Texas Social Blog

Almost one million child safety locks are being recalled because they don’t work.

Community leaders meet with the Harris County district attorney to voice their outrage at the not guilty verdict in the case of a former police officer who was accused of beating a teenage burglary suspect. Images of protest

Gas prices are coming down for most of the nation, but not for Lynnae McCoy and other residents of the West Coast.

While supplies of gasoline are flush in much of the country, due to a combination of increased domestic production and reduced consumption, supplies are at the tightest point since the early 1990s west of the Rockies. That means that while gas prices have fallen about 5 percent in the last month nationally, they’ve barely moved up and down the West Coast.

McCoy, who lives outside Medford, Ore., with her husband Jim and three children, is spending about $65 a week fueling a Toyota minivan to take kids to schools and various other activities. Her husband, a sports broadcaster, spends about $50 on gas to get to and from work.

The $115 or so they’re spending at the pump each week is more than many items in their household budget, including tuition to her 9-year old son’s school.

“It does make me angry,” she said. “It cuts into our lifestyle where we have to make hard decisions. Do I have to work more hours freelancing? How can we cut the grocery budget? We’re fairly frugal anyhow. Gas prices are making it really hard to survive.”

West Coast prices are typically among the most expensive in the nation anyway. State taxes and strict environmental regulations are two factors. Another is limited supply — the West Coast is far from domestic sources such as the Great Plains and the Gulf Coast, as well as from the Middle East.

“Gasoline stocks in the country are OK, but if you look at inventories on the West Coast, they’re lower than they’ve been in May since 1992,” said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst of the Oil Price Information Service, the firm that compiles the pump price averages for AAA. “People are going to be complaining out there.”

AAA’s reading of gas prices typically shows California pump prices about 30 cents a gallon higher than what’s paid by motorists nationally. Oregon and Washington State have prices comparable to California.

But as prices nationally have fallen 21 cents a gallon since early April, the gap between that average and the California average has swelled to more than 60 cents — $3.722 a gallon for unleaded nationally, compared to $4.366 in California. Other West Coast states are paying about 50 cents above the national average — $4.239 in Washington State and $4.215 in McCoy’s Oregon.

Hawaii has the most expensive gas in the country at $4.546, followed by Alaska, which has plenty of oil but no refineries. Gas there costs $4.487.

But no other state is paying more than $4 a gallon although three are within a few pennies of that pain threshold — New York and Connecticut, the two states with the highest gas taxes, and another western state, Nevada, where the average price is $3.968.

Prices are likely to decline on the West Coast once refineries are done switching over to the cleaner summer blend of gasoline that meets environmental rules. But there’s going to be more pain for the West Coast drivers before they see meaningful relief later this summer.

“I won’t be surprised to see the West Coast actually rebound above some of the highs we saw in March,” said Kloza.

Buying a home just got even cheaper as interest rates on both 30-year and 15-year-fixed-rate mortgages set record lows for the third week in a row.

The 30-year fixed mortgage, the most popular mortgage product, dipped by 0.04 percentage points to 3.79%, according to a weekly survey by Freddie Mac. Last year, 30-year loans averaged 4.64%. The new low can save borrowers $50 a month for every $100,000 borrowed. Over a 30-year term, that comes to $21,874.

The 15-year fixed mortgage, which is popular among those looking to refinance, inched down 0.01 percentage points to 3.04%, according to Freddie Mac’s survey. That’s down from 3.82% a year ago. The new 15-year rate would lower borrowing costs to $693 a month for every $100,000 borrowed, a $38 savings compared to last year.

Ongoing economic turmoil in Europe is, in part, responsible for the continued slide in mortgage rates, according to Freddie Mac’s chief economist, Frank Nothaft.

“The European debt crisis overshadowed improving economic indicators for the U.S. and allowed Treasury bond yields and fixed mortgage rates to ease for another week,” he said.

As for economic conditions here in the U.S., Nothaft pointed to recent reports that showed improvements in industrial production, consumer sentiment and new home construction.

