News and Finance

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will visit Florida on Friday to discuss a United States Department of Agriculture pilot loan program that could help tens of thousands of rural homeowners in 19 states.

The program, which was first announced Feb. 1, allows underwater homeowners in rural areas to refinance their homes with lower interest rates, similar to a program President Barack Obama announced earlier this month _ although as Vilsack points out, the USDA’s program does not rely on the approval of Congress.

“We’ve already obligated this money,” Vilsack said.

To be eligible for the USDA program, homeowners must have either a direct loan with the USDA or a USDA guarantee on a commercial bank mortgage.

Officials say the new program will cut through red tape normally seen with bank refinancing and save borrowers hundreds of dollars a month. To be eligible, borrowers must have made their mortgage payments on time for 12 consecutive months. There are more than 20,000 borrowers eligible in Florida and some 237,000 nationwide, according to the USDA, all in rural areas.

“We’re trying to make this as easy as possible,” Vilsack said.

He said that if more underwater loans are refinanced, then fewer homeowners will face foreclosure.

“This will preserve not only an opportunity for these families to save a little money, but it will preserve the value of neighborhoods, also,” he said.

Under the new pilot program, a homeowner could knock three or four percentage points off their mortgage interest rates if they refinance _ and they wouldn’t have to go through an appraisal, inspection or credit report.

Similar to the federal Housing and Urban Development, the USDA does make and guarantee home loans, only for those living in rural areas. Vilsack said the agency has facilitated about 465,000 home loans nationwide.

In contrast, Obama’s housing proposal faces a major hurdle in Congress. The program would cost between $5 billion and $10 billion, depending on participation, and the administration proposes to pay for it with a fee on large banks.

On Friday in Orlando, Vilsack will also announce that the USDA is accepting applications from lenders to help finance the construction, acquisition and rehabilitation of affordable multi-family rental housing for rural residents. The USDA also has money available to help low income residents secure affordable rental housing.

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Greece

TNT Express NV sidestepped questions Monday about a hostile UPS takeover bid, announcing instead an abrupt switch in strategy to focus on its European operations after posting a large fourth-quarter loss partly due to problems at its Brazilian arm.

CEO Marie-Christine Lombard deflected questions about the issue most on the minds of investors and employees: a hostile offer of euro9 ($11.87) per share that United Parcel Service made for TNT after the close of European trading on Friday.

TNT rejected the bid, which values the Hoofddorp, Netherlands-based company at $6.43 billion, but says it is in talks with UPS.

Lombard wouldn’t say whether the company believes UPS may sweeten the offer or whether TNT has been approached by other potential buyers such as FedEx or private equity firms.

But investors believe a higher offer is likely, as shares soared more than 60 percent Monday to close at euro10.18. They dropped to euro9.929 in early trading Tuesday, still well above the UPS bid.

TNT reported a loss of euro173 million ($229 million) for the fourth quarter, including a euro104 million charge on its Brazilian arm and another euro45 million to write down the value of its airplane fleet. The company had profit of euro4 million in the same period a year ago. Revenues rose 2.8 percent to euro1.85 billion ($2.5 billion).

Lombard said TNT believes it can grow at least twice as fast as the European economy “in the medium term” _ but noted TNT has had a “difficult start” in the first quarter of 2012.

Lombard said the company is looking for “strategic partnerships” for its businesses in Brazil and China, which usually means it wants to sell them in part or whole payday loan lenders.

But Lombard said there were other possibilities, including joint ventures, as long as they reduce the company’s “financial exposure.” Asked whether the company’s Brazilian operations would return to profit in the second half of 2012, she laughed and said “that’s the plan.”

“Europe provides us with future further opportunities to grow,” she said, citing TNT’s market share and the “fragmented” nature of the market. TNT is the second largest express delivery company in Europe behind DHL.

She said the company sees opportunities in delivering health care products that have to be maintained at a steady temperature.

TNT reported full year operating income of euro356 million ($472.3 million) in Europe in 2011, down 4 percent from euro370 million in 2010, and full year operating losses in all other regions.

“Today’s press release underlines that corporate value outside Europe is meager at best,” said analyst Geert Steens of SNS Securities in a scathing note on the earnings. He said just a year ago, Brazil and China were central to the company’s growth strategy.

His advice to investors is to “Hold, and hope” a takeover goes through.

Source

Home sales in the U.S. probably climbed in January to the highest level since May 2010, adding to evidence the housing market is regaining its footing, economists said reports this week will show.

Combined purchases of new and existing houses rose to a 4.97 million annual rate from 4.92 million in December, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey. Claims for jobless benefits held near the lowest level since 2008, bolstering consumer confidence, other reports may show.

A strengthening job market, combined with record affordability driven by the drop in home prices and mortgage rates, will probably keep underpinning demand. Nonetheless, the Federal Reserve and Obama administration are striving to find ways to lend the industry additional assistance amid concern that mounting foreclosures will continue to hinder the recovery.

