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Two telecommunications giants now control the Toronto Maple Leafs, the biggest prize in Canadian sport.

The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan announced on Friday that will sell its 79.5 per cent stake in Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, owners of the iconic Leafs, to Rogers Communications and BCE for $1.32 billion.

The companies made the announcement in a morning news conference at the Air Canada Centre to confirm the blockbuster deal.

“MLSE is truly a world-class organization with some of the most iconic brands and popular sports teams across North America,” said Nadir Mohamed, Rogers president and CEO in a statement.

“This investment fits squarely into our strategy of securing premium content and making it accessible to Canadians when, where and how they want it.”

“Sports content is king. Let’s face it nobody wants to watch a game two days later,” Mohammed said during the announcement Friday morning. “Between the two organizations I can’t think of anybody that can bring live sports to Canadians wherever they are without missing a second.”

MLSE also owns the Raptors of the NBA, Toronto FC of Major League Soccer, the Marlies of the American Hockey League, the Air Canada Centre, two specialty television channels and Maple Leaf Square, a condominium development adjacent to the arena.

Under the agreement, Rogers and Bell Canada will divide their 75 per cent share of MLSE evenly. And Larry Tanenbaum whose firm, Kilmer Sports, owned 21 cash till payday.47 per cent of MLSE increases its ownership to 25 per cent.

“I am excited to welcome our new partners Bell and Rogers,” said Tanenbaum, who remains as chairman of MLSE, in a statement. “I am proud this is a made-in-Canada deal that will bring resources and expertise to help us win on and off the ice, court and pitch.”

“It really means we’re moving for those championship teams, the Stanley Cup, that NBA championship,” Tanenbaum said

There were provisions in the existing shareholders agreement that gave Tanenbaum key rights that would make it difficult for any owner with telecommunications properties to take advantage of MLSE’s rich broadcast assets without his approval.

Reports surfaced two weeks ago that Rogers and BCE had been working on an alliance to share control of MLSE, which also owns other sports properties and lucrative broadcast interests.

At that time, Teachers, one of the country’s biggest pension plans with assets of more than $107.5 billion, indicated it was pulling its stake off the market after an extensive search that formally started earlier this year. Teachers’ noted that several parties had made offers.

The Star reported a year ago that Teachers had been quietly talking to possible suitors including Rogers about selling its stake. Teachers’ played down the story but four months later announced that it would formally explore a sale.

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U.S. home prices are falling again in most major cities after posting small gains over the summer and spring, the latest evidence that the troubled housing market won’t recover any time soon.

The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index released Tuesday showed prices dropped in September from August in 17 of the 20 cities tracked. That was the first decline after five straight months in which at least half the cities in the survey showed monthly gains.

A separate index for the July-September quarter shows prices were mostly unchanged from the previous quarter.

David M. Blitzer, chairman of S&P’s index committee, said that while the steep price declines seen between 2007 and 2009 appear to be over, home prices are down from the same time last year and do not show signs of easing.

“Any chance for a sustained recovery will probably need a stronger economy,” Blitzer said.

Atlanta, San Francisco and Tampa, Fla. posted the biggest monthly price declines. Prices in Atlanta, Las Vegas and Phoenix fell to their lowest points since the housing crisis began four years ago. Blitzer called the new lows reached in those three cities a “bit disturbing.”

Prices rose in New York, Portland, Ore. and Washington.

Americans are reluctant to purchase a home more than two years after the recession officially ended. High unemployment and weak job growth have deterred many would-be buyers. Even the lowest mortgage rates in history haven’t been enough to lift sales.

Some people can’t qualify for loans or meet higher down payment requirements. Many with good credit and stable jobs are holding off because they fear that prices will keep falling payday loan lenders.

Sales of previously occupied homes are on pace to match last year’s dismal figures _ the worst in 14 years. And sales of new homes are shaping up to be the worst since the government began keeping records a half century ago.

“Despite record high affordability of real estate, the psychology of home buyers is still being weighed down by economic uncertainty, keeping them on the fence when it comes to buying homes,” said Stan Humphries, chief economist at Zillow.com, which measures home values.