Affordable mortgages, combined with much lower home prices, should also help to bolster the housing market.

Rates are almost half what they were at the peak of the housing bubble in mid-2006. At the time, the median price of a U.S. home was about $250,000, according to the National Association of Home Builders, and the average interest rate was about 6.75% for a 30-year loan.

A person who bought a home in 2006 with 20% down would have made payments of $1,300 a month. Today, a person who buys a median priced of home of about $162,000, would pay less than half that amount, about $600 a month.

The U.S. Postal Service announced on Thursday it’s moving forward with a $2.1 billion cost-savings plan to consolidate postal plants over the next two years, with consolidations starting in July.

The cuts will be limited in 2012, with 48 plants slated to be consolidated or closed in July and August, which will only impact 5,000 employees. However, when the plan is fully implemented at the end of 2014, 229 plants will be consolidated or closed and 28,000 jobs will be gone.

To customers, the consolidation plans will mean slower mail delivery for the most commonly sent mail — but not until 2014. Overnight service is being phased out, but agency officials say letters being sent locally should still just take a day through the end of 2013.

Even with the slower delivery, they say that 80% of first-class mail, which most consumers use, will continue to be delivered on time in 2012.

“These changes are a necessary part of the plan to reduce costs and return the Postal Service to financial stability,” said Megan Brennan, chief operating officer for USPS.

Last week, the Postal Service announced it was pulling back on plans to close thousands of rural post offices, saying these post offices would instead offer shorter hours.

The Postal Service also reported a $3.2 billion loss for the three months of 2012 ended March 31, which was due to the recession, declining mail volume and a congressional mandate to prefund retirement health care benefits.

The health care mandate is a major liability for the Postal Service, which doesn’t have the cash to make a $5.5 billion payment that’s due in August.

Unions say the health care payments are the main cause of the Postal Service’s financial problems and should be eliminated instead of plant closures and service delays, which could turn more customers away.

“The Postal Service’s actions are the best evidence there is that union members must contact their U.S. representatives and urge them to address postal reform immediately, using the recently approved Senate bill as a starting point for discussion,” said Cliff Guffey, president of the American Postal Workers Union.

The Senate plan would spare about 100 plants from consolidation. The House doesn’t have such a measure in its bill, which the full House has yet to consider.

Senators called upon the House to move forward on legislation to save the USPS. The Senate plan, which passed last month, would allow the Postal Service access to $12 billion in overpayments in retirement accounts, while postponing health care retirement payments.

“It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Postmaster General is moving forward to reduce costs with the limited tools at his disposal,” said Sen. Thomas Carper, a Delaware Democrat and one of the authors of the Senate bill. “Now it’s up to the House to pass a bill.”

However, the House isn’t likely to tackle Postal Service legislation until this summer at the earliest.

The list of 48 plants to be closed in July and August won’t be released until later Thursday afternoon, postal officials said.

The Postal Service is, by law, an “independent establishment” of the executive branch. The agency doesn’t normally use tax dollars for operations, but it has a $12 billion loan from Treasury to stem the tide until it can get back in the black.

It’s about time.

For the first time in six years, the Federal Reserve Board will soon have a full roster.

The Senate confirmed two of President Barack Obama’s nominees to the central bank Thursday. Jerome Powell, 59, a lawyer and former investment banker, and economist Jeremy Stein, 51, are being named Fed governors.

The Federal Reserve Board in Washington is supposed to be headed by seven voting members, but the last time all of those seats were filled was in April 2006.

The seven members of the Board of Governors are the central bank’s highest ranking officials. Appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, they serve 14-year terms, but many resign before completing a full stint.

Both Presidents George W. Bush and Obama have struggled to push their nominees through the Senate. Obama’s previous nominee, Nobel prize-winning economist Peter Diamond, withdrew his nomination last June, citing opposition from Senate Republicans.

