Employment growth suggests the resilience of U. S. Recovery

The U.S. economy showed signs of kicking the speed in March, adding 216,000 jobs and generate Obama to announce finally turned a corner.

The president and his Democratic colleagues said the last employment report Friday, and an unemployment rate that has fallen slightly to 8.8 percent, as proof that their policies, such as stimulus spending and reducing payroll, worked. All this, they explained, could become ammunition in their confrontation with House Republicans, who spoke of the deep cuts in the federal budget and threatened to stop government.

An emboldened Mr. Obama spoke of the political implications before several hundred workers at a center of United Parcel Service shipping in Landover, Maryland

"If these budget negotiations break down, we could end up having to quit the government, just when the economy begins to recover," Obama told workers. "So, given the encouraging news we received today on the job, what would be the height of irresponsibility to stop our economic momentum because of the same old Washington politics."

administration officials hit the same points over and over on Friday. The private sector added an average of 188,000 jobs over the first three months of 2011, and 1.8 million jobs since the beginning of the recovery. March was the 12th consecutive month of growth in jobs in the privatesector and the stock market rose slightly on the report from the Labor Department.

Manufacturing continued its improbable - comeback in March, adding 17,000 jobs - it is still modest. Health care added 37,000 jobs in the month, and professional and business services added 78,000, while 37 percent of this increase came from temporary help. Employment figures for January and February were revised slightly higher as well.

Yet many of Mars is also available in more than a few warning signs that the economy has not been cured of all ailments. The ranks of Americans who have been unemployed for 27 weeks or more are very painful, more than six million. And the labor force has declined steadily since the recession began, to the point that just 64.2 percent of adults are either in the work force or looking for work. This is the lowest rate of participation in a quarter century.

For several months now, economists have expressed the hope that unemployed Americans have heart for signs of new hires and re-enter the labor market. This does not occur in March,the participation rate remained unchanged.

"There is still a very inhospitable market for the unemployed," said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute. "We have five unemployed workers for each opening, and these are desperate times."

The average workweek, also remained unchanged at 34.3 hours and average hourly earnings remained static. These indicators show an economy on the demand for soft hints of deflation and little upward pressure on wages. Real earnings of the Brookings Institution noted on Friday, fell 1.1 percent last year.

"The oversupply of labor at very high it is unlikely we will see a significant acceleration in wage rates anytime soon," Joshua Shapiro, MFR Inc. economist, said Friday morning.

Although the overall unemployment rate fell to 8.8 percent - 8.9 percent in February and a peak of 10.1 per cent in late 2009 - the rate remains particularly high for blacks, 15 , 5 percent and for Latinos, 11.3 percent. (In 2007, black unemployment was 8.3 percent and was 5.6 percent for Latinos.)

In addition, localgovernments are experiencing a month-long purge. Localgovernments have paid 416,000 jobs since employment peaked in September 2008, and dropped 15,000 jobs in March.

Teenage unemployment remains off the cards and the long-term unemployment is only a tenth of a point below its historic high, "said Heather Boushey, senior economist at the Center for American Progress, a liberal group. "Although, after years of watching things get worse,it is good to see increasing overall employment."

The tension between the two views of Ms. Boushey's economy, its deep problems and signs of hope can be seen in a Bureau of Labor Statistics summary that breaks the economy into 16 sectors. It shows construction workers with a rate of 20 percent unemployment, and leisure and hotel employees to 13.2 percent. Yet the unemployment rate declined in 13 of the 16 sectors since March 2010.

It also poses a political enigma of the Federal Reserve, whose governors will meet in April to review their policy interest rates. How the council for the economy is the economic engine is finally starting to purr, in this case,some argue for "overshoot and rate hike later this year? Or weaknesses are sufficiently pronounced that it is wise to keep flooding the engine with cheap money?

The administration believes that Obama is too early to raise rates. Recoveries from financial shocks as severe as that of 2008 are often long and slow, and they argue against risking another failure.

Another issue is that augurs mid-term future. Jobs continue to grow in the spring, and with enough force - 300,000 permonth, for example - to reduce significantly the rate of unemployment? As Ms. Shierholz said, if the economy added 200,000 jobs permonth, it will be 2019 before reaching the employment rate that preceded the recession.

