should the government pay whistle blowers? one idea from the stock market's top enforcer to find fraud by paying for insider information. plus, the number of utility customers drops for the first time in more than 50- years...what's causing more people to turn off the power. and....businesses remain resistant to healthcare reform....why they're not behind the president's plan and what it's going to take to gain their support...these stories and more on this edition of first business. the market rally of better than 30 percent since the springtime a drop in the pace of planned price declines still not enough to erase the fact that the job market is very weak and by most expectations it will remain weak for many months to come in

at contains too wary consumers. and taking a look at the scorecard for your kid a sustained rally s and p 500 of 9% nasdaq up 25% in coming up in the show run talk to one money manager who stays he would hold on for more days will tell you why coming up a little bit later. but put him on the charts as well and really take a look and find out welcome happening in your portfolio. the latest response to the market meltdown by the stock cops is to permanently ban a type of trade called naked shorting....a technique that allowed people to bet a stock would drop in price without ever actually borrowing the stock. it's one of many actions taken by the securities and exchange commission in recent months, ranging from trading rules to investigative tools, looking for fraud. robert khuzami is the director of enforcement at the securities and exchange commission.

a report on what went wrong at the s-e-c with madoff has not been completed, but tomorrow on the show, khuzami talks about how enforcement is changing. even if madoff had not occurred it would be natural from a priority point of view to look for ponzi link behavior in the market cycle that we're in. that's tomorrow on the show.

time now for trade talks. how does head to the cme group and join peter cook of performance trust investment divisors of we have the dow holding above 9000 and is still struggling to build on the dance made from last week the you take this opportunity to sell and to this rally will you hold on? some stocks may be a little bit overbought on short term basis but the bigger picture is that the stock market is likely to go higher based on the number of indicators first me on the only one war breaking into highs for the rest of the world is doing that also. he suddenly it if you were bound to invest it in place to invest as and when stocks they've been a lagger run well and it's interesting for the last few days while the stock market in general has not made much headway bank stocks have come to the floor of one mexican bank stocks are bought kept abreast of market at the some interesting numbers are taking place now. today we have the first upwind and s&p index that

is the index that tracks health prices since may of 2006. we are starting to see housing activity upheld start to move higher we have new-home sales yesterday was the first of movie was up 11% we also had inventoried of rundowns passed a broad on top of that when you think about that is the main asset class is residential real- estate. i want to talk about some more equal and that real quickly gdp for the second quarter estimate for the second quarter coming friday and there's no room to disappoint with the but especially given how much investors have bid up this market. would you think? i don't think there's really too much of an expectation is - 2 or something like that we may get a little bit of open trade but the key thing is that it ought to be true that the third quarter isn't of gdp in the reason for the december producing far fewer cars if they are sold each month so on an annualized basis we are

producing half as many berceuse is a similar type of scenario and the housing market where housing information is about twice what the actual number of new homes were building. and that kind of activity as we catch up with demand is actually low commodity politicians have been much better second-half gdp statistics. woolsey tower all plays out pull the rest of the week. thank you so much running as peter cook with performance trust. the very good. still to come the impact the president's healthcare reform plan could have on businesses and why they're not exactly keen on the idea. but first....more and more people shutting off the power...what's behind the drop off in utilitiy customers.

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there's virtually no industry that has escaped this bad economy - now utility companies are feeling the heat..... as customers close their accounts... and cut back on usage. utility companies across the nation are reporting the largest drops in customer accounts in decades... com-ed which serves northern illinois - saw a decline of17- thousand accounts over the past 6 months.... that's just a fraction of 1% of total customers - but it is the

largest drop on record since 1953. experts say the utility companies that are seeing the biggest drops are in areas that saw housing prices collapse the most. it could be foreclsoures.. people renting moved in wtih family.. or moved out of state utility companies are also seeing drops in electricity usage even among current customers. for residential homes - usage was down almost 4 % from january to april. small and medium sized businesses cut usage by almost 2% large companies and factories have cut electricity usage by almost 13% what we have seen for variety of reasons.. less electricity.. economy or energy efficient..third reason.. weather we've had.. more mild

than normal for the summer and it's all having a big impact on the bottomlines for the nation's largest utility companies the utility index is down more than 2% since january but individual performances vary stronger utility stocks include; florida power and light and public service enterprise group weaker utility stocks are excelon and southern, if that customer never going to pay.. if they move and are not accountable.. that's an expense.. could be cost utility not able to make up many utility companies also have also made large infrastructure investments they need to pay for... and so analysts say they will have to make up for the lost revenue by rate hikes. we expect utilities will seek rate increases .. for lower usage patters.. and large

capital spending projects have planned for next 5 to 10 years for now though experts say many people are seeing a small break on their utility bills - the cost of electricity actually went down 10% this summer.. the biggest consumer bank in the u-s may shrink it's footprint. bank of america has 61-hundred branches throughout the country and says it could reduce that by as much as 10 percent. the bank grew into the behemoth it is through aggressive expansion and acquisitions of smaller regional banks. it also was one of the biggest recipients of bailout money. most recently, b of a bought merrill lynch and countrywide, expanding its presence in mortgage and investment banking and management. while it says it's branch network may shrink, there are no specific immediate plans for closing branches. b of a stock is down more than five percent this year.