The newly approved Powell and Stein garnered more bipartisan support, because they represent both sides of the aisle. Powell is a Republican and has donated to presidential candidates John McCain in 2008 and most recently Mitt Romney. Stein donated to Obama’s campaign in 2008.

“I’m here today not only to say that I admire the nominees,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Republican from Tennessee. “I want to acknowledge the fact that the President chose to break the stalemate by nominating Mr. Powell, a Republican, as well as a Democrat.”

Prior to the vote, Republicans also noted their discontent with the Federal Reserve’s recent actions.

The Fed has kept interest rates at historic lows since 2008 and enacted two rounds of asset purchases in an effort to help the economy recover from the recession.

Republicans fear those efforts will eventually lead to a sudden rise in inflation. That said, many were willing to vote in favor of the nominees anyway.

“They’re not ideal from my perspective, but they are qualified,” said Sen. Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee.

Both Powell and Stein hold degrees from Princeton and have served briefly with the Treasury Department.

Powell has recently been working as a visiting scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. He served as Undersecretary of the Treasury for Finance under President George H.W. Bush.

An economics professor at Harvard, Stein served as an adviser to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and worked for the National Economic Council. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Princeton and a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Hot social network Pinterest just landed a sizable cash infusion: The company raised $100 million in a financing round by e-commerce giant Rakuten. Existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners and FirstMark Capital also participated in the round.

The latest funding from the Tokyo-based Rakuten values Pinterest at $1.5 billion, according to a source close to the company.

“While some may see e-commerce as a straightforward vending machine-like experience, we believe it is a living process where both retailers and consumers can communicate, discover, and curate to make the experience more entertaining,” Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani said in a press release.

It’s a strategic move for Pinterest, which said it will use the funding to continue branching out globally.

“The investment also marks the start of a strategic partnership between Rakuten and Pinterest to help expand in Japan and into Rakuten’s 17 other global markets,” the companies said in the release.

Palo Alto, Calif-based Pinterest, which allows users to create a virtual pinboard showcasing items they find around the Web, has over 18 million active users. Previous backing includes $37 million from tech heavyweights SV Angel and Highline Venture Partners.

Neel Grover, CEO of Rakuten subsidiary Buy.com, told CNNMoney that discussions have been in the works for a couple months.

“We reached out several months ago and had some discussions on how we thought the world similarly,” he said. “Pinterest needs a way to accelerate their user base and build on their company. With Rakuten’s global presence and large market places, we think there’s a lot we can do with e-commerce long term.”

After four months of paperwork, hype and speculation, the last piece of the Facebook IPO is in place: Facebook said it has priced its IPO at $38 a share.

At that price, Facebook’s IPO will raise $16 billion, making it the largest tech IPO in history. It’s the third largest U.S. IPO ever, trailing only the $19.7 billion raised by Visa in March 2008 and the $18.1 billion raised by automaker General Motors in November 2010, according to rankings by Thomson Reuters.

There are still a few more steps before Facebook’s shares are ready to trade. The company is waiting for the Securities and Exchange Commission to declare its IPO effective — the formal green light Facebook and its underwriters need before they can sell shares to outside buyers.

The $38 IPO price is the rate at which Facebook’s underwriters (including lead banker Morgan Stanley) will sell shares to their clients, which typically include large institutional investors, mutual funds and hedge funds.

Shares will be released Thursday night to those buyers, who can resell them on the open market beginning on Friday.

Some shares were made available to individual investors, but getting them typically requires either a lot of money or a lot of trading experience. It also required moving fast. Many brokerages offering pieces of Facebook’s IPO allotment “closed their books” on Tuesday, meaning they stopped taking orders.

When can I buy? Ordinary investors looking to get a piece of Facebook will have to wait until Friday morning.

Unlike Google, whose IPO used a “Dutch auction” to allow direct bidding by investors, Facebook’s setup doesn’t give regular folks access until shares begin trading publicly on the tech-heavy Nasdaq exchange.