Many economists speak of optimism coming months. "The private sector of the economy was the locomotive pulling the economy forward," said Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at California State University, Channel Islands. "Exports record, better than expected sales detail and increased business capital spending are good news. "

But some grow wary after that. The storm clouds are numerous international - debt problems dramatically in Europe, uprisings sweeping the oil-rich Middle East, and many crises in Japan. The fear is that these evils can press the consumption and business confidence.

"The first half of this year will be the best job market we will see in all this expansion," said David Levy Jerome Levy Forecasting the Center. "After that, and looking toward 2012, the situation is doubtful."

Fornow, the economy of the United States confront global storms last month and even acquired a number of jobs in good health. Austan Goolsbee, chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, sounded content to stick with it fornow. "We're not quite know the answer" to the global turmoil, "he said. "For now, it's a good sign that you've heard in March that seemed to hit on consumer confidence and yet it did not slow the engine."

Medicare says it will pay for expensive drugs for prostate.

Medicare announced Wednesday it would pay for Dendreon Provenge prostate cancer drug. Whose $ 93,000 price tag had triggered a debate on the cost and effectiveness of drugs against cancer.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said in a note posted on its Web site that Provenge was "reasonable and necessary" treatment for Medicare patients who had stage prostate cancer for which the drug was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in April.

However, he said the evidence was "virtually nil" that Provenge was effective for men who had other stages of the disease, and therefore, he did not use so-called off-label must be repaid.

The coverage plan proposed was widely expected since he was in line with the findings of a Medicare advisory committee last November. The proposed decision will be open for public comment, with a final decision expected in June.

Medicare rule for drugs that receive FDA approval. Thus, the decision of the Agency able to undertake a formal "national coverage determination" has generated some controversy.

Some securities analysts, investors in Dendreon and patient advocates said Medicare move represented the beginning of drug interdiction at high prices, or even the beginning of the "rationing of health care" that critics of the new legislation federal health care accompany the affirm.

Medicare officials refused, saying they simply wanted a uniform payment policy, rather than leaving the decision to the regional Medicare contractors. Officials also said that Provenge raised new questions, because he resembled a method of treating a drug over mass produced.

Some health experts have argued that society cannot continue to pay for cancer drugs prolong the lives of only a few months if that much. In clinical trials of Provenge main, men with advanced prostate cancer who received the drug lived an average of about 26 months, about four months longer than those who received placebo.

In November, an advisory committee on Medicare have expressed a relatively high level of confidence in the evidence showing that Provenge extended life, at least for the type of patients enrolled in clinical trials.

But the committee, which does not consider the cost of the drug, said the evidence was not convincing that Provenge would help men who had earlier-stage prostate cancer or more advanced than men in the trials.

In the memo on Wednesday, officials from the health insurance said they would not be put in place a national ban on reimbursement for off-label uses of Provenge, leaving room for local entrepreneurs develop policies of insurance. But the memo officials said Medicare hopes that all these off-label uses would only be in clinical trials.

"We can, if it proves to be an overly optimistic view, this NCD review to ensure that Medicare coverage is limited to uses that are supported by substantial evidence," said the memo.

Provenge is approved for men whose cancer has spread beyond the prostate and who no longer respond to androgen blockade, while having little or no symptoms.

Medicare said it had received 657 public comments in its deliberations on Provenge, which 620, or 94.4 percent was in favor of paying for the drug.

Provenge is sometimes called a vaccine against cancer, because it mobilizes the body's immune system to fight cancer. The immune system cells are removed from the blood of a patient and incubated with a protein by Dendreon GM, which in a sense, trains theimmune cells to recognize and attack tumors of the prostate. Theimmune cells are then reinjected into the patient.

Dr. J. Leonard Lichtenfeld, deputy medical director of the American Cancer Society, said Wednesday's decision was a "they had to come" given the laws of health insurance. He was surprised that the decision left the door open for off-label by delegating those decisions to local carriers for Medicare.

Regret and resentment in Microsoft Partner

Paul G. Allen, the cofounder of Microsoft, may be one of the richest men in the world with a fortune at 13 billion. But he still feels his former partner, Bill Gates, for not sharing enough credit or give him his due financially.

In a memoir due out next month which istinged with bitterness and regret, Mr. Allen accuses Mr. Gates to cut its stake in the company and the credit for some of his contributions.

