WASHINGTON – It's all so last millennium, that filthy business in the depths of the Gulf of Mexico.

It reeks of yesterday's fuel, yesterday's sweaty labor — a hands-on way of life from another time. Today's Americans don't care to know how the gas comes to the pump, the food to the table, the iPad to the store.

Just make sure they do.

But now they're staring, transfixed, at where things come from. And what people still do to get it to you, and the death and devastation that can result when something goes wrong and it can't be fixed with a call to technical support.

"Top kill" wasn't a video game. It was a desperate injection of mud and junk into the primeval muck near the wreck of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. It was the most ambitious effort yet for a temporary fix, and it failed.

In this age of microchip miracles, people are seeing brute mass, old tools and ancient physics at work in the weirdly lunar undersea landscape. The atmospherics could be from a moon mission.

A mile down, supersized vise grips clench a pipe forcing a flotsam into the ruptured well like oil workers have done on land.

All so yesterday in look and feel — even if it is the first ever top kill at such great ocean depths.

The enormity of the Gulf, its depths and the engineering challenges are beyond ordinary comprehension. (The Gulf alone is punctured with more than 2,300 deep wells. Who knew?) No fancy touch-sensitive chart on TV conveys the vastness. Even experts wildly disagree on fundamental questions such as how much oil is coming out.

The United States is a seafaring nation whose encounters with the sea now tend to be Red Lobster in the suburbs or Memorial Day at the beach.

It's historically a farming, industrial and exploring nation, most of whose people now are distant from the elemental struggles of living and working in the physical environment, much less understanding it.

Only 14 percent of the modern U.S. work force is engaged in production: manufacturing, mining, logging, construction and the like. The rest are in services payday advance lenders.

While it is often considered an alien place, too, Washington is a product of that nation.

The president and many lawmakers are lawyers by training, not engineers, roustabouts or farmers. No wonder members of Congress met to discuss legal liability among their first orders of business in the oil spill response. For many in Washington, the talk is of blame, accountability and political consequences.

No wonder, perhaps, that President Barack Obama assumed that something so terrible would not happen because it had not happened before.

Like most Americans, he lacks the sixth sense of a mariner in foul weather or a miner listening to the earth speak.

He does, though, hail from Hawaii, where, as he noted last week, the ocean is sacred. Not to mention, all around.

Obama touched on the disconnect between those of the grounded physical world and everyone else during his news conference. He showed that he knows what he can't really feel.

"When I hear folks down in Louisiana expressing frustrations, I may not always think that their comments are fair," he said. "On the other hand, I probably think to myself, these are folks who grew up fishing in these wetlands and seeing this as an integral part of who they are."

The land, sea and factory are less and less an integral part of Americans.

If Aristotle were blogging about all of this, he would probably have little patience with the armchair experts and the pontificators who think the solution should be as easy as Malia Obama suggested when she asked her father, "Did you plug the hole yet, Daddy?"

The Greek philosopher said "those who dwell in intimate association with nature" are apt to understand the big picture. "Lack of experience diminishes our power of taking a comprehensive view."

His way of saying, you have to be there to get it. Americans, these days, are not.

___

Online:

Live video of oil spill: http://tinyurl.com/2c8y3rj

Modern meets primeval in Gulf oil spill response

DECELERATING SLIDE: Ad revenue at U.S. newspapers fell 10 percent to $6 billion in the first quarter. It marked the industry's smallest year-over-year decline in quarterly ad revenue since the recession began in late 2007.

THE HOPE: After 13 consecutive quarters of bringing in less ad revenue than the previous year, newspaper publishers are hoping for an upturn soon.

THE HARSH REALITY: Newspapers are subsisting on about 46 percent less ad revenue than they had before the slump began bad credit pay day loans. The industry's ad revenue totaled $11.1 billion in the first quarter of 2006.

Summary Box: Newspapers' 1Q ad revenue down 10 pct

COVINGTON, La. – BP on Wednesday launched its latest bid to plug the gushing well in the Gulf of Mexico by force-feeding it heavy drilling mud, a maneuver known as a "top kill" that has never before been tried 5,000 feet underwater.

The oil giant's chief executive earlier gave the procedure a 60 to 70 percent chance of working, and President Barack Obama cautioned Wednesday there were "no guarantees."

