Wall Street can turn to the Fed a little longer

Focused on getting the nation's credit gears smoothly working again, the Federal Reserve is letting Wall Street firms draw emergency loans into next year and giving financial companies more options to help them overcome credit problems. The Fed's announcement Wednesday marks its latest effort to get credit -- the economy's oxygen -- flowing more freely. A global credit crisis that erupted in August has hobbled the U.S. economy, already reeling from a housing meltdown. As financial companies have racked up multibillion-dollar losses on soured mortgage investments and credit problems spread to other areas, firms have hoarded cash and clamped down on lending.

Inflation could hit 6 percent by the fall, according to Jeffrey Rubin, chief economist of Toronto-based investment bank CIBC. Consumer prices for June were up 5 percent from a year ago, the fastest annual change since 1991.

Mortgage application volume fell 14 percent during the week that ended July 25, the Mortgage Bankers Association said, even as interest rates on fixed-rate mortgages retreated from sharp increases a week earlier. Many homeowners have found they don't have enough equity to refinance.

A group of Burger King franchise operators in Florida is resisting a new rule from the No. 2 hamburger chain to operate longer hours. The three franchisees, who operate a total of 57 restaurants, say they shouldn't have to comply with a company requirement that restaurants open from 6 a.m. most days and stay open until 2 a.m. on others, saying their contracts only require them to be open from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.

Public companies can use their websites exclusively to disseminate information to investors under guidelines adopted Wednesday by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The commissioners voted unanimously to issue a so-called "interpretive release" providing guidance as to what types of corporate information can be considered public and appropriate to be distributed on companies' websites. The change is expected to save companies, especially smaller ones, time and money.

The long-delayed deal to take radio and billboard company Clear Channel Communications Inc. private closed Wednesday. Bain Capital Partners and Thomas H. Lee Partners bought the nation's largest radio station operator for $17.9 billion, paying investors $36 per share.

Nissan North America Inc. said it will offer buyouts to about 6,000 employees at the company's two Tennessee plants and eliminate a night shift at one plant because rising fuel prices and the economic downturn have slowed sales of trucks and sport utility vehicles. The technicians and salaried employees at the assembly plant in Smyrna and powertrain plant in Decherd will be offered $100,000 or $125,000 depending on tenure, as well as medical and car purchase benefits, Nissan said.

The Wall Street Journal plans to publish a new "lifestyle" magazine called WSJ starting in September, the publisher said, betting that the market for luxury advertisements will remain robust even as the economy falters.

E-Trade Financial Corp. agreed to pay $1 million in a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which accused the retail brokerage firm of failing to verify more than 65,000 customers' identities to prevent money laundering.

Ireland's unemployment rate hit a nine-year high of 5.9 percent, the government reported Wednesday, as economists warned that layoffs were spreading quickly from construction to most parts of the economy. The Central Statistics Office said a growing proportion of people who had lost their jobs recently were women.

ASSOCIATED PRESS