The charges surprised some in the small circle of former Microsoft at first, that Mr. Gates and Mr. Allen have known each other since high school and remained on good terms until recently. Moreover, the wealth of Mr. Allen rose mainly because of the success that Microsoft came well after he left the company in 1983.

"I think the argument you've been cheated financially difficult to do when you come to be so rich," said Vern Raburn, who worked at Microsoft from 1978 to 1981 and ran its consumer products division. Mr. Raburn said he was friends with the two founders and he had not read the book or an excerpt of which was published on Wednesday, Vanity Fair's website.

Mr. Raburn added that Mr. Allen has played a key role in the early days of the company, and that "the bill out of his way to recognize it."

In the excerpt, Mr. Allen also slips Steven A. Ballmer,Mr. Gates recruited as business manager of Microsoft in 1980 and who replaced Bill Gates as CEO in 2000.

Mr. Allen wrote that in December 1982 after learning he had Hodgkin's disease, he heard Mr. Gates and Mr. Ballmer conspiracy to deprive him of his due.

"They have been lamenting my lack of recent production and discuss how they could dilute my shareholders by issuing options to Microsoft themselves and other shareholders," said Allen.

Mr. Allen said he burst into the room and confronted the two men, shouting: "It's amazing! It shows your true character, once and for all. "

Mr. Allen said he later apologized, but he had already decided to leave the company. The book, "Idea Man: A Memoir by the co-founder of Microsoft," to be published by Portfolio / Penguin, an imprint of Penguin Group USA.

In a statement, Mr. Gates said: ". If I remember many of these events may differ from Paul, I value his friendship and the important contribution he made to the world of technology and Microsoft "A Microsoft spokesman said Ballmer declined comment.

Mr. Allen, through a spokesman, declined comment. The spokesman, David Postman, "said the memorandum was not intended as an attack against Mr. Gates. "We'll leave the memorial is standing there, and we hope people take the time to read the book and have a full picture," he said.

The bitterness and sense of betrayal echo the most recent complaints against Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder Youth, by Eduardo Saverin, co-founder of Facebook and Zuckerberg to Harvard roommate, on reducing the role of M . Saverin and reduced participation in the company.

In a series of memories that the painting of Mr. Gates in an unflattering light, Mr. Allen said, after deciding to leave, Mr. Gates made a "lowball" offer of $ 5 per share for the participation of Mr. Allen of Microsoft. Mr. Allen has requested at least $ 10 per share, and Mr. Gates refused. This decision eventually turned into a billionaire Allen.

"From the moment that we started together in Massachusetts, I suppose that our partnership would be a 50-50 proposition," Mr. Allen wrote earlier in the extract. "But Bill had other ideas."

During the early years of Microsoft, Gates has put pressure on Mr. Allen to reduce its stake to 40 percent and 36 percent later as a particular challenge Mr. Gates has increased to 60 and 64 percent, Mr. Allen wrote. "Bill knew I balked at a division by two to one, and that 64 percent has gone as far he could go," he writes.

Stephen Manes, co-author of "Gates: How Microsoft mogul reinvented an industry - and made himself the richest man in America", said that much of what Mr. Allen said in the extract, including the fact that its owned by Microsoft has been reduced significantly, was reported in his book and others. He also said that Mr. Gates and Mr. Allen have collaborated closely, the two often argued vehemently.

"People told us about shouting matches," said Manes. "There has been a saga that began in the office, went into the elevator and going into the park for half an hour."

After leaving Microsoft, Mr. Allen, who is 58, became known as one of the most aggressive investors in technology, although its record is mixed. It is also the owner of the Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trail Blazers.

People who know both men said they remained friends until recently, and that Mr. Gates has often visited Mr. Allen two years ago, when he was recovering from chemotherapy to treat lymphoma Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

"Paul is a creative person, charming and friendly," said Carl Stork, who worked at Microsoft from 1981 to 2002 and has held several leadership positions. "I do not know what Paul is trying to trying to take something from Bill. I am surprised and disappointed."

Financial Overhaul Wins Final Approval in House

WASHINGTON — The House on Wednesday adopted legislation to revamp the nation’s financial regulatory system, voting mostly along party lines as partisan acrimony impeded cooperation even on the shared goals of averting future economic crises.

The vote in the House was 237 to 192, with all but three Republicans standing in opposition to a measure that President Obama in his State of the Union speech said embodied one of the highest priorities of his administration: “serious financial reform.”

