate in economic circles they'd spend the money, some about whether of them reflecting the pinch of as usual a difficult economy in which those checks warded off recession or went straight from the costs of food and gas are ' THE -- ASSOCIATED PRESS big-tick- n h ; rising and jobs' are harder to granddaughter, '. come by who lives with her, call the shots: "She just likes to go to Take DaMel Nixon,' 33, a McDonald's and the movies." mailhouse quality control When the 2001 rebates went supervisor in Lansing, Mich., of the cash who used to be an avjd buyer out, of music but is unlikely to use was spent within six months, his $800 to splurge on CDs beaccording to one paper pubcause he needs money for gas. lished by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a "I'm going to need that $20 to put in the tank," he said. private research group that In Fargo, N.D., Doug Benserves as the national arbiter on such matters. son said he would spend half Fans of the rebate say that of the $800 on bills and half on new beds for his children. In spending was enough to keep New York City, Landy Ung the country out of a longer, more painful recession. said she would plow the mon"The recession officially ey into her startup Internet ended the month after the business as an incentive for stimulus package checks were her salespeople. sent out," said David Wyss, At a mall in Madison, Wis., chief economist at Standard & Antonia Rivera said would love a new pair of snow boots, Poor's. But a conflicting report, but said she'd save the cash also published by the Naanyway. She hopes to retire from her job as a supply clerk tional Bureau of Economic at the University of Wisconsin Research, found the bump in spending went almost entirely Hospital next year but fears to the auto sector, which was she may not have enough then offering money. So she's cutting back on all financing. "The majority of consumher purchases. "If I need it. I look for the best price," said ers saved or paid off a debt rather than spending it," said Rivera, who is 68. "If I don't Matthew Shapiro, professor really need it, I don't buy anyof economics at University of thing." And in Kansas City, Jenise the Michigan, who second report. Lemmones said she'd let her two-thir- zero-perce- 1.36 11125 HSIC Inc. 0.95 Q Dionex Corporation GE 4849 27.10 Inc. 028 WALT DISNEY ENTERGY CP 000 6.120.2204 0.27 640 646 15.08 0.03 DNEX FRANKLIN COVEY CO 0.74 8.05 30.33 DIS FC NAT GAS 44 42.03 DELTA AIR LINES ETR Inc. Inc. 47.45 DAL Telephone Inc. SUNSHINE BEATYAssodated Press Traders look on as President Bush delivers his economic message at the Chicago Board of Trade. On Friday, Bush embraced tax rebates, possibly in the amount of $800 for individuals and $1600 for couples to give the economy a "shot in the arm." 1.55 1.04 065 72 5.42 XCEL ENERGY INC 21.31 Zions rfoncorpoution 41.71 0 34 029 Leading indicators signal continued slow economy r Eileen Alt Powell the assoc iaild press A gauge of NEW YORK future economic activity skidded 0.2 percent in December, registering its third consecutive monthly decline and signaling that the U.S. economy, likely will weaken further in coming months. The Confcrcme Board said Friday that its index of lead three to six months. ing indicators fell to 13(5.5 last Ken Goldstein, labor economonth after declining a revised 0.4 percent to 136.8 in Novemmist at the Conference Board ber and 0.7 percent to 137.3 in said in a statement that "the October. latest data suggest that growth The December drop was and poscould remain slow slightly more than the 0.1 sibly be even a little slower in the first half of 2008." percent decline expected by Some economists believe analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial'IFR. that the credit crunch and The index is watched as an troubled housing market alindicator of where the U.S. ready have thrown the U.S. economy is headed in the next economy into recession. On ' Thursday, President Bush and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke promised measures to try to stimulate. economic growth. ' The components most affecting the December index reading were building permits and average working hours in manufacturing, according to ' the Conference Bourd, which is a New York-basebusiness d group. |