BP spokesman Steve Rinehart said the company will pump mud for hours, and officials have indicated it may be a couple of days before they know whether the procedure is working. The top kill involves pumping enough mud into the gusher to overcome the flow of the well, and engineers plan to follow it up with cement to try to permanently seal the well.

BP PLC was leasing the rig Deepwater Horizon when it exploded April 20, killing 11 workers and triggering the spill that has so far spewed at least 7 million gallons into the Gulf. Oil has begun coating birds and washing into Louisiana's delicate wetlands.

Witness statements obtained by The Associated Press show senior managers complained BP was "taking shortcuts" the day of the explosion by replacing heavy drilling fluid with saltwater in the well that blew out guaranteed pay day loans.

Truitt Crawford, a roustabout for drilling rig owner Transocean Ltd., told Coast Guard investigators about the complaints. The seawater, which would have provided less weight to contain surging pressure from the ocean depths, was being used to prepare for dropping a final blob of cement into the well.

"I overheard upper management talking saying that BP was taking shortcuts by displacing the well with saltwater instead of mud without sealing the well with cement plugs, this is why it blew out," Crawford said in his statement. BP declined to comment.

var so = new SWFObject("http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/_national/oil_spill/content.swf?scalable=true", "content", "620", "525", "9", "#FFFFFF"); so.addParam("base","http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/_national/oil_spill/"); so.addParam("allowFullScreen","true"); so.addParam("allowScriptAccess","always"); so.useExpressInstall('http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/template_items/expressinstall.swf'); so.write("contentcontent");

BP begins 'top kill' method to try to plug gusher

SANAA (Reuters) – A Yemeni airstrike targeting al Qaeda missed its mark on Tuesday and killed a mediator by mistake, prompting members of his tribe to blow up a crude oil pipeline in clashes that followed, a provincial official said.

The mediator, who had been trying to persuade members of the global militant group to surrender, was killed instantly in a pre-dawn strike on his car in the mountainous Maarib province that also killed three other people.

"Jaber al-Shabwani, the deputy governor of Maarib, was killed with a number of his relatives and travel companions in an airstrike targeting the Wadi Obeida area, where al Qaeda elements are present," said the official, a member of a local council in Maarib, who declined to be named.

"The deputy governor was on a mediation mission to persuade al Qaeda elements to hand themselves over to the authorities, but it seems that the airstrike missed its target and struck his car, killing him instantly in addition to three companions," he added. Two others were wounded.

The strike provoked clashes between the army and members of Shabwani&&9;s tribe, and the tribesmen attacked the pipeline that ferries crude from Maarib, east of the capital Sanaa, to the Red Sea coast, the official said low fee pay day loans.

"Tribesmen blew up a pipeline that carries crude from Safir to the Ras Isa port on the Red Sea," he said, adding that the pipeline attack was "in response to the killing of the deputy governor of Maarib province."

Yemen, which borders the world&&9;s top oil exporter Saudi Arabia, moved to the forefront of Western security concerns after al Qaeda&&9;s Yemen-based regional arm claimed responsibility for a failed attempt to bomb a U.S.-bound plane in December.

The United States and Saudi Arabia want Yemen, which is trying to end a conflict with Shi&&9;ite rebels in the north while separatist sentiment bubbles over in the south, to focus its efforts on fighting al Qaeda, which they see as a greater global threat.

Maarib province, where the strike took place, has seen air strikes in the past against al Qaeda&&9;s regional wing.

Yemen&&9;s allies fear the global militant group will take advantage of instability in Yemen to spread its operations to Saudi Arabia and beyond.

(Reporting by Mohammed Ghobari; Writing by Cynthia Johnston; editing by David Stamp)

Yemen strike kills mediator and tribesmen hit pipeline

Don't miss these top stories:

Delays, denials hit home-buyer-credit filers

A surprise tax hit on foreclosures

How to estimate the value of donated items

Late Thursday, lawmakers introduced the American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act, a wide-ranging bill that proposes to remove the $1 billion cap on companies' liability for oil spills, to tax at income-tax rates hedge-fund managers' carried interest, and to save and create jobs, among other provisions.

