president obama looks to drum up support for financial reform... plus...going for broke... how some people are getting out of debt. and...foreclosures are not letting up....despite all of the government's efforts...plus... viewer mail...it's all ahead on this edition of first business. good morning everyone. it's friday april 23rd, 2010. and the pressure to pass some form of financial reform is mounting. the senate could start debating its own version of the bill as early as next week. and angie, i guess we're going to be watching to see if this is a bipartisan effort. oh i can't wait for that one. and also, consumers are definitely out there using that plastic. american express reported in with earnings after close last night. profits doubled. so, credit card companies are making money, still very nicely. well, in the meantime, greece just can't seem to get away from its debt problems. and it seems to have the markets on edge, just a little bit. we'll check in on the trading floor coming up later.

collectively as a country-- credit card debt is well above $2 trillion. the average american owes credit card companys $8300 at a charles schwab event for the federal reserve's money smart week-- people are learning how to reduce their debt and create a budget plan that will let them get some sleep at night. not being able to maintian a monthly budget is one of the reasons paula c johnson--who owns a hair salon-- is here for help with her money matters. "i have been in business for 30 years and because of the economy many of my clients have been laid off or losing their jobs so it has effected my business as they do their own hair." melvin keys is concerned about his children's future. "i have a retirement program started but as far as savings for college, that's probably my most pressing need." if there is a way to sneak in a nat sound pop of him talking for 1 sec, that would be

fantastic. ryan lee of charles schwab, consults people such as johnson and keys on how to pay down debt and start a rainy day fund. he says a big step is paying more than the minmum on the credit card balance-- "especially in the current economy you've seen credit card rates jump up to 20 30% the numbers move up automatically and without paying it off it really hurts their financial situation immediately. even at a 13% interest rate-- lee says paying the minimum on $6,000 dollars of credit card debt over 6 years tacks on an additional $2600. "relative to paying 300 dollars and paying it off in 2 years" "you have an immediate want, you charge it and you forget that what you are paying for $100 now with the interest on going it can be $150, $200, $300 if you are just paying the minimums on those credit cards." taeshima white who also does financial consultations at charles schwab admits some clients have to plan out how to pay off their bills. "the truth of the matter is

many people out there are working and living pay check to pay check. so if that's you in that situation, it may come of the first of the month and you don't have enough money to pay your bills. so what you should be doing is getting ahead of those bills a little bit and with every check pay off your bills. so on the 15th, think about what is going to be due on the 1st, and use some of that money to pay off the debts, start thinking ahead, make that a part of your plan." and even she admits many people have a difficult time-- facing the numbers. "it's kind of like that scary thing that you try to avoid -- go in head first face it, because you want to avoid it because it doesnt feel if you address it now , longer term it's going to feel a lot better." and this may be a sign people are choosing cash over plastic earlier in the month the federal reserve reported that credit card usage fell 13%. president obama is now taking on wallstreet... he was in new york's financial district - urging for more progress to reform banking practices. in a speech at cooper union

college on thursday, mr. obama pressured congress to pass financial reform ... and explained the risks of doing nothing. "it is essential that we learn the lessons of this crisis, so we don't doom ourselves to repeat it. and make no mistake, that is exactly what will happen if we allow this moment to pass - an outcome that is unacceptable to me and to the american people. the house of representatives passed its own version of financial reform legislation last december... the senate is currently debating its version... mr. obama also urged wallstreet not to fight the overhaul effort. but critics say... at this point, the reform legislation is so watered down, it really has no teeth .... and what congress really needs to do is break up the big banks. "these banks are too big.. volker rule is step in teh right direction.. make banks downsize.. return to glass steagall is a better idea - that would cut them in half." depaul university professor rebel cole says on a scale of 1

to 10... the reform bills now on the table amount to a 1 or 2. he says congress is doing nothing to change business practices of the rating agencies that gave triple a ratings to junk investments before the financial meltdown. let's check in with jessica hoversen, mf global. she's there over at the c m e group. and jessica, greece is the news after moodys' once again cut greece's debt rating four notches above junk status. is this fear still in the markets? the fear over greece is definitely still in the market. there are three issues we need to focus on. one, the problems in greece just underscore the structural inaccuracies of the european monetary union. secondly, a possible default in greece brings forth the reality that western nations can default on