While the market opens at 9:30 am ET on Friday, Facebook’s shares won’t start trading instantly. It typically takes time — sometimes an hour or more — for newly listed shares to begin actively trading on the day of their public debut.

How much Facebook is worth:Facebook’s market capitalization will hover around $81 billion on the day of its IPO.

Many Facebook employees and executives hold unexercised stock options. If all of those shares were exercised, Facebook’s outstanding share count would rise to around 2.8 billion — pushing the company’s total valuation closer to $107 billion.

Who’s selling shares: Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg plans to sell 30.2 million shares in the IPO offering. That will net Zuckerberg about $1.1 billion.

But Zuckerberg won’t be hanging on to his cash. Facebook said he will use the “substantial majority” of the windfall to cover the massive tax bill he’ll be hit with, thanks to his plan to exercise a large stock-options grant that will increase his ownership stake in the company he founded.

After the offering, Zuckerberg will hold 503.6 million shares, or about 31% of the company. That stake is worth $19.1 billion.

Venture capital firm Accel Partners, which is the largest shareholder outside of Zuckerberg, is selling 49 million shares in the offering. That’s about a quarter of its Facebook holdings.

– CNNMoney’s Chris Isidore and Maureen Farrell contributed reporting.

Buying a home has reached its most affordable level in more than two decades.

Nearly 78 percent of homes sold during the first quarter were affordable to those earning the national median income of $65,000, according to a report released Thursday by the National Association of Home Builders and Wells Fargo.

The reason: Home prices nationwide are off about 36 percent from their peak. Median income has risen by about 10 percent. And mortgage rates are below 4 percent.

There is one catch for home buyers, however: Mortgage availability.

“Homes in this year’s first quarter were more affordable than they have been at any time in more than 20 years, yet many potential sales are not happening,” said Barry Rutenberg, NAHB’s chairman and a homebuilder in Gainesville, Fla. He said that’s mainly due to overly tight lending conditions.

“Without this significant hurdle, the housing and economic recovery could be proceeding at a much stronger pace,” he said.

Most and least affordable markets: Among large metro areas, Indianapolis was America’s most affordable housing market with 96% of all homes sold easily afforded by the typical family, according to the report.

Wages in Indianapolis are reasonably high with the median family income at $66,900, nearly $2,000 above the national median. Meanwhile, the median price for homes sold there during the first three months of 2012 was a mere $102,000.

Other major markets that topped the most affordable list included Dayton, Ohio, where 94 percent of homes sold were considered comfortably affordable; Lakeland, Fla., with a 93 percent affordability score and Modesto, Calif. at 93 percent.

Decidedly unaffordable was New York, where only 31 percent of homes sold were affordable to median income families, who earned $69,200. The median home price in the metro area was $400,000.

Other least affordable large markets included San Francisco (40 percent), Honolulu (48 percent), and Los Angeles (50 percent).

In smaller markets, Cumberland, Md. topped even Indianapolis with 99 percent of homes sold affordable to median income families in the area. Homes sold for a median of $80,000 there, with local families typically earning about $53,000.

The least affordable small market was Ocean City, N.J., with an index rating of 46 percent for families earning the median income of $71,100. Other expensive housing markets in this category included Santa Cruz, Calif., San Luis Obispo, Calif., Santa Barbara, Calif. and Laredo, Texas.

Investors fled stocks and made a rush toward the safety of U.S. Treasuries Thursday, sending 10-year yield to a record low close, as worries about Greece’s future in the eurozone continued to escalate.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 156 points, or 1.2%, and the S&P 500 lost 20 points, or 1.5%. The day’s retreat marked the fifth day of declines for the Dow and S&P 500.

The Nasdaq closed in the red for a fourth consecutive session, shedding 60 points, or 2.2%.

All three indexes ended at the lowest levels since January.

Concerns about Greece’s place in the 17-nation eurozone continued to build, pushing investors toward U.S. government debt, which is perceived as a safe haven investment. The yield on the 10-year Treasury was 1.706% Thursday, the lowest closing level on record.

