How construction can lose jobs in middle of home building rebound

Cuts in government spending on construction projects led to the drop in April's construction employment.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

The sector lost about 6,000 jobs overall, according to the Labor Department's jobs report. This was largely due to a decline in hiring for non-residential buildings or public works projects like roads or sewer plants. Combined, these two areas lost 19,700 jobs.

Meanwhile, home builders and their subcontractors added 13,300 workers, even more than in March.

A big part of the sector's pullback is due to a drop in government-funded construction projects, a trend that has been going on for about two years.

Federal construction spending is down 28% since peaking in August 2011, when stimulus spending was still going strong, according to Ken Simonson, chief economist of the Associated General Contractors of America, an industry trade group. Local governments, particularly school districts, have also been pulling back on construction spending after building a rush of new ones during the housing boom.

"You don't need to open a new school every month if people aren't coming," he said.

Related: April jobs report - Hiring picks up

Additionally, many builders are having a hard time finding skilled construction workers.

David Crowe, chief economist with the National Association of Home Builders, said residential construction hiring likely would have been even higher in April if not for the shortage of skilled workers in some markets. He said a survey of his trade group's members found about half couldn't find workers with the necessary skills.

Simonson and other experts say the cutback in federal spending -- known as the sequester -- that went into effect March 1 hasn't halted work on any construction projects already underway. But they said federal agencies knew the sequester was looming and did scale back new construction contracts earlier this year.

Record low mortgage rates, a rebound in home prices and strong new home sales prompted the fastest pace of home building in nearly five years in March, according to a separate government report.

First Published: May 3, 2013: 12:54 PM ET

22.16 | 0 komentar | Read More

My First Rifle: The business of selling guns for kids

Chipmunk, a subsidiary of Keystone, sells guns designed for children, along with its sibling subsidiary, Crickett.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

The gun used in the recent shooting in Kentucky was a Crickett .22-caliber rifle, marketed with the slogan "My First Rifle," from Keystone Sporting Arms in Milton, Pa. The single-shot rifle uses the smallest caliber available and is sold by major retailers, including Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500), Cabela's (CAB) and Gander Mountain.

The Crickett website was down Friday due to "difficulties," according to John Renzulli, an attorney representing Keystone . But the site for Chipmunk, another Keystone brand, exhibited "quality firearms for America's youth" on its site, including .22-caliber rifles and pistols, with photos of children shooting them. The site includes a "kids corner" section.

Renzulli insisted that the company is not marketing firearms to children.

"No one's marketing to children," he said. "They're marketing to parents who would buy guns for children."

On its website, Wal-Mart markets the Crickett as a "youth rifle," while Gander Mountain's site describes it as a "great beginner's gun."

"All are lightweight and easy for youngsters to carry at the range and in the woods," reads the Crickett description on Cabela's site, which describes it as "a fun firearm to get your young shooter started with."

Wal-Mart did not immediately comment on whether their policy on sales of guns for children would change. Gander Mountain said it would not comment on potential policy changes, but added that it has launched a responsibility campaign aimed at keeping firearms away from "the underaged, untrained and unauthorized." Cabela's did not return a request for comment.

Related: Remington jobs rule the Rust Belt

Lawrence Keane, vice president and spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearms industry group, described the youth firearm market as a relatively small slice of the gun industry, though large enough to have plenty of participants.

"A number of manufacturers make youth models of firearms for parents to purchase to introduce their children to adult-supervised target shooting," said Keane. "Millions of families all across America participate in the shooting sports as a family recreational activity. Children cannot purchase firearms from licensed dealers, of course."

Keane said safety has improved in recent years, saying data show that accidental fatalities involving firearms and children younger than 14 dropped by more than half over two decades to about 600 in 2009, the most recent year for available data.

Related: Gun and ammo sales fuel jobs boom

Brian Rafn, gun industry analyst and director of research at Morgan Dempsey Capital Management, described the youth gun segment as a small enough portion of the $4 billion industry to call it a "ghost market." He added that most states won't issue a hunting license to children younger than 10.

"I don't know of any state, and I've been hunting for 30 years, that would allow an armed five-year-old out in the woods during hunting season," he said. "In Wisconsin where I go hunting, if you were found out in the woods with a five-year-old with a gun, the game warden would have you in cuffs."

First Published: May 3, 2013: 2:44 PM ET

22.16 | 0 komentar | Read More

Buffett's Berkshire blows past estimates

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA, Fortune 500) handily beat analyst estimates with its first-quarter earnings on Friday, booking strong gains in its investments and insurance business.

Excluding certain investment gains, Berkshire reported earnings of $3.8 billion, or $2,302 per Class A share, blowing past the prediction of $1,995.50 per share from analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters.