The Case Shiller index covers half of all U.S. homes. It measures prices compared with those in January 2000 and creates a three-month moving average. The September data is the latest available.

Prices are certain to fall further once banks resume millions of foreclosures. They have been delayed because of a yearlong government investigation into mortgage lending practices.

Home prices had stabilized in coastal cities over the past six months, helped by a rush of spring buyers and investors. But this year, prices in many cities, including Cleveland, Detroit, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Tampa, have reached their lowest points since the housing bust more than four years ago.

Foreclosures and short sales _ when a lender accepts less for a home than what is owed on a mortgage _ are selling at an average discount of 20 percent.

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Libya’s transitional government was sworn in Thursday before the country’s interim leader, another step in the oil-rich country’s roadmap to elections next year.

Starting with Prime Minister Prime Minister Abdurrahim el-Keib, each minister faced the transitional council’s leader, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, placed his hand on a Quran and swore to “remain loyal to the goals” of the revolution that overthrew longtime leader Moammar Gadhafi.

Each shook Abdel-Jalil’s hand as he stood in front of two national flags, and some also embraced him.

The country faces huge challenges now, but el-Keib said he and his ministers were “upbeat” and optimistic about leading Libya toward elections by next June.

“We are looking forward to having an exciting seven months ahead of us, with lots of things to do and hopefully good results,” el-Keib said.

The lineup of relative unknowns, almost all of them older men, will confront daunting challenges, like establishing control over the fractured nation after the ousting of Gadhafi’s 42-year regime, along with building up state institutions practically from scratch.

El-Keib pledged to represent the interests of all Libyans.

“I am a son of all Libyans,” he said. “I will represent everyone and share wealth with everyone.”

The transitional Cabinet includes 24 ministers, though several, including the defense minister, were missing from Thursday’s ceremony. The prime minister explained that they were out of Tripoli, some of them attending to personal preparations in their hometowns before taking up their new posts.

Among the institutions that must be built is a justice system that will be able to put on trial two key members of the Gadhafi regime _ Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, the dictator’s recently captured son and one-time heir-apparent, and the ex-intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senoussi.

The International Criminal Court has charged them both with crimes against humanity for alleged atrocities committed during the recent civil war.

Libyan authorities insist the be tried in Libya, and not at the court in The Hague, Netherlands, a decision aimed at asserting their national authority. However, they have promised to work with the ICC and with the United Nations in investigating the alleged crimes.

ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told The Associated Press on Thursday that the court received the formal pledge of cooperation in a letter from Abdul-Jalil, the NTC chairman.

Moreno-Ocampo said he was satisfied with that move, which appeared to settle a dispute between the international court and Libyan authorities over which body should try Seif al-Islam Gadhafi.

Moreno-Ocampo said the most important thing is for “face of the old regime” to face justice.

It “is very important for the world and for Libya to understand what happened here, how they attacked these people, how they killed these people,” Moreno-Ocampo said.

He said investigations are under way into the alleged crimes committed by Gadhafi’s son and that he believed it would be ready for trial “in a few months.”

Seif al-Islam was captured on Saturday and is being held by fighters from the Libyan town of Zintan, who flew him there after his arrest in the south. He appeared to be in good health despite a hand injury, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which visited him Tuesday.

Officials with the NTC have reported that al-Senoussi, the former intelligence chief, has also been captured. But some later cast doubt on that assertion, and his whereabouts are not known.

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A tax cut that reaches 160 million Americans and government aid for the long-term unemployed will expire at the end of the year _ sucking $165 billion out of the economy next year _ unless Congress takes action.

Economists hoped the so-called congressional supercommittee would decide whether to extend both measures. But the committee couldn’t even agree on how to reach its main goal, cutting $1.2 trillion from the federal budget deficit.

If the tax cut goes away, the average family would pay about $1,000 more in taxes next year, the equivalent of an extra tank of gas every two weeks. Someone earning $100,000 would pay $2,000 more.

