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Tensions with Iran are adding at least 30 cents to a gallon of gasoline in the United States, and experts say gas prices have only just begun to rise.

Gasoline prices have surged over 10% in the last two months, largely tracking the runup in oil prices, which have increased by a similar amount and are now at a 9-month high.

Several factors have caused oil prices to rise, including the sense that the economy is improving and supply disruptions in a handful of minor oil producing nations.

But the biggest factor by far, say analysts, is fear that tensions with Iran will lead to an all-out war that causes a disruption in oil supplies.

"The market right now is fairly well supplied," said John Kingston, director of oil, at the analytics firm Platts. "You’ve just got a significant fear factor that things could get worse."

Kingston noted that OPEC is actually producing more oil right now than is needed to keep pace with global demand. As such, stockpiles are rising.

Gas spending and prices by state

And thanks to the recession and better fuel efficiency, gasoline demand in the United States, the world’s largest consumer, is actually the lowest it’s been in a decade, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Yet gas and oil prices continue to climb.

The fear is that Iran’s 2.2 million barrels a day in exports could be cut off. Iranian oil is already being sanctioned, but so far most is still finding its way to market, just at lower prices.

Worse, there’s fear the 17 million barrels a day that flow through the Strait of Hormuz, one fifth of the world’s total production, could be disrupted by an Israeli attack.

That’s a big reason why gasoline prices in the United States averaged $3.37 in January, the highest for any January ever, according to AAA.

"It’s a market that’s caught fire," said Ben Brockwell, an analyst at the Oil Price Information Service, which collects data for AAA. "And it doesn’t look like there’s any circuit breakers to stop it."

Indeed, Brockwell noted that while retail prices are up 36 cents a gallon in the last two months, futures prices have risen even higher — 82 cents over the same time period.

Unless the situation with Iran cools off and future prices decline, consumers will likely see that 35-cent-a-gallon difference in the form of a similarly paired price hike at the pump in a matter of weeks.

Iran’s ‘distressed’ oil to keep flowing - at deep discount

"I definitely think the market is psyching itself up for a new record," he said, referring to the previous average high price for gasoline, which was $4.11 a gallon set in the summer of 2008. "Probably before memorial day."

That possibility has got a lot of people freaked out. Everyone from the Obama administrations to the American Petroleum Institute has been trying to talk down prices in the last few days.

Many economists say gasoline prices sustained above $4 a gallon could stunt the growth of the fragile worldwide economy — a fact which diplomats shuttling to Israel must be well aware.

It’s thought the Israelis are considering an attack on Iran as a means to disrupt its nuclear program, which Iran says is for peaceful purposes but many suspect is intended to produce a bomb.

But if Israel can’t be persuaded to hold off an attack, $4 gas will look cheap.

"If Israel does hit Iran, all bets are off," said Mike Fitzpatrick, editor-in-chief of Kilduff Report’s Energy Overview. "$150 [oil] is the first marker we’ll hit."

Oil at $150 a barrel could translate into over $5 a gallon at the pump. 

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United Parcel Service, the world’s largest package delivery company, said Friday it is still in talks to acquire TNT Express even after the Dutch package delivery company rejected a $6.43 billion bid.

UPS said there is no guarantee that they will reach middle ground and make a deal. If UPS were to successfully buy TNT, it would significantly expand its business in Europe. The deal would be UPS’ biggest ever.

The bid works out to euro9, or about $11.84, per share. That’s based on TNT’s 534.2 million outstanding shares. TNT’s American depositary shares soared 56 percent to $12.57. UPS shares closed unchanged at $76.76.

TNT, Europe’s second-largest express delivery company, said Friday that its supervisory and executive boards carefully considered the proposal from UPS Inc., which is based in Atlanta. Both companies confirmed they are still talking about other possible outcomes.