The bill also would extend a number of expiring tax perks, including the real-estate deduction for people who take the standard deduction, the above-the-line tuition costs deduction, and more. Fun stuff. Expensive stuff. Read the legislative text published by the House Ways and Means Committee here (PDF).

This piece of legislation represents a compromise agreement between House and Senate lawmakers, and merges provisions of a bill passed by the House of Representatives in December and a Senate bill in March. Some Democratic lawmakers in the House say they plan to vote on this legislation as early as next week. Stay tuned for more on the bill at MarketWatch.com.

Meanwhile, read Eva Rosenberg's TaxWatch column today for a look at how people who've claimed the home-buyer tax credit are running into long delays and flat-out rejections from the IRS.

As Rosenberg notes in her story, some of these taxpayers have ample reason to contest the IRS's findings. The question is: Do they have the time and inclination?

-- Andrea Coombes, Personal Finance editor

Delays, denials hit home-buyer tax credit filers

While TaxMama is being deluged with calls and emails from taxpayers wondering where their refund went, the IRS has been busy processing over 1 cash advance no faxing.8 million claims for home-buyer tax credits, according to IRS data through February. See TaxWatch.

A surprise tax hit on foreclosures

Maxine McDaniel has a message for Americans considering walking away from an unaffordable mortgage: Beware of taxes. See story on surprise tax hit on foreclosures.

How to estimate the value of donated items

Fellow hoarders, take a fresh look at your overcrowded closets, bulging book shelves and other cluttered nooks and crannies of your home and garage. You might uncover some valuable tax deductions. See story on how to estimate the value of donated items.

A few quirky tax breaks that aren't going away

Surprise: Not all taxes are going up. On April 15, the House of Representatives passed a tax exemption for employer-provided cellphones and smartphones. See story on a few quirky tax breaks that aren't going away.

Find your tax refund

Still waiting for your income-tax refund? Taxpayers who filed tax returns online on April 15 should have received their refunds by last week. Those who mailed in their returns should get their refund checks within six weeks of the date they're received by the Internal Revenue Service. See story on how to find your tax refund.

Taxing Times: More tax laws likely coming your way soon

Hot News:

FREMONT, Calif. – Opnext Inc., a maker of fiber-optic communication network products, said its fiscal fourth-quarter net loss narrowed from a year earlier, when results included hefty goodwill impairment expenses and other items.

For the three months ended March 31, the company on Wednesday posted a net loss of $18.3 million, or 20 cents per share, compared with a loss of $118.8 million, or $1.39 per share, in the same period a year earlier.

The latest quarter's adjusted loss was 16 cents per share.

Revenue fell 8 percent to $76.8 million from $83.6 million.

Analysts, on average, were expecting a loss of 17 cents per share, excluding items, on revenue of $76 payday loans online.8 million, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.

The year-ago quarter included goodwill impairment expenses of $62 million related to its acquisition of StrataLight Communications Inc. The latest quarter had no such costs.

The company expects revenue between $80 million and $85 million for the fiscal first quarter ending June 30. Analysts are expecting $83.1 million.

Shares fell 9 cents, or 3.9 percent, to $2.21 in morning trading. The stock has traded between $1.68 and $3.30 in the past 52 weeks.

Opnext posts smaller 4Q loss

The two-week slide in oil prices that dragged crude down to its lowest price of the year ended Tuesday.

The question now is whether it is the start of a new trend higher or just a pause before prices fall again.

Benchmark crude for June delivery rose 76 cents to $70.84 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The June contract dropped $1.53, or 2.1 percent, to $70.08 on Monday. The price fell as low as $69.27 during Monday's session.

Oil prices have been on a roller-coaster ride since the beginning of the year. Twice since January they have approached $90 a barrel only to slide back to $70. Crude dropped about 20 percent after hitting $87.15 a barrel on May 3, the highest point since October 2008.

"It's premature to say we've placed the lows," said Jim Ritterbusch of Ritterbusch and Associates.

Oil analyst and trader Stephen Schork said prices could drop into the mid-$60s.

Oil has been falling as investors worry about the ripple effects of the debt crisis in Europe and whether it could spread to the U.S.