European leaders voiced support Wednesday for keeping Greece in the body, but said the debt-ridden country must stick with unpopular austerity measures if it wants to continue receiving help.

Greek voters rebelled against those measures in the May 6 elections, denying the ruling coalition — which had agreed to the bailout terms — the votes needed to form a new government. Greek voters will go to the polls again on June 17.

Though the ability to form a governing coalition remains uncertain, the main fear is that an anti-austerity ruling party could cause the bailout deal to unravel, leading to a Greek default and an exit from the euro.

Citing the “heightened risk that Greece may not be able to sustain its membership of Economic and Monetary Union,” Fitch Ratings downgraded Greece’s credit rating by one notch to CCC.

Adding to those concerns, the European Central Bank has suspended its lending to some Greek banks that need to sufficiently boost their capital.

Meanwhile, a growing number of depositors are withdrawing their money amid worries that their savings could be converted to a devalued currency if Greece drops the euro.

The rapid withdrawals add pressure on the Greek banking system, which is the “primary trigger for some from of the eurozone break-up,” said Jonathan Loynes, chief European economist at Capital Economics.

Investors remain worried about what a Greek exit from the eurozone would mean for global financial systems.

“Not surprisingly, concerns are growing that bank runs could soon become a regular feature in other troubled countries in the region deemed at risk of following Greece’s lead,” said Loynes.

Adding to Europe’s troubles, Spain got yet another slap in the face Thursday, when Moody’s Investors Service downgraded sixteen Spanish banks including giants Banco Santander and BBVA, saying the Spanish government’s “ability to provide support to the banks has reduced.” Earlier the ratings agency downgraded four of the country’s regional governments.

Stocks finished in the red Wednesday, as positive economic data in the U.S. failed to counter increasing pessimism over Greece’s fiscal woes.

Companies: Facebookpriced its initial public offering at $38 a share after the closing bell Thursday. Shares of Facebook will begin trading Friday on the Nasdaq.

The offering raised $16 billion, making it the most valuable tech IPO in history.

Retail giants Wal-Mart and Sears Holdings were among the biggest gainers Thursday. Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retailer, posted stronger-than-expected quarterly earnings and sales.

Rival Sears also reported a profit, even as sales declined, thanks to a boost from selling real estate assets. The retailer also announced it was looking at a partial spin-off of its Canadian operations.

Shares of JPMorgan Chase fell Thursday, a day after the director of the FBI confirmed his agency had launched an initial investigation into a $2 billion trading loss suffered by the bank.

Economy: Initial jobless claims were unchanged in the week ended May 12 from the revised figure of 370,000. The number came in weaker than expected.

Foreclosures fell for the third straight month in April, reaching the lowest level since 2007, according to tracking service RealtyTrac.

A Philadelphia Fed report showed that regional manufacturing unexpectedly plunged in May for the first time in eight months. The Philly Fed index fell to -5.8 from 8.5 in April. Economists were expecting the index to increase to 8.8. Any reading below zero indicates weakness.

The index of leading indicators, which gauges the economy’s performance over the next three to six months, was also discouraging. The index fell 0.1% in April, disappointing economists who expected it to rise 0.2%.

World markets: European stocks slid on Thursday. Britain’s FTSE 100 and the DAX in Germany slipped 1.2% and France’s CAC 40 fell 1.1%.

Most Asian markets ended higher following a report that showed the Japanese economy grew 1% in the first quarter, which was much better than forecasts. Tokyo’s Nikkei gained 0.9% on the news, while the Shanghai Composite rose 1.4%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng slipped 0.3%.

Currencies and commodities: The dollar fell against the Japanese yen, but edged higher against the euro and British pound.

Oil for June delivery edged down 25 cents to settle at $92.56 a barrel.

Gold futures for June delivery rose $38.30 to settle at $1,5574.90 an ounce.