the push to limit speculation in the oil market...what impact it could have on oil prices...even as they've fallen from their highs. as the recession continues...many people are finding themselves more and more in debt...what they can do to help ease their financial burdens and repair that very important credit score. and...why you may want to think twice before investing your retirement all in company stock...why it could pose a risk to your retirement security....it's all ahead on this edition of first business. don't look now but the march to may rally is under significant pressure welcome in glad you're along for the ride. the selling of u.s. stocks in july taking the s&p 500 down to levels we haven't seen since april even as oil prices collapsed almost $20 from their highs. on thursday is gonna be interesting to see how the market reacts to alcoa's earnings the company

reported another big loss for the second quarter more than four to $50 million loss in most market experts would say that even though alcoa is a big bet component there are more important companies to watch like ge and some transportation stocks. but we need more uncertainty and stories about computer hacking and government agency was size even the new art stock exchange impacting public access. federal regulatory officials say they are ready to open up debate over imposing limits on oil speculators... but industry insiders say the feds are completely missing the mark.... and that the problem lies with shrinking supply not speculators. for the next 2 months, the commodity futures trading commission will hold hearings to determine whether the government should place limits on the position sizes that speculators in oil and other energy markets can trade. some say that will only result in artificial oil prices "as far as limiting speculators.. the market takes care of that itself.. price

discovery becomes tainted if you shackle that ability to trade and find prices." right now the cftc already sets position limits on speculators in ag futures.. including corn, wheat, soybeans.. and other ag products but the energy markets have no government imposed limits on speculators... instead, individual exchanges set those limits.. but they are not required to enforce them. and some say the current government limits on ag futures don't work well anyways. they really haven't yet.. occasionally little effective. .but not consistantly working that way.. adjustments are needed to but to hammer down on specs.. not right answer despite limits on speculators in ag futures - they are still able to move the grain

markets.... gavin mcguire of the iowa grain company points to the record corn prices last year... when they reached 8 dollars a bushel... that spike was largely caused by fears of corn shortages after massive floods... mcguire says speculators caused the price to go maybe a dollar higher than they should have. he believes there's a more effective solution to avoid higher prices. if they want to limit upward momentum... because people don't like paying lot for commodities .. they have to expand production or limit demand.. and oil experts .. like dave bahoric.. say the feds are *not getting at the real solution on the debate over higher oil prices... what is not being diussed since the nixon era is energy policy.. #1 - we will never be energy independent.. there will

be ties to other sources but we'll never get away from it - but we can decrease use.. you can be a little smarter." the commodity futures trading commission will also try to improve the way trades are reported especially involving hedge funds and index funds - all in an effort to boost transparency. we've seen more and more of the triple digit dates for the doubt and several dozen points for the s&p 500 michael palmer along with us as a chicago board option exchange. i have a sense that the volatility fear has picked up considerably in the last five or six sessions. if that is right we saw for the past three months we saw a sustained lower wing of value across-the-board and now something has put the market because in the last five to six trading days volatility has crept up. where has distort what did you see volatility in

the first? we saw a lot of bids for volatility, and and the basic material stocks. they crept into more commodities and as soon as the s&p 500 starting turning downward it was everywhere. we certainly have seen a steep sell-off in oil racine belles commodity exchange traded fund based material exchange traded fund county to keep the bid would volatility meaning that they think prices could move lower? absolutely. they are going for what we call the $28 put stay going for the sway of the money options so they feel that way when a lot of commodities are still very overpriced. we will leave it there would michael palmer of the trading floor at the chicago board options exchange he's with group one trading. thank you tom. google is taking aim at microsoft after announcing plans to roll out its own p-c operating system, google chrome os, which should arrive to market in the second half of next year. though google did say chrome will work with full- powered desktop computers, the

operating system will target the growing market for netbooks, or smaller computer designed primarily for web use. "microsoft has a problem with netbooks. their current operating system, microsoft vista, does not run on netbooks. their older software, microsoft xp does. so if nothing else, this is a way for google to annoy microsoft." with pricetags as low as $300 netbook sales have exploded in the past 3 years. according to market research firm idc, less than 200-thousand netbooks were sold in 2007, compared with more than 11 million in 2008 and a projected 21 million this year. whether or not that trend continues could be the key to google's foray into microsoft territory. "we'll see what happens in 2010, 2011, 2012 when the economy hopefully rebounds. there's a lot of pricing pressure on laptops and desktops now, we'll see as more consumers move back

to those machines whether or not the chrome operating system will be successful." benderoff added that microsoft will be coming out with its own new operating system, windows 7, this coming fall with a version designed to run on netbook computers. still to come why investing in your company may not be such a good idea...the problems you could run into when looking to retire. but first, tips on how to emerge from a mountain of debt ....and ways on how to repair your credit score....that's coming up next.