Including investment gains, Berkshire's earnings hit $4.89 billion, rising more than 50% versus a year prior.

Berkshire is a broad-based investment conglomerate whose holdings include everything from Geico insurance to Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad to Dairy Queen. It also has stakes in a variety of other large firms.

Earlier this year, Berkshire was part of a consortium along with private equity firm 3G Capital that purchased ketchup maker H.J. Heinz Co for $28 billion.

Berkshire earned $901 million in the first quarter from its insurance underwriting business, up from just $54 million in the first quarter of 2012. The company said its gains came from the lack of significant catastrophe losses in the first three months of the year.

Related: Buffett is worried about Fed policy

On the investment side, Berkshire has substantial holdings in derivatives that serve as bets on the value of global stock indexes like the S&P 500. Berkshire's position improves when these index values rally.

Berkshire earned more than $1.1 billion from investment and derivative gains in the first quarter, up from $580 million a year ago.

With stakes in several large banks and homebuilders, Berkshire also has significant exposure to the housing market, which appears in the midst of a solid recovery. Earlier this week, the S&P Case-Shiller index of home prices showed a 9.3% rise over the past 12 months, the biggest gain since near the height of the housing bubble.

The aging Buffett has not publicly revealed a succession plan, but says he has informed Berkshire's board about his preferred candidates. He underwent radiation treatment last year for prostate cancer, though he said the illness was "not remotely life-threatening."

Investors will descend on Buffett's hometown of Omaha this weekend for Berkshire's annual meeting, where he and business partner Charlie Munger typically hold forth on their business and the state of the U.S. economy.

You don't have to be in Nebraska to get real-time updates on Buffett's thinking, however; the 82-year-old joined Twitter this week.

First Published: May 3, 2013: 6:00 PM ET

22.16 | 0 komentar | Read More

Staples starts selling 3-D printers

3D Systems "The Cube" can print 3-D plastic objects, and it is now available at Staples.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Staples (SPLS, Fortune 500) says it is the first major U.S. retailer to sell a 3-D printer. It began selling The Cube, made by 3D Systems (DDD) on Staples.com Friday, and the 3-D printer will hit "many" of the retailer's brick-and-mortar stores by June.

While 3-D printers have long been used in industrial manufacturing, a recent "maker" movement is slowly popularizing in-home versions of the devices.

The Cube, like other 3-D printers, is a machine that creates physical, three-dimensional objects. The printer uses a digital design file as a blueprint, then builds the item layer by layer with plastic powder or liquid. Users can print anything they can design, including action figures, iPhone docks and coffee cup holders.

The Cube can print items up to five-and-a-half inches tall, wide and long in 16 different colors, and it comes packaged with 25 free design templates. Shares of Cube maker 3D Systems were up 3.4% after the announcement, while Staples stock was up 2.5%.

3D Systems says it is devoted to the "democratization" of 3-D printers, making the complex and expensive technology available to the masses. But the company faces a lot of upstart competition.

Perhaps the buzziest 3-D printer company is Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Makerbot, which unveiled its $2,800 "Replicator 2x" at the Consumer Electronics Show in January.

Following Makerbot's success, crowdfunding site Kickstarter quickly became full of similarly named rivals: Printrbot, TangiBot, Ultra-Bot, RigidBot, Gigabot, and Bukobot.

While many 3-D printer owners may be using the devices to prototype inventions or simply have fun making plastic toys, other industries are tapping into the printers' potential. Chefs are using the printers to create intricately designed food. Doctors are even experimenting with advanced versions of the machines to make artificial organs and prosthetic limbs.

In some cases, 3-D designs have been controversial. Makerbot found itself under pressure to crack down on downloadable designs for printable gun parts late last year, after the school shooting in Newtown, Conn. MakerBot's design file repository, called Thingiverse, had long prohibited "the creation of weapons" -- but they were loosely enforced before the crackdown in December.

First Published: May 3, 2013: 10:42 AM ET

22.16 | 0 komentar | Read More

RBS looks to escape state control

The U.K. government currently owns just over 80% of the Edinburgh-based Royal Bank of Scotland.

LONDON (CNNMoney)

Five years after the British state was forced to rescue Edinburgh-based RBS during the financial crisis, the bank believes its house-cleaning operation is nearly complete.

RBS (RBS) chairman Philip Hampton says the bank will work with the government to prepare a privatization prospectus by the middle of 2014, allowing it to extract itself from what has been a troubled relationship.

"It could be earlier [than 2014], that's a matter for the government," Hampton said in a statement. "But certainly we think the recovery process will be substantially complete in about a year or so."