UPS has made a couple of smaller acquisitions to bolster its operations in Europe over the last several months. In December, it said it will buy Pieffe Group, an Italian company that specializes in shipping and storing pharmaceutical products. Last week it announced the purchase of a small Belgian e-commerce company, Kiala.

TNT, which is based in Amsterdam, has been seen as a takeover target of either UPS or smaller rival FedEx Corp. for some time. Deutsche Bank analyst Justin Yagerman said in a note to clients Friday that he doesn’t expect FedEx will go after TNT, preferring instead to continue its plan of acquiring smaller companies in Europe. A FedEx spokesman said the company doesn’t comment on corporate development matters.

Last month, TNT detailed plans to split its express and mail businesses and said its CEO will step down after that separation is complete. That’s expected sometime next year.

The company’s express operations are growing, but its mail business is struggling with lower volume and disputes over layoffs. In November, it reported third-quarter net profit fell by more than half to 5 million euros, reflecting weak margins in its European businesses and losses at its operations in high-growth emerging markets.

Shareholders are set to vote on the separation in May.

TNT was split from Dutch mail company PostNL NV in May of last year.

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A few members of the Federal Open Market Committee meeting said the central bank may soon have to consider more asset purchases, while others said the economic outlook would have to deteriorate first.

A few members said economic conditions

Rising demand for automotive-related products helped Viasystems Group Inc., a provider of printed circuit boards, to a fourth-quarter profit of $15.5 million, or 74 cents per share, compared with $9.5 million, or 44 cents a share, a year ago. Sales grew 10.3 percent, to $269 million, from the corresponding period the previous year. Demand for the Clayton-based company’s products by automotive users continued an upward trend from last year.

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Just hours after Greece gave in to painful new job and spending cuts, European ministers declared Thursday that Athens didn’t go far enough and demanded more within a week in exchange for a euro130 billion ($170 billion) bailout to stave off bankruptcy.

The ministers gave the debt-ridden country until the middle of next week to find an extra euro325 million ($430 million) in savings, pass the cuts through a divided parliament, and get written guarantees that they will be implemented even after the elections of a new government in April, said Jean-Claude Juncker, the Luxembourg prime minister who chaired Thursday’s meeting of finance chiefs of the 17 euro countries.

The new austerity plan, which makes sharp cuts to the minimum wage and thousands of public-sector jobs, ignited fresh criticism from unions and the country’s deputy labor minister, who resigned in protest after Greece agreed to the deal. Even debt inspectors conceded that the new measures would keep the country in a recession for a fifth straight year.

But Greece’s finance minister warned that the alternative will likely be worse.

“Unfortunately the choice we face is one of sacrifice or even greater sacrifice _ on a scale that cannot be compared,” Evangelos Venizelos told reporters, after the meeting with ministers from the 16 other countries that use the euro.

Other European officials warned that more severe steps still might be necessary.

“Greece still has its homework cut out,” Jan Kees de Jager, the Dutch finance minister, said after the meeting. “A lot of measures need to be clarified and taken.”

A European official said earlier he still saw 10 to 15 issues before the deal could be concluded, including doubts that Greece could lower its debt level down to 120 percent of its annual economic output by 2020 and that labor market reforms would restore the country’s competitiveness. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.

On top of that, the ministers were seriously considering a plan proposed by France and Germany to force Greece to set up a separate account dedicated to repaying its debt, said Olli Rehn, the EU’e economic affairs commissioner.

Such an account would be an unprecedented intrusion into the fiscal affairs of a sovereign state in Europe. The plan underlines the frustration that has built up in the eurozone over Greece’s slow reforms over the past two years.

Rehn, calling it a “relevant possibility,” did not say whether only money from the bailout would be channeled into the account, or whether it would also contain Greek tax revenue.

Greece is under immense pressure to reach a rescue deal. On March 20, it has to redeem euro14.5 billion ($19.3 billion) in bonds _ money which it doesn’t have. The country’s total debt is euro350 billion ($464 billion) _ equivalent to 160 percent of its annual economic output _ and unsustainable even for a healthier economy easy payday loans.

Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos earlier Thursday said that all major party leaders in the country’s coalition government had backed the latest round of cuts, including a 22 percent cut in the minimum wage, firings of 15,000 civil servants and an end to dozens of job guarantee provisions.

The support of all major parties was a key demand from Greece’s international creditors _ but European ministers indicated that they still needed written assurance from the political leaders before Wednesday, when the ministers planned to meet again.

Once all the demands have been fulfilled, the eurozone will give Greece the green light to start implementing a separate bond swap deal with banks and other private investors designed to slice some euro100 billion ($132 billion) off Greece’s debt load.

Rehn indicated that the eurozone was relatively content with that deal, but reserved final approval until Wednesday. The swap deal will see investors exchange their old bonds for new ones with half the face value, lower interest rates and longer repayment deadlines. It has to be launched quickly since it is expected to take several weeks to complete.

A forced bankruptcy would likely lead to Greece’s exit from the euro common currency, a situation European officials say would hurt other weak countries like Portugal, Ireland and Italy. Financial analysts fear an uncontrolled default could trigger a chain reaction similar to the financial meltdown that followed the 2008 collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers.

Greece is expected to rush the new austerity measures through parliament by late Sunday, but Papademos’ government is facing growing dissent from the majority Socialist party, which has seen public support in opinion polls drop to single figures.

Unions called for a 48-hour strike for Friday and Saturday in opposition to the new cuts, while Yiannis Koutsoukos, the deputy labor minister who quit Thursday, accused debt inspectors of using “shameless and blackmailing tactics” with the government.

And conservative leader Antonis Samaras insisted that Papademos call a spring general election _ a move that could make it more difficult for coalition parties to work together.

Almost two years of austerity have taken their toll on Greece. Unemployment reached a record 20.9 percent in November, up from 13.9 percent a year earlier, with more than 1 million people without a job. In the 15-24 age group, unemployment has spiked to 48 percent.

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Scientists for the Food and Drug Administration say that an Amgen drug slowed the spread of cancer to the bone in men with hard-to-treat prostate cancer, though the drug did not extend life and carried significant side effects.

The Food and Drug Administration will ask a panel of outside experts on Wednesday whether the benefits of Amgen’s Xgeva outweigh its risks, which included bone disease in about 5 percent of patients taking the drug. The agency posted its review of the drug online Monday morning ahead of the meeting.

Xgeva is already approved for preventing fractures in cancerous bones, and for osteoporosis, in a different formulation called Prolia.

Now Amgen has asked the FDA to approve the injectable drug as a preventive measure for men with recurring prostate cancer that is at high risk of spreading to the bone. Men must have also attempted and failed treatment with hormone therapy.

A 1,432-patient study conducted by Amgen showed the drug slowed the spread of cancer to the bone by about 4.2 months when compared to patients who received placebo. While that delay was statistically significant, the FDA’s reviewers questioned whether it is “an adequate measure of clinical benefit” for patients with prostate cancer.

FDA’s review notes that the drug did not increase overall survival, with patients in the drug and placebo groups living about the same amount of time.

Additionally, five percent of patients taking Xgeva experienced the side effect of osteonecrosis of the jaw, in which the bone dies because of poor blood supply.

While the FDA staff does not openly recommend against the new use for the drug, they do quote from an editorial in the Lancet which said the company’s findings on Xgeva “`do not support its broad use as a preventive agent for bone metastases in prostate cancer.’”

ISI analyst Mark Schoenebaum said the FDA’s negative review was consistent with analyst expectations.

“As was generally expected by us and much of the Street, the FDA is critical of the data, questioning the clinical meaningfulness of the primary endpoint,” Schoenebaum wrote in an email.

Amgen shares slipped 78 cents, or 1.1 percent, to $68.50 per share.