The soybean. Just a humble legume wrapped in a funny pod.

But the beans are worth a bundle these days - more than $33 billion nationally in 2010, and $2.6 billion in Missouri alone. On Friday, American soybean exporters, in fact, sold more than 2.9 million metric tons to China in the biggest deal of its kind ever, underscoring just how valuable the crop has the potential to be.

University of Missouri researcher, Henry Nguyen, believes there’s even more potential for the soybean, if only scientists can unravel the molecular keys to greater yield, better disease resistance, higher nutrition and oil content.

This week Nguyen announced a project to sequence the genome of 1,008 commercially important soybean varieties, an effort he hopes will give farmers and researchers a road map to better beans - and make Missouri an epicenter of soybean research in the process.

“If we get something like this going, it’s definitely good for the scientific reputation of the state, and the economic development that comes with that,” Nguyen said.

Nguyen, who heads the MU-based National Center for Soybean Biotechnology, pointed to the fact that the major soy-oriented trade groups are based in the St. Louis area, along with major research institutions and private corporations with a stake in soybean science.

“St. Louis is a powerhouse - with the United Soybean Board, the American Soybean Association, the Danforth Center, Monsanto, Washington University. In Columbia, there’s the University of Missouri,” he added. “This will definitely bring in good science, and that usually attracts industry and scientific manpower into the state.”

For soybean growers, the project comes as happy news.

“We’ve made good progress in the last number of years, but this is another step,” said Steve Censky, CEO of the American Soybean Association. “We’ll be able to identify where on the soybean genome is the trait responsible for drought tolerance, or the oil profile, or the protein content. It adds to the information we have, and really speeds up the ability to improve the soybean.”

In recent years, international groups have formed to study the world’s major commodity crops. But, Nguyen said, there is no such group for the soybean, despite the fact that world consumption has been growing steadily for the past decade.

“We don’t have an international center that has the global mandate for soybean improvement,” he said. “So I said, We here at the University of Missouri, we have the obligation - we have to do something to enhance soybean science and also the genetic improvements that will give U.S. producers a competitive advantage.”

Nguyen picked the number, 1,008, as a goal because the number “8″ is considered auspicious and a harbinger of prosperity in China, where the bean likely originated. But actually his target number is considerably higher: 3,000 or more varieties.

The first plant genome to be sequenced, or mapped, was a weed in the mustard family, Arabidopsis, which has a relatively low number of base pairs, with about 140 million. (The number of base pairs indicates the size of a genome and its complexity.) In subsequent years, other plants - and increasingly valuable ones - were sequenced, including rice, with about 450 million base pairs, and corn, with about 2 billion. As sequencing technologies have improved, the process has gotten even faster and easier, making it possible to sequence more complex genomes.

“Just over the last two years, its unbelievable - there have been revolutionary changes in sequencing technology,” Nguyen said, noting that the first soybean sequencing, launched in 2002, was completed in 2008.

Nguyen says he believes his researcher group will be able to complete 1,008 sequences in about a year. Once the sequencing is complete, the hope is that scientists will be able to identify what genes, in what combinations, control the traits of a plant. With that information, researchers will be able to breed better plants, faster.

“We’ll know about the genes - where they are, how they operate, which genes to put together,” said Grover Shannon, an MU professor of soybean breeding. “We’ll be able to get better varieties much quicker. We’ll know how to manipulate things.”

The information, Shannon pointed out, will be in the public domain, which is critical to the improvement of research.

“There’s not going to be one private entity, holding all the cards, all the information,” he said. “It’s going to help everybody. I think the next 10 years are going to be really exciting.”

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U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers are two leading candidates to succeed World Bank President Robert Zoellick when he leaves in June, said two people familiar with Obama administration discussions.

The U.S. promised a candidate

European officials jacked up the pressure on the Greek government to deliver budget cuts in exchange for a second bailout as they insisted that default is not an option.

Finance ministers canceled a Brussels meeting slated for today and will hold a teleconference instead to prod Greece to do more to clinch an aid package worth 130 billion euros ($170 billion) along with about 100 billion euros of debt relief from private bondholders. Greece needs the aid to make a 14.5 billion-euro bond payment on March 20.

Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos won parliamentary approval for austerity measures to secure an international bailout after rioters protesting the measures battled police and set fire to buildings in downtown Athens.

A total of 199 lawmakers voted in favor and 74 against, Parliament Speaker Filippos Petsalnikos said in remarks carried live on state-run Vouli TV. When, on Nov. 16, Papademos won a mandate from the Parliament to implement budget measures and secure the bailout of 130 billion euros ($172 billion) he received the support of 255 lawmakers in the 300-strong chamber.

ATHENS

Frustrated by what it calls Air Canada