“If this bill were to fail,” the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said, “We would be preserving a status quo that has left our economy in a wretched state.”

To symbolize the importance of the bill, Ms. Pelosi personally gaveled the vote to a close, with 234 Democrats joined by three Republicans in favor; and 173 Republicans and 19 Democrats opposed.

The Senate is also expected to approve the measure, but the majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said that he would not be able to schedule a vote until after Congress returned from a weeklong recess for the Fourth of July.

Democrats in the Senate need the support of a few Republicans to complete the financial regulatory overhaul and one of those who supported the Senate version of the bill, Scott Brown of Massachusetts, said he wanted to spend the recess reviewing the final language.

The bill gives government regulators the authority to liquidate failing financial companies by breaking them apart, selling assets and forcing creditors and shareholders to take losses so that taxpayers do not pay the bill.

The legislation also vastly expands the regulatory powers of the Federal Reserve and establishes a systemic risk council of high-ranking officials, led by the Treasury secretary, to detect potential threats to the overall financial system. It creates a powerful new consumer financial protection bureau and widens the purview of the Securities and Exchange Commission to broaden regulation of hedge funds and credit rating agencies.

The measure restricts the ability of banks to invest and trade for their own accounts — a provision known as the Volcker Rule, for its proponent, the former Fed chairman, Paul A. Volcker — and creates a new regulatory framework for derivatives, the complex financial instruments that were at the heart of the 2008 crisis.

The bill was shepherded through the House by Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts and chairman of the Financial Services Committee, who spent more than a year drafting it even as Congress was mostly focused on health care.

The mostly party-line House vote stood in contrast to the bipartisan approval of the $700 billion financial system rescue in October 2008, when 172 Democrats and 91 Republicans joined in support of the bill requested by President George W. Bush.

Ms. Pelosi recalled that effort on Wednesday in her speech urging passage of the regulatory overhaul.

House Republicans complained that the Democrats’ legislation would extend the reach of government regulators too far, that it would encourage rather than prevent future bailouts, and that it would not address the causes of the financial crisis because it did not deal with the government-controlled mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

“When you look at this legislation it is proof positive again that this majority just doesn’t get it,” said Representative Mike Pence, Republican of Indiana. “Under the guise of financial reform, Democrats today are pushing another bill that will kill jobs, raise taxes and make bailouts permanent.”

But Democrats said that Republicans had tried and failed to prevent the government from responding to the worst financial downturn since the Great Depression and had put their desire to obstruct Mr. Obama’s agenda ahead of the nation’s best interests.

Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, a member of the Democratic leadership, said the bill would establish safeguards against future crises. “Never again will we allow the American economy to be held hostage to bad decisions made by Wall Street and the financial sector,” Mr. Van Hollen said. “Unfortunately our colleagues on the other side of the aisle haven’t gotten this message.”

Representative Paul E. Kanjorski, Democrat of Pennsylvania, expressed disbelief at the Republican opposition. “To now make the argument that we need do nothing,” he said, “is pure ludicrousness.”

In speech after speech, Republicans attacked the bill as a threat to free markets and to economic recovery and job creation.

“This legislation is a clear attack on capital formation in America,” said Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the Republican whip. “It purports to prevent the next financial crisis, but it does so by vastly expanding the power of the same regulators who failed to prevent the last one.”

Mr. Cantor added, “It’s the notion that you can solve a problem by reflexively piling vast new layers of new bureaucracy and regulatory costs and taxes on it.”

Mr. Obama had wanted the bill completed and on his desk by Independence Day. The delayed vote in the Senate represented a small victory for Senate Republicans who were working hard to run down the clock and deny Democrats a chance to notch legislative accomplishments between now and the midterm elections in November.

But the Democrats also see political advantage in the Republican opposition, and Mr. Obama, at a town hall meeting in Wisconsin on Wednesday, seized on comments by the House Republican leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, in which he said of the financial regulation bill, “This is killing an ant with a nuclear weapon.”

Mr. Obama said, “You would think this would be a bipartisan issue.” He added: “He compared the financial crisis to an ant. This is the same financial crisis that led to the loss of nearly eight million jobs, the same crisis that cost people their homes, their life savings.”

Autonomy of Consumer Watchdog Is in Dispute

Business and Finance Career - As Congress and the White House battle over the outlines of an agency to protect consumers from deceptive financial practices, their biggest hurdle is figuring out how independent it should be.