A drop in the euro against the dollar also has made oil a less appealing investment overseas. Crude is priced in dollars, so oil becomes more expensive for holders of other currencies when the dollar goes up. Analysts are concerned that the debt crisis could slow European economies and drag down demand for oil low interest rate personal loans.

Meanwhile, lower oil prices are slowly making their way to the gas pump. Retail gasoline prices fell 0.8 cent to a national average of $2.859 per gallon, according to AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Services.

Prices have dropped by 4.2 cents over the past week and by 7 cents since May 6, but are still 54.8 cents above year-ago levels.

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has not affected crude prices yet. It also has not interfered with tankers carrying imported oil to Gulf ports or those taking refined products from there to other parts of the country. There is concern though that the spill could eventually slow shipments if vessels must be scrubbed of oil before they reach port.

In other Nymex trading in June contracts, heating oil fell 0.65 cent to $1.9787 a gallon, and gasoline lost 0.08 cent to $2.0423 a gallon. Natural gas rose by 3.1 cents to $4.429 per 1,000 cubic feet.

In London, the Brent crude July contact added 3 cents at $75.13 on the ICE futures exchange.

___

Associated Press writers Pablo Gorondi in Budapest and Alex Kennedy in Singapore contributed to this report.

Oil rising again after a 2-week selloff

RED BANK, N.J. — Above the Restoration Hardware in this Jersey Shore town, not far from the Navesink River, lurks a Wall Street giant.

Here, inside the humdrum offices of a tiny trading firm called Tradeworx, workers in their 20s and 30s in jeans and T-shirts quietly tend high-speed computers that typically buy and sell 80 million shares a day.

But on the afternoon of May 6, as the stock market began to plunge in the “flash crash,” someone here walked up to one of those computers and typed the command HF STOP: sell everything, and shutdown.

Across the country, several of Tradeworx’s counterparts did the same. In a blink, some of the most powerful players in the stock market today — high-frequency traders — went dark. The result sent chills through the financial world.

After the brief 1,000-point plunge in the stock market that day, the growing role of high-frequency traders in the nation’s financial markets is drawing new scrutiny.

Over the last decade, these high-tech operators have become sort of a shadow Wall Street — from New Jersey to Kansas City, from Texas to Chicago. Depending on whose estimates you believe, high-frequency traders account for 40 to 70 percent of all trading on every stock market in the country. Some of the biggest players trade more than a billion shares a day.

These are short-term bets. Very short. The founder of Tradebot, in Kansas City, Mo., told students in 2008 that his firm typically held stocks for 11 seconds. Tradebot, one of the biggest high-frequency traders around, had not had a losing day in four years, he said.

But some in Washington wonder if ordinary investors will pay a price for this sort of lightning-quick trading. Unlike old-fashioned specialists on the New York Stock Exchange, who are obligated to stay in the market whether it is rising or falling, high-frequency traders can walk away at any time.

While market regulators are still trying to figure out what happened on May 6, the decision of high-frequency traders to withdraw from the marketplace is under examination.

Did their decision create a market vacuum that caused prices to plunge even faster?

“We don’t know, but isn’t that the point? How are we ever going to find out what’s going on with these high-frequency traders?” said Senator Edward E. Kaufman, Democrat of Delaware, who wants the Securities and Exchange Commission to collect more information on high-frequency traders.

“Whenever you have a lot of money, a lot of change, little or no transparency, and therefore, no regulation, you have the potential for a market disaster,” Senator Kaufman added. “That’s what we have in high-frequency trading.”

Some high-frequency traders welcome the closer scrutiny.

“We are not a no-regulation crowd,” said Richard Gorelick, a co-founder of the high-frequency trading firm RGM Advisors in Austin, Tex. “We were all created by good regulation, the regulation that provided for more competition, more transparency and more fairness.”

But critics say the markets have become unfair to investors who cannot invest millions in high-tech computers. The exchanges offer incentives, including rebates, which can add up to meaningful profits for high-volume traders as well.

“The market structure has morphed from one that was equitable and fair to one where those who get the greatest perks, who have the speed, have all of the advantages,” said Sal Arnuk, who runs an equity trading firm in New Jersey totally free credit score.

High-frequency traders insist that they provide the market with liquidity, thus enabling investors to trade easily.