no doubt about it that consumers continue to see their credit crunch wising foreclosure wage increase in credit card delinquencies and lenders putting standards up to get loans in the first place. let's talk about all of this with steve with the president at the equifax personal solution. welcome to the program meant to see you how to access consumer credit these days about a year and a half into this recession? clearly consumers are overextended on their credit if you look at the numbers from the government there are two and a half trillion dollars of credit related debt credit card related debt consumers are dealing with averages is about 10,000 per household around the

united states. we've done a terrible job at managing our debt load and now we're in up up to our ears in terms of credit card debt. and so the latest retells find that in fact the lane in becoming more and more delinquent or your credit cards just as those of buses continue to rise correct. i think what's happened is that there's a large population of consumers and unemployed who live, under a time of financial stress. two things are happening either they're not able to make their monthly payments at all because they all have them, or they're just barely making the minimum monthly payments which unfortunately means that they're going further in debt because the interest is racking up. this is the this is coming at a time when lenders are rationed but those standards what is all of this doing to the media credit scores out there for u.s. consumers? what do they like? believe or not they haven't changed too much. they've actually gone up just a little bit. if you look at the median across the united states according to five go is a 720. that hasn't changed

dramatically in the last two years because what has happened is that some percentage of the population is behaving a lot better been used to fill best offsetting some of the people that are frankly struggling. a 720 credit's core will be to any kind of credit to need even with these higher standards within it? it used to. unfortunately no 750 is almost a new 720 a few years ago 720 was great now was closer to 750 to be able to get the best rates possible. things are definitely tougher than they used to be. things are tougher as we mentioned it standards are higher and credit conditions more difficult for consumers but are we continuing to make the same mistakes when it comes to this mountain of debt that we are under? there is some evidence that consumers are getting better about managing their financial lives one barometer would be the national savings rate is up to as high as 6.9% now where two years ago it was minus one. clearly people are saving for a

rainy day trying to do a better job of managing their finances and that's all very good. they still have a lot of that so the next big hurdle for people to get over is how they manage their financial life to get out of a faster and then what they are currently doing. that does bring up the dichotomy that we may be saving more mon but at a time we owe more money so you have to make choices i always say in you know this the money is about making choices we need to choose to save money as opposed to paying the bills that may not necessarily be the right choice in the short or the long run. absolutely the people who were saving money are the people who are the be most concerned about having emergency fund because they think they can give laid-off or lose their jobs and some point in time other people are being smarter than knowing that it's better use of your money to pay down those expensive credit cards than it is to put money in a savings account. paul to was about that the return on investment you don't think that the pain your credit card bill down to a balance is necessarily an investment but the fact the

matter is if you have a mountain of debt on that bill is a decent return on those dollars. it's a huge return on those dollars in my example of a typical cd boeing 3 045% vs. paying down a car would. where are you getting those five percent cds these days? those are hard to find but i'm sure there for a few out there who but what i would encourage people to do is to get some help in getting focus on paying down debt there's a couple of things you can do. make the commitment to get started. that's a big personal commending you need to make to get going on this program. the second thing you need to do is create a budget. you have toave a an so that you know how good one and get out of that. when the best ways to do that would be used a product like equifax dead watched we can actually help create the plan for you keep on the plan give you a monthly fee that provide you zero words to change your credit reports and also give you scores and see where you're standing on the credit accord. this is program from equifax that cost $15 a

month real quick the top three priorities must pay bills per car first as a common first? absolutely because those are the ones with the highest rates in any other personal loans may have to have higher rates on them. and finally anything you can do to get down to zero. steve along with us president at equifax personal solutions. thank you steve. online items from iran to north korea, political unrest continues around the globe... on our website...one author talks about the impact world tensions could have on business here in the u.s. plus, a new study finds disparities in how different racial groups save for retirment. and...with some states still without fiscal budgets for next year...we take a look at the municipal bond market and how it's being affected. and straight ahead on the show.... how investing in your company's stock now could cause problems later down the road....that's after the break.