their debt. and three, i think that time is no longer on the side of the greece. back in march, greece was saying that it wasn't seeking financial aid, and now it seems as though it can't get financial aid soon enough. so, i think it would be fair to say that we can expect some sort of help from the imf quite soon. let's talk about overall stock market. yesterday one trader said that stocks were tired. do you agree? i do, i think that we had a really impressive rally up here, and the profit news is pretty bullish. i wanna say over 80 percent of the companies in the s&p 500 that have announced earnings have beat estimates. which is a positive development. but, we basically need a greater catalyst. i think overall analyst expectations were for a pretty decent outlook, but the market is still very concerned about the larger macro headwinds. i think we're gonna need either to get over this 1210 kind of hump to push us up to 1250 or we're gonna suffer a little bit of a

correction before we get the momentum to move higher. now you're talking about the s&p 500. also, looking ahead to next week, the fomc meeting and the decision or interest rates. do you think that could actually be a market mover? i think it could to the degree that people are going to watch the language. i would say prior to april the market was almost convinced that april would be the month where they would change the language on the statement and remove the extended period tax. however with the recent rhetoric, i think those expectations have changed somewhat. and now the market is a little confused as to what the fomc will do. i think if they do leave the language put, it means that they keep rates low for a long time. and generally speaking, low rates in this low inflation environment in which we are currently operating on, are generally bullish for stocks. ok, we will see what happens and keep our eye on it. thank you very much. wall street vs. main

street...viewers voice their opinions in today's viewer mail. but first...2010 is turning out to be a pretty bad year for foreclosures...what needs to be done to help save people's homes.

foreclosures are on track to be worse this year than in 2009. does that mean all those efforts on forclosure prevention programs are not working? mike brauneis / protivity is

here to talk about the trends. welcome mike. thank you. let's take a look of the numbers on the foreclosure filings here. how concerning is this trend and pace that we're seeing in 2010? i think that it is very concerning. and there are a lot of discouraging trends behind those headline numbers it for example, march was the worst month since really the crisis began. up about 16% over 2009. so the quarter was bad. march was the worst month and things only seem at this point to be getting worse. and what do you think is causing the worst numbers at this point? i think initially, obviously the crisis was triggered by bad loans. people buying too much house. or selecting loans with features that they didn't really understand and weren't equipped to handle. now i think the trend has definitely shifted. we're seeing borrowers that are losing their jobs and having no income to pay any reasonable loan amount. as well

as property values have fallen so far. a lot borrowers that would of been able to repay their loans simply decided it doesn't make sense to do so. ok, so let's turn our attention to the president's loan modification program. here are some numbers on how it's been going. so is this falling way short of the president's goal of trying to modify 4 million loans? the straight answer is yes. as in, there's been a somewhat subtle shift in the administration's language around the goals. where initially everyone understood it to be 3-4 million loans modified, property saved, families staying in their house. now it is, well we really meant 3-4 million people having modification offers made to them, but not permanent modifications. that is a big difference. absolutely, and you

see now as you look at the trend lines, we may hit the 4 million trial offers. but realistically in looking at it, honestly we're going to fall well short of what we had initially hoped. and what is the confusion around the president's loan modification program? what do borrowers need to figure out? i think there certainly is a lot of confusion, there's a lot interest in the program. the web site for the program for example has got more than 70 million hits since was launched. so there is a lot interest. i think some of the challenges are wondering, for example whether even the servicer that holds my loan participants in the program. whether the investor of the loan will allow the modification. some of the greater confusion though, and a lot of the perceived secrecy of the program relates to what's called the net present value test. where, in simple terms, the modification has to make economic sense for the holder of the loan in order to do it. so i am better off offering a modification than taking my chances and letting the loan ago

in a foreclosure. but, the specific action behind that are complicated and not very clear to the individual borrowers. so they can be told that you don't qualify because you don't pass our test. but its not well understood what the components of that test are. now the president and the treasury department have been really outspoken in trying to change what's not working. and so now recently they put into action a principal reduction idea. where they're giving more incentives to lenders and servicers to actually reduce the loan balances for the struggling home owners. is that really happening because i can imagine that lenders and servicers still don't want to do that? we are starting to see a small number, atleast on a relative basis out of all types modifications. of principal reductions being done, but it is slow to get off the ground. exactly for the reasons that you raise. especially because of servicers being concerned about what are being referred to as strategic defaults. where if a

borrower can repay his or her loan but just doesn't want to, why should the loan holder have to take the hit, permanently reduce the principal and give the borrower a chance to benefit from having the property value comeback. ok, one last quick question i want to throw in here. is there anything that the treasury department is missing in its approach that you think they should do? it's certainly what we hear from the servicers that we work with. is that the program is still far too administratively complex. the guidelines change seemingly every couple of weeks and although the industry has devoted billions of dollars towards building effective modification programs, they just can't keep up with the changes in the reporting requirements. i think more flexibility there, more incentives to encourage servicers to come up with solutions that fit their loan portfolios vs one size fits all across the country. would be very helpful. ok, we will hope for the best. thank you very much. after the show....be sure to head to our website firstbusinessnews.com ...