“The benefits of the liquidity that we bring to the markets aren’t theoretical,” said Cameron Smith, the general counsel for high-frequency trading firm Quantlab Financial in Houston. “If you can buy a security with the knowledge that you can resell it later, that creates a lot of confidence in the market.”

The high-frequency club consisting of 100 to 200 firms are scattered far from the canyons of Wall Street. Most use their founders’ money to trade. A handful are run from spare bedrooms, while others, like GetCo in Chicago, have hundreds of employees.

Most of these firms typically hold onto stocks for a few seconds, minutes or hours and usually end the day with little or no position in the market. Their profits come in slivers of a penny, but they can reap those incremental rewards over and over, all day long.

What all high-frequency traders love is volatility — lots of it. “It was like shooting fish in the barrel in 2008. Any dummy who tried to do a high-frequency strategy back then could make money,” said Manoj Narang, the founder of Tradeworx.

A quiet man with a quick wit and a boyish enthusiasm, Mr. Narang, 40, looks like he came out of central casting from the dot-com era. Wearing jeans, a gray T-shirt and a New York Yankees hat, he takes a seat in front of his computer terminal and quietly answers questions about his business, glancing occasionally at the Yankees game in one of the windows on his PC.

After graduating from M.I.T., where he majored in math and computer science, Mr. Narang bounced around Wall Street trading desks before starting Tradeworx in the late 1990s.

At the time, Wall Street was at the beginning of a technological evolution that has changed the way stocks are traded, opening a variety of platforms beyond the trading floor.

The Tradeworx computers get price quotes from the exchanges, decide how to trade, complete a risk analysis and generate a buy or sell order — in 20 microseconds.

The computers trade in and out of individual stocks, indexes and exchange-traded funds, or E.T.F.’s, all day long. Mr. Narang, for the most part, has no idea which stocks Tradeworx is buying or selling.

Showing a computer chart to a visitor, Mr. Narang zeroes in on one stock that had recently been a winner for the firm. Which stock? Mr. Narang clicks on the chart to bring up the ticker symbol: NETL. What’s that? Mr. Narang clicks a few more times and answers slowly: “NetLogic Microsystems.” He shrugs. “Never heard of it,” he says.

If high-frequency traders crave volatility, why did Tradeworx and others turn off their computers on May 6?

Mr. Narang said Tradeworx could not tell whether something was wrong with the data feeds from the exchanges. More important, Mr. Narang worried that if some trades were canceled — as, indeed, many were — Tradeworx might be left holding stocks it did not want.

Now that the dust has settled, however, he has mixed feelings. “Several high-frequency trading firms that I know about stayed in the market that day,” he said, “and had their best day of the year.”

Fast Traders Are Scrutinized Amid Choppy Markets

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama pushed on Saturday for passage of a financial overhaul bill being debated on Capitol Hill, saying it would empower consumers and bring back-room investment deals "into the light of day."

In his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama said the legislation would also curb predatory lending practices, prevent banks from taking on too much risk and give shareholders more of a say.

"Put simply, Wall Street reform will bring greater security to folks on Main Street," the president said.

"My responsibility as president isn't just to help our economy rebound from this recession; it's to make sure an economic crisis like the one that helped trigger this recession never happens again," he said. "That's what Wall Street reform will help us do."

The legislation, the most sweeping rewrite of the rules governing Wall Street since the Great Depression, is being debated in the Senate, with a final vote possible as early as next week. The bill would then have to be merged with a version passed by the House.

The legislation would set up a mechanism to watch out for risks in the financial system, create a method to liquidate large failing firms and write new rules for complex securities blamed for helping precipitate the 2008 economic crisis. It also would create a new consumer protection agency, a key point for Obama.

The Senate version calls for an independent bureau within the Federal Reserve to write and enforce regulations that would police lending, while the House bill has a stand-alone agency.

Obama said the measures offer "the strongest consumer financial protections in history free credit score online."

Republicans and Democrats have bridged partisan divides to come together on some areas of the legislation, but the two parties still disagree on plenty, and Republicans used their weekly address to accuse Obama and Democrats of promoting economic policies that rely too much on spending and not enough on cutting.