And if long-term unemployment benefits are allowed to expire, about 6 million people would lose weekly checks averaging about $300. For most of the long-term unemployed, that is their main source of income.

“There’s an awful lot of uncertainty ahead,” said Michael Hanson, senior U.S. economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Both changes would leave Americans with an estimated $165 billion less to spend. The Federal Reserve expects the economy to grow only 2.7 percent next year, and economists say the expiration of the two programs could reduce growth by a full percentage point.

The government said Tuesday that the economy grew at a 2 percent rate in July, August and September, down from earlier estimates of 2.5 percent.

To bring unemployment down significantly, the economy has to grow more than twice as fast as it grew this summer.

Congress could extend the tax cut and unemployment benefits when it returns from Thanksgiving recess next week. But the same partisan philosophical differences that sank the supercommittee could complicate the debate.

At the same time, Congress may be unwilling to force what is essentially a tax increase on tens of millions of Americans just as an election year begins.

Both measures were part of a deal struck in December 2010 by President Barack Obama and Republicans in Congress.

The cut applies to the tax that pays for Social Security. The tax applies to the first $106,800 a person makes in a year. The deal lowered the rate paid by individuals to 4.2 percent from 6.2 percent for this year. Companies also pay a 6.2 rate on their payroll.

Some Republicans have indicated they could support extending the tax cut, but there would almost certainly be a fight over how to pay for it. Without spending cuts or other tax increases, renewing the Social Security tax cut would swell the deficit cash advance in one hour.

Obama, as part of his jobs bill in September, Obama proposed lowering the rate further, to 3.1 percent, and cutting the employer portion to 3.1 percent up to the first $5 million on their payrolls.

Cuts at that level would pump almost $250 billion more into the economy compared with last year, when individuals and employers both paid the 6.2 percent rate.

Obama, speaking Tuesday in New Hampshire, urged Republicans to continue the tax break.

“Don’t be a Grinch,” the president said. “Don’t vote to raise taxes on working Americans during the holidays.”

On Monday, White House press secretary Jay Carney suggested that renewing or deepening the tax cut could be paid for by raising taxes on the wealthy. Republicans have refused to consider doing so.

Most states provide up to 26 weeks of unemployment benefits. The deal extended benefits to up to 99 weeks in states with the highest unemployment rates.

Unless that is renewed, almost 2.2 million people out of work will lose benefits by the first week in February. About 6 million people would lose weekly benefits by the end of the year.

Just the uncertainty of not knowing what Congress will do could cause businesses to hold back on hiring and investment, and therefore drag down economic growth, Hanson said.

Most economists would like to see lower budget deficits, but most would like the government to reduce the deficit gradually, to avoid hurting the weak economy. And they would all prefer robust economic growth to solve the problem.

The supercommittee’s failure triggers $1 trillion in automatic cuts in government spending beginning in 2013. Congress could undo them, but then credit rating agencies might downgrade the government’s long-term debt, as Standard & Poor’s did in August.

An even bigger hurdle looms at the end of 2012. That’s when the tax cuts passed during the Bush administration are set to expire. Losing those tax cuts would cost taxpayers up to an additional $4 trillion over 10 years.

Combined, all those factors would reduce growth in 2013 by between 1.5 and 3.5 percentage points, Douglas Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, estimated last week.

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Patricia Ranzini was appointed executive director of St. Anthony’s Charitable Foundation at St. Anthony’s Medical Center.

She will be responsible for strategic direction, oversight and implementation of the foundation’s fund-raising programs and long-range planning.

Ranzini has worked for 12 years in the development field, most recently for the Herbert Hoover Boys & Girls Club payday advance online. She is a member of the Association of Hospital Philanthropy, the Association of Fundraising Professionals and the Women’s Leadership Council of the Humane Society of Missouri.