Doctors use a variety of treatments and interventions to treat prostate cancer, depending on the speed of the cancer’s growth and the patient’s age, among other factors. Patients with fast-growing prostate tumors often receive hormone therapy to stop production of testosterone, which fuels cancer growth.

All of the men in Amgen’s study had tumors that did not respond well to hormone therapy, but had not yet spread beyond the prostate. While there are multiple drugs for both early and late-stage prostate cancer, Amgen argues “there is a gap in the treatment plan for those patients” enrolled in its study.

Xgeva and Prolia, the osteoporosis formulation, had combined sales of $554 million in 2011, their first full year on the market. Amgen is based in Thousand Oaks, Calif.

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So many times when the big credit-rating companies have embarrassed themselves, the world has sighed and chalked it up to a business model that by design invites corruption and incompetence. Perhaps never before have the public’s expectations for the industry been lower.

The fundamental flaw is that the major rating companies, led by Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s, typically are paid by the issuers of the securities they rate, or by other deeply interested parties, such as Wall Street underwriters. Too often the raters seem to be the last to know that a company they dubbed investment grade was going broke, or that a mortgage bond once deemed AAA was about to default. The public sees these things and naturally draws a link between what the raters say and how they are compensated.

Although the government can’t make the credit raters more capable, it can make them more transparent. Here’s a good place to begin: Start requiring disclosures of how much the raters’ clients pay them for their services.

Consider some of the boilerplate in Moody’s reports on MF Global Holdings Ltd., whose credit ratings were the subject of a congressional hearing last week. Moody’s Oct. 27 report — in which it downgraded MF Global to junk, only four days before the futures broker filed for bankruptcy — said most issuers of debt securities pay “fees ranging from $1,500 to approximately $2,500,000″ for “appraisal and rating services.”

It’s anyone’s guess whether the fees MF Global paid to Moody’s fell within or outside this range. The companies know how much money changed hands. They’re just not telling us.

The disclosures in Standard & Poor’s reports are just as useless. The company’s Oct. 26 report on MF Global said “S&P may receive compensation for its ratings and certain credit-related analyses, normally from issuers or underwriters of securities or from obligors.” Coincidence or not, S&P maintained an investment-grade mark on MF Global until the day it failed.

There’s no such secrecy about the fees other types of opinion vendors charge their clients. For more than a decade, U.S. public companies have been required to disclose the annual fees they pay their outside auditors. Similarly, when companies hire stock promoters or other firms to publish research reports profiling their shares, federal securities laws require disclosures in the reports showing who paid for them, as well as the amount and form of compensation.

The auditor-fee disclosures have been useful. Fannie Mae’s proxy statement for 2003, for instance, showed the housing financier paid KPMG $2.7 million to audit its books that year.

The fee was so tiny, for a company with $1 trillion of assets, that it served as a red flag for investors, signaling that KPMG’s audit quality couldn’t have been all that robust. The next year Fannie Mae had a huge accounting scandal.

At the other extreme, in its first annual report as a public company, Blackstone Group LP said it paid its auditor, Deloitte & Touche, total fees of $159.1 million for 2007, mostly for nonaudit work. The fees were so huge — Blackstone’s total assets were $13.2 billion at the time — it would be reasonable for investors to wonder what influence they might have had on Deloitte’s judgment.

The parallels for credit-rating companies are obvious. Like auditors and stock promoters, they’re paid to express opinions to investors. Whatever their fees are, the public should be told. The credit raters would have us believe there’s nothing wrong with collecting cash from the same customers whose securities they grade, and that this doesn’t cloud their independence or objectivity. If that’s true, they should have no problem with us knowing the actual dollar amounts.

Unfortunately this isn’t the path the government has chosen. The Dodd-Frank Act, passed in 2010, included 19 pages of new provisions governing how credit-rating companies operate.

Numerous federal banking and securities laws were amended to remove statutory references to credit ratings, for instance, so that regulators would reduce their reliance on them. Dodd-Frank didn’t mandate disclosure of the raters’ fees, however.

