Finance and Economic

GROOVY GROVE: One of St. Louis’ newest designated communities, the Grove, has started off the new year with several new business openings and planned openings of several more.

Urban Breath Yoga at 4237 Manchester Avenue opened on Jan. 1, which, yes, was intended to coincide with the need for a place for hangover recovery. Director Cathleen Williams said the studio was previously located in Dogtown, and that she made the new space the main location because it has a larger reception area and additional room for classes.

Located in the same block is No Coast Skateboards, which opened last year and bills itself as the only skater-owned and operated shop in St. Louis. Planning to open soon along the same stretch is the SoHo Restaurant and Lounge, which is described as an upscale restaurant with a rooftop deck for dining and lounging payday loan.

Sameem Afghan Restaurant, which had originally been on South Grand but closed for a couple of years, reopened last week at 4341 Manchester Avenue. Owner Fahime Mohammad also operates Al Waha Restaurant and Hookah Lounge at the old Sameem’s location. He also operates the Kabob Palace catering company in Manchester.

The addition of Afghan cuisine adds another dimension to the variety of international cuisine in the Grove, which also has restaurants offering Baja Mexican, Nepalese, soul food and Spanish tapas. Rounding it off will be O’Shay’s Irish Pub, which is planning a spring opening.

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Iran’s navy said Sunday it test-fired an advanced surface-to-air missile during a drill in international waters near the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the passageway for one-sixth of the world’s oil supply.

Iran’s state TV said the missile, named Mehrab, or Altar, is designed to evade radar and was developed by Iranian scientists. The report said the missile was tested Sunday but provided no further details.

A leading Iranian lawmaker said the sea maneuvers serve as practice for closing the Strait of Hormuz if the West blocks Iran’s oil sales. After top Iranian officials made the same threat a week ago, military commanders emphasized that Iran has no intention of blocking the waterway now.

The exercise covers a 1,250-mile (2,000-kilometer) stretch of water beyond the Strait of Hormuz, including parts of the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden.

The drill, which could bring Iranian ships into proximity with U.S. Navy vessels that operate in the same area, is Iran’s latest show of strength in the face of mounting international criticism over its nuclear program. The West fears Iran’s program aims to develop atomic weapons _ a charge Tehran denies, insisting it’s for peaceful purposes only.

The 10-day exercise drew significant attention after the Iranian warnings about closing the strait. Iranian military officials later appeared to back away from that threat.

A spokesman for the exercise, Rear Adm. Mahmoud Mousavi, made a similar conciliatory comment on Sunday.

“We won’t disrupt traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. We are not after this,” the semiofficial ISNA news agency quoted him as saying.

Prominent lawmaker Ismail Kowsari offered a different view. He said the war games are part of Iran’s preparations to close the vital waterway if sanctions are imposed.

“Iran’s armed forces have practiced operations to close the Strait of Hormuz several times,” the semiofficial Fars news agency quoted Kowsari as saying Sunday.

“If we feel that the enemies want to prevent our oil exports, definitely we will close the Strait of Hormuz,” he said.

Mousavi said the missile that was tested Sunday is one of the newest in the navy’s arsenal.

“It’s equipped with state-of-the-art technology and a built-in system that enables it to thwart jammers,” Mousavi told state TV. One way to deflect surface-to-air missiles is to confuse their guidance systems.

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Viva Del Taco?

On Sunday, the owner of the old Del Taco building in Midtown backed off plans to knock it down, saying he would explore a range of other alternatives before seeking a demolition permit from the city.

After weeks of silence on his plan to bulldoze the saucer-shaped landmark at South Grand and Forest Park boulevards near St. Louis University, developer Rick Yackey sent a statement to the Post-Dispatch pledging to hire an architect, talk with potential tenants and hold a community meeting to explore possible uses of the building.

“I am a developer, not a demolition man,” Yackey wrote, noting that he has performed more than 2 million square feet worth of historic rehabs in the city, been honored by the Landmarks Association of St. Louis and never once applied for a demolition permit.

Yet demolition was to be the fate of the Del Taco building, according to plans filed with the city last month. Yackey, who owns the structure and neighboring Council Plaza, indicated he would knock down the 1967-built former gas station and replace it with new buildings for retail tenants.

That news prompted a flurry of protests from fans of both the restaurant and the building’s funky midcentury architecture. Even as the Del Taco itself closed, thousands of people signed online petitions to save the structure. Supporters held rallies. Mayor Francis Slay weighed in, urging reuse. Eventually, aldermen changed the redevelopment plan to require review by the city’s Preservation Board before any demolition permit could be issued. That’s where things stand now.