online items after the show... check us out online to see why target funds keep missing the mark and why people continue puting their money in these retirement investments, despite the poor performance. plus, a look at the complex relationship between the u.s. and china...why money is a big part of it.. and, a technology company and a luxury hotel join forces to help boost business...you can find these stories and more on our website, firstbusinessx.com. and straight ahead on the show... as the debate over healthcare reform continues on capitol hill....businesses have yet to warm up to the plan...more on that after the break.

congress may blow president obama's deadline to deal with healthcare by the end of this week, setting up a month of lobbying and debate over changing health insurance, how people buy it and for how much. john zern is an executive vice president at aon consulting. when the program. the presidential goal is to expand coverage and to limit cost increases when comes to expanding coverage one of the many proposals out there is to mandate the companies offered health insurance. what is the business community reaction? but i would say mixed we recently conducted a survey of over a 1100 employers in the u.s. all sizes geographies and industries-63 percent of the respondents opposed a mandate. a lot of resistance? if paramount for short. when you look get a lot of different issues that come on with their employer mandate the methodology and lorries have to offer a myth in benefit levels and contributor a mythic minimum

portion towards the employer mandate purses a penalty to opt out of it there's a lot of concern that the employer mandate start to undermine the employer basic health care system which is 93 percent of our respondents actually favored employer based health care system. we talk about mandatory coverage the specifics obviously still need to be put in place but you generally are talking about companies that have to provide coverage was to collect some of these were basically paint a tax or a fee for the offering those some exemptions if the firm is really small or if they are below a certain pressure hold of revenue. apparently not enough to satisfy many of those in the survey in terms of their concerns. i think there's a lot of details still left undecided. from the public opinion from the employer side it's hard to really keep behind an issue once you have all of the detailed data and is a fair amount of time allotted details to be ironed out not only on the

employer mandate on a variety of issues. the youth found a lot resistance among country take a look more than have opposed the idea of a public plan. over have opposed to health exchange to provide a marketplace and over have opposed to just having the uninsured in boston a public plan. what is the source of this resistance overall? had happened a couple of things first of all lack of details. around a variety of issues at the there is a concern to run the timing that was originally laid out by conference. in on a very complex issue as health care of the people really are behind the issue of a we can solve this in 60 days and the president has backed off and said last look before the end of the year for resolution and i really come back to i think it's a very complex issue there are details that need to be ironed out and people are waiting for those. when you see this resistance this in the business

community could also tell you that those are offering health care to their employees are necessarily seen these things broken. i think a lot of employers peeled away in a back to open the server results were 93 percent say the employer pay for the employer health care system in their ways that people believe there should be a tack fourth before the major or all of the system takes place. the other half of the presidential goal is to limit cost increases and souls we've seen the legislation in the week seen elsewhere is really beginning to put a price tag on prevention and trying to get productivity in the workplace a test well as in the birthplace. companies i imagine are a nice big endorsement for many firms. brain to for many employees how the seventh fastest of getting those employees to get on the prevention bandwagon? many employees have released been a significant amount of time in planning what sent the prevention programs there's a couple of key been prefaced

themselves. in order to implement a been a strong program there are a couple of things need to take place for all you need a critical issue and really well-designed program can be cultured changing for an organization. thirdly i think really need strong and attractive incentives for employees to get on the bust and really want to partake in participate in the well and structure in the coming war premiums for those who take event. we have to be there but i appreciate your thoughts. john along with us except russia president a year in consulting. with the s&p 508 month highs now we take a look at the overall stock market in chart talk after this in the know message.

as the bulls tried to continue pushing this market higher we noticed since the last two weeks the bulls have had a hard time in building on those gains. the bears haven't come out either it's been a little bit of digestion going on in the gains we've seen at the building of the new highs the leasing system forced to meet rabin in continuing and a lot of economic news and corporate earnings. us to look at the spiders tracks s&p 500 fell eight month highs so me last time rebecca these ties were back in november of 2008 which was when the presidential election and markets were up one that news. in a significant me take a look get back in uc resistance around $100 for the

spiders this was the first shopping. when everything fell off a cliff back in early october run 100 or thousand for the s&p five printer and here we are. to look at the nasdaq 100 accused which trap index are actually up 31% year-to-date singeing refer the nasdaq 100. the one-year performance here is back at the highs seen not highs but back at levels seen back in october. here again with the market for stock and fell off the cliff and september and october erased all those awful war respect in the fourth quarter and first quarter now and where at the first point of ruby some significant resistance. i get about and really doesn't mean anything we've been talking about this since april of this year exactly it's been going down consistently since april when the market has been going up

with no signs of backing down. speak to us on the web site and via e-mail will see you next time everybody. krupp