The GOP address was delivered by Rep. Chris Lee of New York, who represents Buffalo. Obama visited there Thursday to talk up his agenda for jobs and the economy, and Lee said he'd hoped the president "would listen — really listen — to what the people are saying."

What the president would have heard, according to Lee: Americans "want us to work together on commonsense solutions to stop the spending spree and focus on helping manufacturers and small businesses create jobs."

Lee contended that the economic recovery act passed last year never lived up to Democrats' promises that it would reduce unemployment and that Democrats' health care bill will cost taxpayers money, not bring savings.

"So our choice is this: Make the tough decisions required to put our fiscal house in order or continue to duck them," Lee said. "That's why Republicans have proposed several initiatives to cut spending now and make Washington do more with less, just as families and small businesses are."

___

On the Net:

Obama address: http://www.whitehouse.gov

GOP address: http://www.youtube.com/houseconference

Obama pushes passage of Wall Street reform bill

WASHINGTON – The White House asked Congress Wednesday to raise limits on BP's liability for the Gulf oil spill, approve new spending on everything from food stamps to seafood inspections and increase taxes on oil companies for an emergency cleanup fund.

Administration officials said they couldn't forecast total costs from the cleanup of the massive spill and a multitude of economic damages to the Gulf region, but the changes they're seeking in the legislative package unveiled Wednesday suggest a multibillion-dollar response.

The administration wants to increase from $1 billion to $1.5 billion the amount that could be spent from an emergency cleanup fund paid with industry fees, and raise a $75 million liability limit BP would bear for costs not directly connected to cleaning up the spill, such as lost wages and tourism.

BP PLC will pay as much as possible, administration officials told reporters on a conference call, although some of the new proposed spending — such as money for the Interior Department to conduct inspections for proposed offshore drilling leases — cannot be charged to BP.

Nonetheless, said White House energy adviser Carol Browner: "We take BP at their word. They say they intend to pay for all costs. And when we hear 'all' we take it to mean all."

BP spokesmen did not immediately respond to messages seeking reaction but the company has said it will pay cleanup costs and legitimate claims. BP estimates it has already spent more than $350 million responding to the spill, trying to contain the leak and cleaning up the 4 million gallons of oil already in the Gulf. The price tag increases at least $10 million a day

A 1990 law passed in the wake of the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska makes "responsible parties" — in this case BP — liable for cleanup costs from oil spills but limits to $75 million their exposure to other kinds of claims. The administration did not propose a new figure for the liability limit, saying they would work with lawmakers to find the appropriate amount. A number of Democrats have introduced legislation raising the limit to $10 billion.

The current $75 million liability limit is unchanged since passage of the 1990 Oil Pollution Act. The act provided for the limit to be periodically adjusted upward for inflation but that never happened; federal officials planned to revisit the figure in 2012, according to Coast Guard documents easy payday loans.

Browner said the White House believes the legislation unveiled Wednesday could apply retroactively. Democratic lawmakers have cited the Superfund program as an example of legislation enacted to clean up environmental hazards that existed prior to enactment.

Jeff Liebman, acting deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, said the administration wants to pass the legislation in the next few weeks. Lawmakers are looking for a legislative vehicle to attach it to.

The White House proposal would also:

_Raise from 8 cents per barrel to 9 cents per barrel an excise tax paid by oil companies to finance an Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, beginning this year. _Increase allowable per-incident expenditures from the fund to $1.5 billion, from $1 billion now. Already, the Coast Guard has tapped some $100 million from the fund, which started with $1.6 billion before the spill, although the administration hopes to make BP repay the money.

_Give $2 billion to the Food and Drug Administration to monitor seafood safety in the Gulf.

_Give $29 million to the Interior secretary for studies related to the safety of offshore drilling. The bill would also give the Minerals Management Service more time to review and approve oil and gas leasing plans. President Barack Obama, who has proposed a limited expansion of offshore drilling, has said no new leases will be allowed until Interior Secretary Ken Salazar completes a study of what new safety precautions are needed.

_Provide $15 million to out-of-work fishermen if a fisheries disaster is declared.

_Provide up to 26 weeks of benefits to self-employed workers and other workers ineligible for regular unemployment compensation in the Gulf.