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In nearly every category from real estate loans to small business loans to consumer loans, banks in the St. Louis area are lending less than a year ago, according to data released from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Some borrowers are sitting on the sidelines waiting for the economy to improve before they expand their businesses. Construction and industrial, or C&I, loans, which go to pay for equipment upgrades and inventory, fell in the third quarter to $3.3 billion, down from $3.6 billion a year ago. Many banks in the St. Louis area have targeted growing C&I loans to replace construction and land development loans, which had high default rates during and following the recession payday loans direct lenders.

Small business loans have also declined, to $3.6 billion in the third quarter, down from $3.9 billion a year ago.

“At this point, so much is dependent on confidence in the economy, and demand for loans is flat,” Stackhouse said. “Businesses don’t want to gear up until (consumer) spending is up.”

Not all banks are seeing slowdowns in loan activity. Clayton-based Enterprise Bank & Trust grew its loans, both organically and through acquisitions, with its fastest growth category in C&I loans.

“Overall, most business owners are careful about adding more people or equipment, but some segments are growing, such as health care and manufacturing,” said Enterprise Bank & Trust’s Chief Executive and President Stephen Marsh.

Nonperforming loans, or those that are at least 90 days past due, totaled $855 million for all St. Louis-chartered banks in the third quarter, down from $1.1 billion a year ago. Banks are also setting aside less for loan loan provisions, which fell to $545.1 million in the third quarter compared to $614.3 million a year ago.

“Credit quality is a slow, steady improvement,” Marsh said.

Another positive trend is that profitability is improving. Banks chartered in the St. Louis area had a combined profit of $104. 8 million for the year through Sept. 30, compared with a $50 million loss in the same time period last year. Of the 10 largest locally chartered banks, only two posted a loss for the first nine months of the year, First Bank and Reliance Bank.

First National Bank of St. Louis posted a $14.6 million profit for the first nine months of the year, up 8 percent from the comparable period a year earlier.

“Our customer base has seen some improvement in their businesses in the last 12 months, but this is still the worst economic downturn I’ve seen in 35 years,” said President Rick Bagy.

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More U.S. homes entered the foreclosure process in October than in the previous month, with Florida, Pennsylvania and Indiana registering among the largest monthly increases, new data show.

Some 77,733 properties received an initial default notice last month, up 10 percent from September, foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday.

The number of homes scheduled to be auctioned or repossessed by lenders also posted monthly increases.

All told, notices of default, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions _ warnings that can eventually lead to a home being lost to foreclosure _ hit a seven-month high in October.

The numbers are further evidence foreclosure activity is picking up.

The activity slowed a year ago after problems surfaced with the way many lenders were handling foreclosure documentation, namely shoddy mortgage paperwork comprising several shortcuts known collectively as robo-signing. Many of the nation’s largest banks reacted by temporarily ceasing all foreclosures, re-filing previously filed foreclosure cases and revisiting pending cases to prevent errors.

But banks appear to be moving past those problems now and starting to tackle a swelling backlog of homes with mortgages that have gone unpaid _ something that lenders are seeing more of as the economy struggles and unemployment remains high.

The rate that homeowners were 60 or more days late on their mortgage payment rose in the June-to-September period for the first time since the last three months of 2009, according to TransUnion.

The credit reporting agency said 5.88 percent of homeowners missed two or more payments, an early sign of possible foreclosure. That was up from 5.82 percent in the second quarter of 2011.

The number of U.S. homeowners underwater on their mortgage, or owe more than their homes are worth, represent another potential source of trouble for lenders.

As of June 30, some 22.5 percent of all U.S. homes had a mortgage that was under water, according to CoreLogic. That’s 10.9 million properties. Another 2.4 million borrowers had less than 5 percent equity in their home, the firm said.

Industry experts say a housing market turnaround isn’t likely to occur as long as there remains a glut of potential foreclosures hovering over the market, so October’s increase in foreclosure activity means a potentially faster revival for housing.

“We all know that there is an underlying amount of properties that need to go into foreclosure and the sooner we clear that the sooner we can get housing to a normal level,” said RealtyTrac CEO James Saccacio.

In some states, the number of homeowners put on notice by banks for missing payments far exceeded the national average for October.