Yackey said his goal is an “economically viable” project that fits in with the neighbors. Demolition was always a last resort, he said, but the existing structure, just 2,000 square feet under a vast cement canopy, has very little leasable space payday loan lenders.

“This isn’t about disliking the building,” he said. “It’s about things being functionally obsolete.”

But after the uproar, and after talking with Slay and Alderman Marlene Davis, Yackey decided to see whether he can keep the building. He has hired an architect to study adding on to the ground floor, and he’s talking with the owner of a neighboring property about swapping some land for more parking spaces.

That is great news both for the Del Taco building itself and for the broader cause of preservation in St. Louis, said Randy Vines, who helped organize rallies in support of the building. The outpouring of support shows that people care about distinctive buildings, even if they’re just a few decades old, he said. And the protesters tried hard to keep a positive tone.

“We’ve done our best to offer solutions,” Vines said. “Certainly this is a building that can be adapted to another use.”

Yackey said he’s talking with potential tenants already. He wouldn’t say who, but Kaldi’s Coffee and local pizza chain Pi confirmed last week that they’re interested. Yackey also plans to hold a “community meeting to explore reuse and redevelopment ideas.”

And, Yackey said, he won’t rush to knock the building down.

“I have not applied for and will not apply for a demolition permit until completing this investigative process,” Yackey wrote. He said he expects that will take two or three months.

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Days before Canadian superstar Georges St-Pierre won his bout at UFC 129 at the Rogers Centre last April, a unanimous decision was already in among Toronto business owners like Carlos Gavilanes about the true victor of the bloody cage match: the cash register.

The Ultimate Fighting Championship went the distance for Toronto tourism and for local businesses, which took in an estimated $40 million from the most successful fight night in UFC history.

Polish central bank Governor Marek Belka said inflation in the eastern European country will peak within two months and a surprise interest rate increase in May isn’t a start of “a new trajectory” in monetary tightening.

“We are really very close to the peak” of consumer-price growth, Belka said in an interview in the Kazakh capital Astana today. The rate increase wasn’t to signal “a new trajectory of interest rate increases. It’s simply that we want to implement our strategy faster.”

The central bank unexpectedly raised its benchmark seven- day rate by a quarter-point to 4.25 percent on May 11. The bank sought to pre-empt pressure on prices as consumer spending is picking up. The inflation rate rose to a 2 1/2-year high of 4.5 percent last month.

Wage growth is accelerating in Poland, the European Union’s largest eastern member which escaped a recession altogether during the credit crisis. The Polish central bank raised borrowing costs three times since January as policy makers across the globe struggle to curb inflation.

The rate move probably changed perceptions of how fast prices are going to rise and will “moderate” economic growth in Poland, Belka said cash advance. Imported inflation is also eroding the purchasing power of consumers, he said.

‘Hysteria Is Over’

Following the rate increase “we are observing a certain attenuation of inflationary expectations.” Belka said. “The hysteria is over.”

The inflation rate may drop “close” to the central bank’s target of 2.5 percent late next year, Belka said. The rate has been above the bank’s goal for seven months.

Government efforts to limit public spending may help combat inflation in the country, he said.

Even so, Belka said he has “some doubts” the government will be able to reduce the budget deficit to 2.9 percent of gross domestic product as planned next year.

The central bank took the government’s pledge “seriously” that it will implement “additional measures if necessary” to cap expenditures, he said.

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Facing continued public unhappiness over gas prices, President Barack Obama is directing his administration to ramp up U.S. oil production by extending existing leases in the Gulf of Mexico and off Alaska’s coast and holding more frequent lease sales in a federal petroleum reserve in Alaska.

Obama said Saturday that the measures “make good sense” and will help reduce U.S. consumption of imported oil in the long term. But he acknowledged anew that they won’t help to immediately bring down gasoline prices topping $4 a gallon in many parts of the country.

His announcement followed passage in the Republican-controlled House of three bills _ including two this week _ that would expand and speed up offshore oil and gas drilling. Republicans say the bills are aimed at easing gasoline costs, but they also acknowledge that won’t be immediate.

The White House had announced its opposition to all three bills, which are unlikely to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate, saying the measures would undercut safety reviews and open environmentally sensitive areas to new drilling.

But Obama is adopting some of the bills’ provisions.