A rule proposed last year by the Securities and Exchange Commission would require companies such as Moody’s and S&P to disclose in a form accompanying each credit rating whether the grade was paid for by the issuer, underwriter or sponsor of the security being rated — or if it was purchased by someone else, such as an investor. The rating company would also have to disclose if the purchaser had paid it for any other services, such as consulting or advisory work.

Most important, though, no dollar amounts would have to be divulged.

This is a mistake. A big reason that the public doesn’t trust credit ratings is because of the money that changes hands.

What matters most, obviously, is how much. It makes little difference whether the amounts are disclosed by the rating company or by the issuer of the securities as part of its own disclosures, as long as it’s made public somewhere.

The most dubious penny-stock promoters have to disclose what they get paid for their opinions. Credit raters can at least be held to the same standards.

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Facebook’s long-awaited IPO filing is imminent, according to several news reports.

The Wall Street Journal kicked off the hoopla on Friday, citing anonymous sources who said that Facebook may file for an initial public offering as early as this Wednesday.

The New York Times and CNBC echoed that with their own unnamed sources in articles posted late Tuesday, saying that the filing will land Wednesday. Facebook is seeking to raise up to $5 billion in its offering, they added.

If that number is correct, Facebook would represent by far the largest global IPO ever by an Internet-focused company, according to data from Dealogic. Google’s (, Fortune 500) $1.9 billion debut is currently the largest U.S. Internet IPO.

But Facebook would still lag behind blockbuster U.S. IPOs like those from Visa (, Fortune 500), which raised more than $19 billion in 2008, and General Motors (, Fortune 500), which raised $18 billion last year.

Facebook’s IPO filing won’t answer one burning question: What’s the company worth? For that, Wall Street will have to wait until Facebook starts trading, which typically happens several months after companies file their first round of regulatory paperwork.

Some experts have suggested that the social network could valued between $75 billion and $100 billion once it starts trading. No matter what the market cap, Facebook’s IPO is undeniably hot, says Max Wolff, chief economist at GreenCrest Capital.

But there’s a lot more riding on Facebook’s paperwork than wealth creation. The social network has become an entire ecosystem, supporting independent app makers and gaming platforms like Zynga ().

Facebook’s filing will have implications for companies that depend on it, as well as the social media landscape at large. Until then, analysts are left to speculate about Facebook’s revenue streams and profitability — and whether it really deserves a $100 billion market value.

Michael Pachter, a research analyst at Wedbush Securities, says the rumored valuation range is reasonable — though he won’t cite a specific estimate of his own.

How Facebook makes money — and could make more: The vast majority of Facebook’s revenue comes from advertising: a combination of search and display ads. And the sales growth is incredibly robust.

Research firm eMarketer estimated last September that Facebook’s ad revenue would more than double in 2011 to $3.8 billion and increase another 52% to $5.78 billion in 2012.

Facebook has grown by grabbing market share from Google and Yahoo. Last year Facebook comprised 16.3% of the so-called display (i.e. banners and other graphical ads) market, eMarketer estimates — compared with Yahoo’s (, Fortune 500) 13.1% and Google’s (, Fortune 500) 9.3%.

Martin Pyykkonen, analyst at Wedge Partners, says Facebook is highly appealing to advertisers because about two-thirds of its users fall into the coveted age demographic of 18-49. He thinks Facebook’s ad targeting will become even more effective over time.

"The ‘Like’ button option is a basic example of targeting," Pyykkonen wrote in a note to clients Monday. "[It’s] likely that advertisers will be able to even better target their audiences as Facebook goes deeper with integrating apps, games, movies, music."

Facebook’s other revenue stream is its payment system for purchases within apps and games: Facebook Credits. Facebook keeps 30% of the revenue from those payments, and passes the remaining 70% on to the app developer.