Republicans have floated proposals to create a consumer protection unit at the Federal Reserve or the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which could weaken President Obama’s goal of creating an agency free from the influence of banks and federal regulators whose priority is to shore up banks’ profitability and soundness.

Asking bank regulators to house a consumer protection authority could leave the balance of power tilted toward the banks, critics fear. The Fed, for instance, ignored years of warnings about the dangers of subprime mortgages and overdraft fees before finally taking substantive action in recent years. An independent agency devoted to consumer protection would be more responsive to such problems, the critics say.

Kathleen E. Keest, a lawyer at the Center for Responsible Lending, said that while bank regulators already had some consumer protection duties, it “was an afterthought, at best, and viewed as a drag on profitability and innovation.”

Representative Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, warned Friday that if the Republican proposals would pull the teeth from a consumer watchdog, he might consider scrapping larger efforts at a regulatory overhaul for the financial industry.

“Anything that would subordinate this to bank regulators would be a bad mistake,” Mr. Frank said. “If you could trust bank regulators to handle consumer protection, we wouldn’t need to be doing this. There’s a natural tension there. It gets second priority.”

While acknowledging regulatory lapses, most Republican lawmakers and banking lobbyists say it would be cumbersome and potentially disastrous to separate regulators who are focused on the safety and soundness of banks from those concentrating on consumer protection. They want a bank regulator to have veto authority over any consumer agency.

“By separating those two functions, literally the bank could be told to do two different things that are in conflict,” said Edward L. Yingling, president and chief executive of the American Bankers Association. Regular reports to Congress and strong leadership would assure that regulators maintain their focus on consumer financial protection, he said.

Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, insisted Friday that any new agency have an independent budget and director and the ability to write rules and enforce them, even if it is housed within another entity. Mr. Dodd had suggested that the agency be put under the Treasury Department.

The most contentious issues are whether the consumer agency will be able to enforce rules on its own, or whether banking regulators should have authority to make the final decisions.

Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the senior Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, has said he will not support a bill that puts consumer protection above bank regulation. He said his constituents were more concerned about bank failures than consumer protection.

“They’re worried about banks not loaning money, and they’re worried about the solvency of banks,” he said. To address those concerns, Mr. Dodd would have the watchdog consult with other regulators before issuing rules and publicize any objections they had, while allowing other regulators to appeal the watchdog’s protections to a new interagency council led by the Treasury Department. This council could veto any proposed consumer protections, or send them back to the consumer agency to be rewritten.

Both sides agree that the current regulatory framework for consumer protection is inadequate. That function is spread among the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the F.D.I.C., which oversee banks, and the Office of Thrift Supervision, which regulates savings and loans.

The Fed is mainly responsible for writing consumer protection rules, and the other agencies are charged with enforcing the rules and ensuring the health of banks.

Each regulator already has employees devoted to consumer issues. But, according to testimony by Lauren K. Saunders, a lawyer for the National Consumer Law Center, they are often trumped by “a deregulatory bias and faith in the free market, an antipathy to taking significant consumer protection measures that are opposed by the industry, an excessive reliance on fine print disclosures when the agencies have acted and just plain inertia.” She was speaking at a Congressional hearing last year. At the Fed, regulators maintained a light touch for years because of a deregulatory environment fostered by the longtime chairman, Alan Greenspan, who supported free markets and self-regulation.

Although the Fed had authority to act against abusive mortgage practices, predatory credit card companies and overdraft fees on checking accounts, it made few substantive changes. As evidence mounted of abuse by credit card companies, the Fed focused on improved disclosures that “did nothing about fundamental abusiveness of credit card tactics,” Ms. Saunders testified.

In 2005, the Fed joined other bank regulators in issuing “best practices” on overdraft fees that the industry largely ignored.

Since the onset of financial turmoil in 2007, Fed officials, including Mr. Greenspan’s successor, Ben S. Bernanke, have acknowledged regulatory lapses and have been more aggressive in issuing rules on consumer matters, including credit cards and overdraft fees. Fed officials declined to comment for this article. But if consumer groups fear a consumer financial agency housed in the Fed, they are terrified of the prospect, however remote, of it being turned over to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which supervises banks with national charters, including Chase, Citibank and Bank of America.