_Make people affected by the spill eligible for food stamps.

The proposals add up to $118 million in new discretionary spending, Liebman said. That does not include the cost of the unemployment insurance or food stamps, which in all likelihood would dwarf the other spending.

WH wants increased industry liability in oil spill

BOSTON (MarketWatch) -- U.S. financial stocks clawed their way into the green Tuesday, recovering from a weak open although the sector remained volatile in the aftermath of the European Union's bailout package intended for debt-ridden nations.

The Financial Select Sector SPDR Fund was fractionally positive in midday trading. The ETF, which had soared nearly 6% in Monday's relief rally, sustained a morning decline as investors focused on the implications of the massive bailout for troubled EU countries.

S&P 500 (1 YEAR)

• Market Snapshot: U.S. stocks in focus • Today's biggest advancing, declining stocks • Sign up for free, breaking-news email alerts | Earnings, updates, warnings | Industries • Tech Stocks | Energy Stocks | Retail Stocks • Financials | Airline Stocks | Pharma and Biotech • Bond Report | Oil news | • Currencies | Market Data | Economic Calendar • See all the latest markets video

Markets on Tuesday also keyed on a report showing higher-than-expected inflation in China, leading to fears the government in Beijing may have to resort to tightening to slow the economy.

A standout was Legg Mason Inc. , shares of which rallied more than 10% after the asset manager reported a better-than-expected profit for the fourth quarter ended March 31 and said it plans to buy back up to $1 billion in common shares guaranteed approval cash loans.

Meanwhile, a strategic restructuring Legg Mason also announced late Monday "is significant enough to cause operating margins to improve materially over the next few years," said Stifel Niclolaus, which upgraded the stock to buy from hold.

Among the sector's decliners, MBIA Inc. shares were down 5% after first-quarter results showed the bond insurer swinging to a first-quarter loss of $1.5 billion as it was hit by losses on insured credit derivatives. Another bond insurer, Assured Guaranty Ltd. , saw its shares weaken by nearly 10% Tuesday following its quarterly earnings report.

Conversely, Ameriprise Financial Inc. climbed after the company unveiled plans to buy back up to $1.5 billion of common stock.

Also higher, American International Group Inc. shares gained 4% at last check on reports the insurer is in talks with Prudential PLC to restructure the sale of AIA Group Ltd. See full story on the potential restructuring.

Financial Stocks: Financials fight to go green after early drop

NEW YORK – A split in metals trading continued Friday as investors seeking safety bought gold, while platinum and palladium dipped on overseas economic worries.

Gold has become a refuge for risk-averse investors in recent days as stock markets plunged.

The Dow Jones industrial average again fluctuated wildly Friday, and traded down as much as 279 points before recouping much of its losses. In afternoon trade it was down about 140 points, having taken a brief and harrowing dive of nearly 1,000 points the day before. European markets all tumbled.

Gold for June delivery rose $13.10 to settle at $1,210.40 an ounce. It has risen $41.20, or 3.5 percent, over the past three days.

George Gero, vice president at RBC Global Futures in New York, said Asian and European investors that would normally turn to their local currencies when selling off stocks and other riskier assets are buying gold instead. That's because the value of their currencies have fallen against the dollar due to fears that Greece's debt problems will spread across Europe.

Friday's gains in gold were kept somewhat in check by investors looking to take some profit before the weekend, Gero said.

Silver and copper both rose as well, after falling in recent days. July silver jumped 93.6 cents, or 5 Business Card Holders.3 percent, to settle $18.451 an ounce. Copper rose 2.75 cents to $3.1445 a pound.

Platinum and palladium, which have industrial uses and are more sensitive to the economic cycle, continued to stumble. Investors are concerned that debt problems in Greece might spread to other countries like Spain and Portugal and upend a global economic recovery.

July platinum fell 70 cents to $1,665.80 an ounce after recovering some losses late in trading. Palladium for June delivery dropped $3.90 to $510.20 an ounce.