the historic destruction to retirement savings thanks to the bear market is bad enough but for many it has been a double whammy if they invest in their own company's stock. many workers wind up investing in their company stock but it could pose a big risk to their retirement security. sean anderson is a visiting professor at the university of illinois school of law. professors nice to see welcome to the program. the idea here is to allow workers to have scan and again for the companies to work for. what is wrong with that? as a concept nothing is wrong with it. the problem arises when the scan and the game is a workers' retirement.

because having that much of their retirement savings invested in company stock makes it very under diversified so if the company runs into trouble they're gonna lose their jobs in their career benefits but also their retirement savings. we saw this become an issue with that and run back in 2001 so many of those employees had so much of those 401 of retirement programs invested in their stock what is this still a problem? it is still a problem in part because the reforms that came into place after in ron didn't really address the problem even for 401 k plans but those reforms did even and pledged another plan or esau and those are still fair games. in aesops are used by private companies not the new york stock exchange and nasdaq. there are a few publicly traded companies put the ball park of them are not.

was the upside for companies to use employee stock ownership plans other than providing some kind of retirement savings vehicle. a few different things the company wants to sell stock to the east did it becomes a source of raising capital for the company would pretty generous tax benefits associated with it. the air the other scenario is with the retirement found there were the owner of the company was to and retired in diversify their assets in he can sell to the east side and that's the easy way to get cash out. is separate from the company's employee stock ownership program has the workers participate in the company provided the stock to that pledge. that's right there separate entities that shares are held in trust for the employees. can the employee still their stock to diversify? only a limited circumstances when the employee has 55 years of age in the year to a company he or she can steal some of the stock but not much.

diversification been working 2008 this we know but traditionally it has been a source of limiting volatility in investing for many investors. are there alternatives but still provide their retirement nest egg for employees and allows for diversification? who chore the 401k plan is one option as long as you are limiting the company's stock in bear. but there are there's the traditional benefit pension plan but that's a vanishing breed at this point but there are a money purchase pension plans and profit-sharing pool to like to see which comes to these employees stock ownership plans. well reforms would like to see? essentially i would like to see the aesop galway by way of limiting or even prohibiting the amount of employee stock bet the retirement plan can hold. under that scenario if this eliminated entirely than the company is not providing retirement savings options for their workers at all. the idea would be for them to provide a

diversified be target play like a 401k dozen flight testing in the two funds with these money purchase plan or something like thatso mind is the elimination altogether let's assume they're gonna stick around because companies have a vested interest in to having that interested by your company stock when it's a private company called the you reform? it becomes very intricate as far as enforcement but another idea would be the cap the amount of stock in any plan can have. and the amount of company stock in any plan to have in it 10% of each participant's about you or possibly even 20 percent. that becomes a monitoring problem because as the stock fluctuates in value you have to keep an eye on that. and transparency becomes the issue. precisely so the easier solution is to just say no company stock and retirement plans everything has to be diversified. certainly best the idea that we appreciate thank you so much

john anderson along with us professor of the university of illinois school of law. and as we continue to see drops in oil and the overall stock market we will take a look at both in chart talk next.

welcome back everybody as the overall stock market is an pull back mode now i guess the question is how aggressive is this sell off going to be cut? and how much participation is going to have? right now is

really seem less than average volume for the past few weeks as the market has pulled back. significantly in very short period of time it seems like the market and investors the one to believe that the market's going to see the gains since the spring time in those gains have evaporated over the past several weeks. from looking at the trough of the spider's been may lows are pretty important to watch so those are around $89 a share of course the spiders are now at $88 a share so on a eight lows before that is really hard to tell where there's any significant levels of support. and the stock selling, as folks are selling off a lot of commodities including oil will take a look at this thing blows 75 just before the july 4th holiday now buried making 60 in the city level there were some support back in may below that you're talking about 55 or so with goes back to those april levels. let us know how things are in your neck of the wasn't us an e-mail at first business x. c o m. see you online or back

here next time.