Run since 2005 by Comptroller John C. Dugan, a former bank lobbyist, the O.C.C. has fought efforts by state regulators to curb abuses, including predatory lending and fees on credit and gift cards. In 2004, the O.C.C. issued “pre-emption” rules that blocked enforcement of state laws against banks with national charters, which the O.C.C. regulates.

In response, nearly half of the state attorneys general have endorsed the proposal for an independent consumer agency. Many say the O.C.C. is all but a tool of the banks.

Richard Blumenthal, attorney general of Connecticut, spoke of a courtroom encounter with the O.C.C. years ago, after he had sued three banks that he said had charged noncustomers A.T.M. fees in violation of state law. He said he was stunned when the O.C.C. lawyer argued in the banks’ defense. “The O.C.C. has been at best indifferent and more commonly hostile to consumer interests.”

Mr. Dugan made no apologies for his efforts to pre-empt state consumer laws, arguing that different state rules would cripple the national banking system. He acknowledged some regulatory failures, but said that his office had pursued many of the same consumer issues as the states, like credit card abuses. Raj Date, executive director of the Cambridge Winter Center for Financial Institutions Policy, worried that even if bank regulators showed a newfound commitment to consumer finance, they might forget it once the spotlight on the issue receded.

Millions of Toyotas Recalled, None in Japan

Business and Finance Career - Feeling her Toyota Mark X station wagon lurch forward at a busy intersection, Masako Sakai slammed on the brakes. But the pedal “had gone limp,” she said. Downshifting didn’t seem to work either.

“I tried everything I could think of,” Mrs. Sakai, 64, said, as she recently recalled the accident that happened six months ago.

Her car surged forward nearly 3,000 feet before slamming into a Mercedes Benz and a taxi, injuring drivers in both those vehicles and breaking Mrs. Sakai’s collarbone.

As shaken as she was by the accident, Mrs. Sakai says she was even more surprised by what happened after. She says that Toyota — from her dealer to headquarters — has not responded to her inquiries, and Japanese authorities have been indifferent to her concerns as a consumer.

Mrs. Sakai says the Tokyo Metropolitan Police urged her to sign a statement saying that she pressed the accelerator by mistake — something she strongly denies. She says the police told her she could have her damaged car back to get it repaired if she made that admission. She declined.

The police say it was a misunderstanding and that they kept her car to carry out their investigation.

But veterans of Japan’s moribund consumer rights movement say that Mrs. Sakai, like many Japanese, is the victim of a Japanese establishment that values Japanese business over Japanese consumers, and the lack of consumer protections here.

“In Japan, there is a phrase: if something smells, put a lid on it,” said Shunkichi Takayama, a Tokyo-based lawyer who has handled complaints related to Toyota vehicles.

Toyota has recalled eight million cars outside Japan because of unexpected acceleration and other problems, but has insisted that there are no systemic problems with its cars sold in Japan. The company recalled the Prius for a brake problem earlier this year.

Critics say many companies benefit from Japan’s weak consumer protections. (The country has only one full-time automobile recall investigator, supported by 15 others on limited contracts.)

In a case in the food industry, a meat processor called Meat Hope collapsed in 2008 after revelations that it had mixed pork, mutton and chicken bits into products falsely labeled as pure ground beef, all under the noses of food inspectors.

A 2006 police inquiry into gas water heaters made by the manufacturer Paloma found that a defect had resulted in the deaths of 21 people over 10 years from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Paloma initially insisted that users had tampered with the heaters’ safety device; the company ultimately admitted that the heaters were at fault — and that executives had been aware of a potential problem for more than a decade. Executives are now being charged with professional negligence, and a court verdict is due in May.

When it comes to cars, the rapid growth of the auto industry here and of car ownership in the 1960s and ’70s was accompanied by a spate of fatal accidents. A consumer movement soon emerged among owners of these defective vehicles.

The most active was the Japan Automobile Consumers Union, led by Fumio Matsuda, a former Nissan engineer often referred to as the Ralph Nader of Japan. But the automakers fought back with a campaign discrediting the activists as dangerous agitators. Mr. Matsuda and his lawyer were soon arrested and charged with blackmail. They fought the charges to Japan’s highest court, but lost.

Now, few people are willing to take on the country’s manufacturers at the risk of arrest, Mr. Matsuda said in a recent interview. “The state sided with the automakers, not the consumers,” he said.