Answering the call of Republicans and Democrats from Gulf Coast states, Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address that he would extend all Gulf leases that were affected by a temporary moratorium on drilling imposed after last year’s BP oil spill. That would give companies additional time to begin drilling.

The administration had been granting extensions case by case, but senior administration officials said the Interior Department would institute a blanket one-year extension.

New safety requirements put in place since the BP spill also have delayed drilling in Alaska, so Obama said he would extend lease terms there for a year as well. An oil lease typically runs 10 years.

Lease sales in the western and central Gulf of Mexico that were postponed last year will be held by the middle of next year, the same time period required by the House. A sale off the Virginia coast still would not happen until 2017 at the earliest online cash advance. But Obama said he would speed up environmental reviews so that seismic studies to determine how much oil and gas lies off the Atlantic Coast can begin.

To further expedite drilling off the Alaskan coast, where such plans by Shell Oil Co. have been delayed by an air pollution permit, Obama said he would create an interagency task force to coordinate the necessary approvals. He also will hold annual lease sales in the vast National Petroleum Reserve on Alaska’s North Slope. Officials said the most recent sale was last year, but that they had not been held on any set schedule.

Republicans dismayed by the lack of progress in Shell’s drilling have drafted legislation to exempt drilling off Alaska from air pollution laws.

House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings of Washington, sponsor of the legislation, said it was “ironic” that Obama “is now taking baby steps in our direction” after the White House and congressional Democrats criticized the bills.

“The president is finally admitting what Republicans have known all along, that increasing the supply of American energy will help lower prices and create jobs,” Hastings said.

Obama also called on Democrats and Republicans to vote to eliminate billions in taxpayer subsidies to oil and gas companies.

In the weekly Republican message, Alabama Rep. Martha Roby said it’s time for Washington to get serious about the challenges facing the country, including straightening out its finances and tackling the gas price issue. She praised the House for passing measures to expand domestic energy production “because when we’re talking about energy, we’re talking about jobs.”

“The greatest threat to our economy, job creation, and the future of our children is to do nothing,” Roby said. “We have to act. It is what we were sent to Washington to do.”

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Community Health Systems Inc. has ended its effort to buy competitor Tenet Healthcare Corp. after Tenet rejected its latest $4 billion-plus offer.

Franklin, Tenn.-based Community Health said Monday it withdrew its offer to buy Tenet for $7.25 per share. It has also rescinded its effort to put nominees on Tenet’s board of directors.

Tenet shares fell 6 cents to $6.46 in pre-market trading Tuesday.

Community Health has been trying to acquire Tenet since late 2010. It originally made a bid of $6 per share for the Dallas company, and took the bid public after Tenet turned it down. Community Health raised its offer on May 2. The latest bid valued Tenet at about $4 payday loans no teletrack.06 billion.

Tenet also opposed the takeover offer efforts by adopting a “poison pill” stock dilution measure, delaying its annual meeting by six months, and filing a lawsuit that accused Community Health of defrauding Medicare.

Tenet said Monday that he latest offer was still too low. Community Health had said that bid would be its last offer.

Community Health runs about 130 hospitals in fast-growing and non-urban markets, while Tenet’s 49 hospitals are in urban and suburban markets.

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The OECD is recommending that Japan as much as quadruple its sales tax rate to deal with a crushing deficit that’s bound to grow as it spends on reconstruction from last month’s earthquake and tsunami.

Economists in the group of the world’s wealthiest countries said in a report released Thursday that the country should boost the sales tax, now 5 percent, to as high as 20 percent while cutting corporate taxes.

OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria says Japan has to perform a balancing act as it finances reconstruction following the March 11 disasters while sustaining its economic recovery and cutting debt.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development also recommends education system changes, freer trade with other countries and other reforms.

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Regulators have shut down a total of six banks in Alabama, Georgia, Minnesota and Mississippi, boosting the number of U.S. bank failures this year to 34. There were 157 bank closures in 2010 amid the shattered economy and piles of bad loans.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. seized Superior Bank, based in Birmingham, Ala., with $3 billion in assets; Birmingham-based Nexity Bank, with $793.7 million in assets; Bartow County Bank of Cartersville, Ga low fee payday advance., with $330.2 million in assets; and New Horizons Bank in East Ellijay, Ga., with $110.7 million in assets.

It also shut down Rosemount National Bank in Rosemount, Minn., with $37.6 million in assets, and Heritage Banking Group, based in Carthage, Miss., with $224 million in assets.

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