Energy prices have also been hurt by the economic and debt worries that have jolted stock markets. Benchmark crude for June delivery fell $2 to settle at $75.11 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

June heating oil dropped 3.42 cents to $2.0795 a gallon, while gasoline fell 3.12 cents to $2.1251 a gallon. Natural gas, which is hovering near its lows for the year, rose 8.6 cents to $4.015 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Gain and bean prices rose. Wheat for July delivery rose 2.25 cents to $5.105 a bushel, while corn rose 0.75 cents to $3.72 a bushel. July soybeans rose 6 cents to settle at $9.60 a bushel.

Gold up; Platinum, palladium down on Euro worries

I’M director of logistics at Tasty Catering, a corporate catering and event planning services company outside Chicago. Our clients include McDonald’s, Google and Microsoft, which have offices here. My job is to assign staff members to events and to coordinate schedules for everyone, including event supervisors, crew leads, servers and delivery drivers, many of whom are older than me. I’m 26.

When I was promoted to this position, I was concerned about whether my age might be a problem for some people, so I talked to Larry Walter, one of the company owners, about it. I managed older women when I worked for a high-end salon several years ago, but I was worried whether our older male employees would respect my authority. Larry said I should hold my own and earn their respect. I spoke to my dad about it, too; he said the same thing.

I do the hiring, so new employees find out right away that I’m young. They get over the initial shock that way, and it sets the tone. I’m in charge of orientation for new employees, but their peers help with training, too. That builds camaraderie. Older employees have made comments occasionally, like, “How did you get to be the one that hires us?” But they say it in a joking tone, and I don’t take offense.

I don’t just sit in the office. I’ve gone on deliveries with some of the drivers, which has surprised them. Once people see that I’m capable of doing what they do, I think any uneasiness about my being their boss disappears.

I’ve heard it said that my generation feels entitled, or that we think everything should be given to us. I have seen people my age who fit that description, but it’s a generalization. I come from a family of entrepreneurs who have worked hard for what they have. I know I have to do the same. I’m careful to be polite to everyone and treat everyone the same. I do see differences between the age groups, however.

Two years ago, we installed global positioning systems in our delivery trucks. The young employees thought that the devices were cool and fun to play with. Sometimes, the older ones wouldn’t even log in, saying that, “The darn thing wasn’t working.” The systems are so important for customer service that we really needed everyone to use them. We drop off orders at 40 to 100 locations a day, and need to be able to reroute trucks and keep customers informed about where their orders are.

The younger workers showed the older drivers how to use the systems, but some of the older ones still weren’t coming around. They just weren’t used to jumping in when it came to technology guaranteed approval cash loans. I thought of my dad, and it dawned on me that he always needs an instruction manual for the TV and other products. I asked some of the older workers whether they’d like the manual for the GPS and made copies for the ones who did. It made a big difference.

If a customer calls at 6 p.m. and places a breakfast order for the next day, I have to contact crew members at home. I can send text messages to most of the younger employees, but haven’t always been able to get the older employees to use that form of communication. Some of them don’t have cellphones. Occasionally, I’m reduced to leaving a message on an answering machine, if they have one, ending with, “Please let me know if you got this message.” Slowly but surely, however, they’re coming around to cellphones and text messaging.

Last year, we asked employees to come up with slogans for a marketing campaign. We planned to put the winning phrases on the sides of our trucks. One that we chose, which a younger employee suggested, was: “Eat something. You’re all skin and BlackBerry.” The point was that people work too much and need nourishment. Younger employees thought the slogan was funny, but some of the older drivers didn’t recognize the wireless device’s name.

Another we chose was: “Ask not what you can do for your company, ask what is for lunch.” Some of the younger people knew they had heard something similar before but couldn’t recall who said it. The older workers had them there.

Our oldest driver, Tom Campe, who’s 75, is one of our most personable workers. Customers love him. Employees with years of work experience have so much to teach others, and they’re great to work with. They can relate valuable lessons from previous jobs, and they’ve been to more places than most of us. They’re more cultured.

IN January, our employees completed a survey, and we learned that they wanted more feedback about their performance. We realized that and have instituted monthly recognition programs. We also started calling customers for feedback and posting the responses around the company.

Sometimes being recognized for your efforts is more important than money. Employees want to feel appreciated, no matter what their age. A simple “thank you” goes a long way.

As told to Patricia R. Olsen. E-mail: preoccupations@nytimes.com

Preoccupations: A Young Manager, Bridging the Age Gap