university...why a lot of people opportunities in selling weiners. race to beat the clock to take advantage of the 8-thousand make the deadline. updates....all at first business one viewer's suggestion to get american companies to produce more products here in the u.s...that's next.

welcome back everybody. time now for our viewer mail segment. paul eggers is back with us. and let's get to our first caller about health care. health care reform law that was passed did take concerns liked

those that our viewer expressed on undocumented immigrants very seriously. undocumented immigrants will not benefit from any subsidies to buy health insurance. and even if they're able to pay for health insurance all by themselves, they will not be able to purchase any health insurance that's on these new federal fairly created exchanges. yeah, it was a big point of discussion during debate. apparently that was settled before the health care law has been passed. so let's get to our next comment here. thank you for that e-mail. i

wanna point out, we have talked about goldman sachs, the fraud charge on our show a lot this week. and one trader on our show this week said that if goldman thought they were in trouble, they would be fiercely making deals with the securities exchange commission's and try to get out of it. but the fact that goldman says that it is innocent of these charges shows that they can either prove their innocence and they have a good shot against proving it against the sec charges. or they think their lawyers can outsmart the sec's top guns. who knows. definitely gonna be interesting to see that all unfolds. now, moving on to another viewer e- mail. yeah, i mean he's right. thank you for that e-mail. let's take

a look at these numbers. they are very scary paul. those are some scary numbers. i think we are all looking at raising taxes. even on the middle class, even though that doesn't seem popular. i and everyone maybe agrees with keith that they probably hate the notion but they realize that it's likely a reality. yeah. well, thank you very much for sending in your comments. keep them coming because we always want to hear from you. call us or e-mail us.

coming up, trader dan deming talks about consumer spending and how it's helping some of the etf's. the sector's clear, captain. seems that way. but they're here.

[ beeping ] we have an intruder! 30 meters... 20 meters... 12...8... 5... [ beeping ] beep...beep...beep... i thought you guys were cleaning out here. uhh, we are... we're...uhh...sweeping. yeah, for space aliens. yeah, for space aliens. well, good luck with that. imagine what a little time can do for your family. i think our work is done here.

in our chart talk this morning, trader dan deming/stutland equities joins us. good morning to you dan. good morning angela. and what is the smart money thinking about this market dan? is it about to fall apart or are we going to continue to grind higher? well, you know, i think it's a mixed opinion as far as

the smart money. i will tell you one thing right now, certainly the momentum is still continuing to the upside. the financials have grown into a little bit of a snag with the news from goldman sachs. but the rest of the market is looking pretty good. look at the broader market. yesterday we saw the russell close at new yearly highs, around 7035 i believe. looking very strong. looking at a couple sectors within the market. look at a home building sector, the x h b going to new yearly highs. and x r t, which is a retail e t f has also exploded to new highs around 4478. so, you are seeing some sectors catch fire now the market seems to have stabilize from the goldman news. let's take a look that retail chart. that is interesting because that means that the consumer is out there spending. so, is this going to continue or do you think they're going to get scared off and worry about the economy? right now, it looks like a consumer is some what supporting this market, even with all the bad housing numbers. not so much, i mean,

we did get good numbers from existing homes. now this morning we're also seeing new home sales. let's see. hopefully that number will lead us to new highs coming into today. but, over all, the consumer seems to be supporting this market pretty well. and right now i am telling you, we can see the manufacturing taking a little bit of a foothold here. so, there are some signs in the economy that it is turning here. we sure love to spend our money, don't we. thanks a lot, great have you on this show this morning. a weak job market is likely to continue over the next 6 months according to a new survey. 20% of chief financial officers questioned said their companies plan to increase hiring in the next 6 months.. while 26% plan to decrease hiring. 35% said the best way to create jobs was to cut personal income taxes... and 32% said cut corporate taxes meanwhile.. many expect that employee wages and bonuses will remain stagnant... that's it for today's show -

have a great weekend... and we'll see you on monday.

the sector's clear, captain. seems that way. but they're here. [ beeping ] we have an intruder! 30 meters... 20 meters... 12...8... 5... [ beeping ] beep...beep...beep... i thought you guys were cleaning out here. uhh, we are... we're...uhh...sweeping. yeah, for space aliens. yeah, for space aliens. well, good luck with that. imagine what a little time can do for your family. i think our work is done here.