Facebook Credits now comprises 10% of the company’s total revenue, up from 5% in early 2010, Pyykkonen estimates.

Those estimates will soon be backed up — or refuted — by hard numbers from Facebook. Once its IPO filing does finally land, it will help answer questions about the overall social media market.

"People are extrapolating outcomes into an environment that’s hungry for missing details," said Wolff. "It’s like all the guys in the class spreading rumors about the prettiest girl in the school."

– CNNMoney’s Maureen Farrell contributed reporting. 

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Turnout was low as Egyptians voted on Sunday for the upper house of parliament, in elections that are the latest step in the country’s planned transition from military to civilian rule.

Few voters showed up to cast their ballots at polling stations in Cairo, one of 13 provinces where the first stage of elections for the largely advisory Shura Council are taking place. A second stage will take place on Feb. 14-15.

“We now feel we have a role in shaping the country’s future,” said Mohammed el-Hawari, a professor at Cairo’s Ain Shams University and one of those who did vote.

The Shura Council is composed of 270 members. Only two-thirds are elected while the rest are appointed.

Islamists dominated elections for the People’s Assembly, the more powerful of the two houses of parliament, in voting that ran from Nov. 28 through January. Turnout was heavy in these elections, which were the first since the Jan. 25-Feb. 11, 2011, mass uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak.

One secular party, the Free Egyptians, had announced that it was boycotting Shura Council elections to protest what it described as violations of Egypt’s election laws by Islamist parties during the People’s Assembly vote.

The secularists say that that Islamists made heavy use of religious slogans and campaigned too close to polling stations. Islamist spokesmen have denied using slogans inappropriately, and said that all groups campaigned too close to the stations.

Secular and liberal alliances, including youth parties which led the anti-Mubarak uprising, have performed poorly in elections.

Once the Shura Council elections are complete, according to Egypt’s transition plan, the parliament is tasked to select a 100-member panel to draft the country’s new constitution. The ruling military council which took power after Mubarak’s ouster is then scheduled to transfer power to an elected civilian president by the end of June.

The army generals have been accused of mismanaging the transitional period, of not carrying through sweeping reforms, and of keeping Mubarak’s regime intact.

The voting comes a few days after hundreds of thousands of Egyptians poured into the streets to mark the first anniversary of their uprising and to press the military council to step down.

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Just 302,000 new homes were sold in 2011, 6.2% below 2010 and the lowest number of annual sales since the government started tracking home sales in 1963.

In December, sales of single-family homes fell 2.2% month-over-month to an annual rate of 307,000, according to estimates released by the Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

A consensus of experts from Briefing.com had forecast an annual rate of sales of 321,000 for December. The actual result was a 6.9% decline from 12 months earlier, when homes sold at a 329,000 annual rate.

The dismal report was a reversal of other recent housing market trends. Last week, the National Association of Realtors reported that existing-home sales rose for the third straight month in December and the Census Bureau said that construction of new homes had been gaining ground.

Pat Newport, an industry analyst with IHS Global Insight, did not put much stock in the December new-home sales report, however. "They’re not statistically significant," he said. "I think the other recent numbers, like on housing starts and permits, give a more accurate picture of the current trends in the market."

Construction gains late in the year indicate that the new home market is picking up, he said.

Still, he added, these are the lowest new home sales numbers for the nation as a whole and for three of the four regions ever recorded. Only the Midwest escaped notching a new a record low.

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The median home price for homes sold during December was $210,300 and there was a 6.1-month supply of homes at the current rate of sales.

Getting new home construction healthy again would help revitalize the economy. For every 100 homes built, 300 jobs are created, said David Crowe, chief economist for the National Association of Home Builders. "Half of those are on construction sites and the other half are people building appliances, cabinets, carpets and other goods for the home," he said.

He’s forecasting an 18% rise in new homes sales this year. Newport, of IHS Global, is predicting a slightly lower gain of about 15%. 

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