The British government owns just over 80% of RBS and holds a 40% stake in Lloyds Banking Group (LLDTF).

Related: UBS and Deutsche Bank show signs of life

Senior politicians have been pressuring the banks to prepare for privatization ahead of national elections in 2015.

The use of taxpayer money to bail out the banks has been hotly debated, and politicians are looking to rid themselves of the responsibility for two of the country's biggest players.

If the government is able to exit its investments in both banks in the next few years, it will book a multi-billion pound loss, unless share prices recover substantially. However, there is no firm decision yet about how or when the government will sell its holdings.

Shares in RBS have plunged by 95% since their peak in 2007. Shares in Lloyds have also fallen by over 80% since their peak.

Both banks have struggled to recover from the financial crisis. They've introduced massive restructuring programs while dealing with a host of legal problems and increased regulation.

Since being rescued by the U.K. government at a cost of £45 billion in 2008, RBS has been trying to make the bank smaller and financially sound. It has shed over £900 billion in assets.

In February, RBS was fined $612 million by regulators after an investigation found 21 bank employees tried to rig the global benchmark interest rates over a period of four years. RBS was one of 14 global banks implicated in this Libor scandal.

Swiss bank UBS (UBS) and Barclays (BCLY), paid out $1.5 billion and $450 million, respectively, to settle their Libor charges.

First Published: May 3, 2013: 10:46 AM ET

22.16 | 0 komentar | Read More

Fortune Brainstorm Podcast: Procter & Gamble CEO Bob McDonald

NEW YORK (Fortune)

Fortune wants to make it even easier for you to eavesdrop. The Fortune Brainstorm podcast is a weekly show that features recorded conversations from Fortune's live events.

Brainstorm Green 2013 wrapped up on Wednesday, so we have fresh audio from the conference. Today's podcast focuses on a town hall- style talk given by Procter & Gamble (PG, Fortune 500) CEO Bob McDonald, who was presenting some of his company's sustainable products, such as a concentrated version of Tide laundry detergent meant for cold water.

But how much do companies really care about sustainability? We talk to Fortune managing editor Andy Serwer and P&G's vice president of global sustainability Len Sauers to try to get some answers. In a tough economy with vocal investors, how easy is it to go green?

Subscribe to and download the podcast from iTunes.

Or stick the podcast's RSS feed into your favorite podcast app: http://fortunebrainstormpodcast.libsyn.com/rss.

First Published: May 3, 2013: 10:55 AM ET

22.16 | 0 komentar | Read More

France blocks Yahoo bid for video site

Marissa Mayer's Yahoo is being given the cold shoulder as it tries to take control of the popular French website, Dailymotion.

LONDON (CNNMoney)

The veto is the latest in a series of episodes that have undermined France's reputation as a place to invest and cast doubt on its claims that it is 'open for business'.

Industry minister Arnaud Montebourg told CNNMoney that he didn't want Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) taking a majority stake in Dailymotion, a website that is likened to Google (GOOG, Fortune 500)'s YouTube.

Montebourg said he hoped a deal could still be reached where each side would have a 50-50 stake in Dailymotion. Yahoo had originally been insisting on a larger piece of the pie.

The French government owns a 27% stake in France Telecom (FTE), which owns Dailymotion through its Orange brand.

"We don't want to sell Dailymotion, we want to work hand-in-hand with Yahoo," Montebourg told CNNMoney. "We want a win-win situation - in other words - a partnership."

Related: Marissa Mayer's first-year pay hits $6 million

Yahoo would not comment on the status of the talks. Orange said in a statement it has been talking to various potential partners over the last few months as it seeks a strategic partner outside Europe to develop Dailymotion's reach.

Some reports say this would have been Yahoo's largest deal since Marissa Mayer took over as CEO in July 2012.

While the French government veto is a setback, it isn't a make or break situation for Yahoo, said Aaron Kessler, an analyst at Raymond James.

"There's obviously a lot of assets out there. Yahoo needs to continue to diversify, but it's hard to say that Yahoo's success would be based on just one acquisition," he said.

Dailymotion is amongst the biggest video websites in the world, receiving well over 100 million unique monthly visitors each month. Revenues grew by 55% in 2012.

Yahoo been trying to regain its status as a top internet property but has been struggling since its heyday in the late 1990s and early 2000s -- despite seven different CEOs.

It has recently made a handful of small acquisitions, dubbed 'acqui-hires' because they were focused on scoring the technical talent in the target company's workforce.

--CNN's Saskya Vandoorne contributed to this article.

First Published: May 2, 2013: 10:41 AM ET

22.16 | 0 komentar | Read More