It has become difficult for drivers to access even the most elementary data or details on incidents of auto defects, says Hiroko Isomura, an executive at the National Association of Consumer Specialists and a former adviser to the government on auto recalls. “Unfortunately, the Automobile Consumers Union was shut down,” she said. “No groups like that exist any more.”

For the government to order a recall, it must prove that automobiles do not meet national safety standards, which is difficult to do without the automakers’ cooperation. Most recalls are done on a voluntary basis without government supervision.

At Closing Plant, Ordeal Included Heart Attacks

Business and Finance Career - The first to have a heart attack was George Kull Jr., 56, a millwright who worked for three decades at the steel mills in Lackawanna, N.Y. Three weeks after learning that his plant was closing, he suddenly collapsed at home.

Less than two hours later, he was pronounced dead.

A few weeks after that, a co-worker, Bob Smith, 42, a forklift operator with four young children, started having chest pains. He learned at the doctor’s office that he was having a heart attack. Surgeons inserted three stents, saving his life.

Less than a month later, Don Turner, 55, a crane operator who had started at the mills as a teenager, was found by his wife, Darlene, slumped on a love seat, stricken by a fatal heart attack.

It is impossible to say exactly why these men, all in relatively good health, had heart attacks within weeks of one another. But interviews with friends and relatives of Mr. Kull and Mr. Turner, and with Mr. Smith, suggest that the trauma of losing their jobs might have played a role.

“He was really, really worried,” George Kull III said of his father. “With his age, he didn’t know where he would get another job, or if he would get another job.”

A growing body of research suggests that layoffs can have profound health consequences. One 2006 study by a group of epidemiologists at Yale found that layoffs more than doubled the risk of heart attack and stroke among older workers. Another paper, published last year by Kate W. Strully, a sociology professor at the State University of New York at Albany, found that a person who lost a job had an 83 percent greater chance of developing a stress-related health problem, like diabetes, arthritis or psychiatric issues.

Senator Questions Bank Fees on Stimulus Bonds

Business and Finance Career - Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa has asked Goldman Sachs to clarify how much it has collected in underwriting fees as states and cities issue so-called Build America Bonds to raise money for infrastructure projects and create jobs.

The senator, the senior Republican on the Finance Committee, said Wednesday in a letter addressed to Chief Executive Lloyd C. Blankfein that he was “concerned that American taxpayers are subsidizing larger underwriting fees for Wall Street investment banks, including Goldman Sachs, as a result of the Build America Bonds program.”

The bond program, part of stimulus legislation passed last year, is intended to help local governments raise money by issuing taxable bonds; the federal government subsidizes 35 percent of the interest payments. On Wednesday, the Senate passed a bill that would expand the program and its subsidies.

But the lower interest payments may have given underwriters room to charge more, even as governments still saved money compared to other debt issues.

In November, nine months after the bond program was enacted, data compiled by Bloomberg News showed that local governments were paying underwriters 37 percent more in fees to issue Build America Bonds than they were paying on tax-exempt debt, which local governments usually issue to fund infrastructure projects. The news service calculated that the extra fees amounted to $100 million at the time. In addition to Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Bank of America and Citigroup are the top underwriters of Build America Bonds, Bloomberg data showed.

Senator Grassley noted that Matt Fabian, managing director of Municipal Market Advisors, said in the Bloomberg article that “the large subsidy gives them leeway to charge more because the issuer probably cares less about the underwriting fee.”

Senator Grassley’s letter included a series of pointed questions about how much Goldman has earned underwriting the subsidized debt, how it determines it fees, and what it expects to earn under the expanded federal program.

“Are these underwriting fees larger than the underwriting fees that Goldman Sachs has charged on tax-exempt bond issuances?” he asked.

A Goldman Sachs spokesperson was not immediately available for comment Thursday.

On Tuesday, a day before the expanded bond program passed the Senate, Goldman Sachs ran an advertisement in Politico claiming the bank was its “one of the principal underwriters,” the senator noted in his letter.

Goldman has vocally backed the program for months. In a commentary in Forbes in November, Jim Esposito, a managing director at the bank, supported expanding the Build America Bonds, or BABs.

“BABs are a win for taxpayers, for state and local governments, for investors, for job creation, for the economy and, by extension, for America's future,” he wrote. “The benefits to extending and expanding the program would reverberate widely and help sustain the country's economic recovery while investing in our future.”