Florida posted a 28 percent jump in October from September in homes receiving an initial default notice. Pennsylvania saw a 50 percent increase and Indiana registered a 61 percent gain, according to RealtyTrac.

In some cases, though, government intervention is slowing lenders down.

Take Nevada, where a law went into effect Oct. 1 requiring that foreclosure documents must be filed in the county where a property is located and a lender must provide a notarized affidavit detailing their legal right to proceed.

Saccacio said the law helped cause a 75 percent drop in initial default notices in Nevada last month versus September, bringing defaults to the lowest level since June 2006 at the peak of the housing boom.

“It’s like a rain delay,” Saccacio said. “We’ll eventually see foreclosure processing go up.”

Despite registering a 34 percent drop in foreclosure activity overall, Nevada still registered the highest foreclosure rate in the nation for October, with one in every 180 households receiving a foreclosure-related notice, RealtyTrac said.

In all, 230,678 U.S. homes received a foreclosure-related warning last month, up 7 percent from September, but down nearly 31 percent from October 2010.

Foreclosure auctions rose 8 percent from September, but climbed by more than 35 percent in several states, including Florida, Minnesota and Illinois.

Lenders took back 67,624 properties in October, up 4 percent from the previous month, but down 27 percent from a year earlier.

Bank repossessions increased by a far larger margin in several states. In Oregon they climbed 45 percent, while in New Jersey they posted a 48 percent jump. Indiana registered a 73 percent increase.

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First the dot.coms popped, then mortgages. Are student loans and higher education the next bubble, the latest investment craze inflating on borrowed money and misplaced faith it can never go bad?

Some experts have raised the possibility. Last summer, Moody’s Analytics pronounced fears of an education spending bubble “not without merit.” Last spring, investor and PayPal founder Peter Thiel called attention to his claims of an education bubble by awarding two dozen young entrepreneurs $100,000 each NOT to attend college.

Recent weeks have seen another spate of “bubble” headlines _ student loan defaults up, tuition rising another 8.3 percent this year and finally, out Thursday, a new report estimating that average student debt for borrowers from the college class of 2010 has passed $25,000. And all that on top of a multi-year slump in the job-market for new college graduates.

So do those who warn of a bubble have a case?

The hard part, of course, is that a bubble is never apparent until it bursts. But the short answer is this: There are worrisome trends. A degree is an asset whose value can change over time. Borrowing to pay for it is risky, and borrowing is way up. The stakes are high. You can usually walk away from a house. Not so a student loan, which can’t even be discharged in bankruptcy.

But there are also important differences between a potential “student loan bubble” and an “education bubble.” Furthermore, many economists think the whole concept of a bubble is a misleading way to think about what’s happening, and may actually distract from the real problems. College affordability is a serious issue, but it’s a different one. Borrowing for college and borrowing for, say, a house, are fundamentally different in important ways.

To be sure, there are some classic bubble warning signs:

_Everybody wants in. The idea that higher education is the only way to get ahead has become widely held. College enrollment has surged one-third in a decade. With rising demand, college tuition and fees have more than doubled over that time, outstripping inflation in every other major sector of the economy _ energy, health care and housing, even when housing was bubbling itself.

_Those bills are paid with borrowed money. The volume of outstanding student loans is rising rapidly and now exceeds credit card debt, though recent reports of it crossing $1 trillion may be premature. Moody’s Analytics puts the number at around $750 billion. But while credit card debt is declining, student loan debt keeps going up.

_Just like housing, many student loans were made with little or no research into whether borrowers were fit. Federal Stafford loans are basically automatic for college students, and government backing for other types of loans gave other student lenders little reason to be picky.

_Defaults on federal student loans jumped from 7 percent to 8.8 percent in the most recent fiscal year. That measures just recent borrowers who were already behind within two years of their first payments coming due.

Those numbers are all alarming. But putting them in context requires thinking separately about the ideas of a “student loan bubble” and an “education bubble.”

First, one thing that’s important about the possible student loan bubble is that it poses much less of a threat than housing debt did to drag down the entire economy. Yes, many individual borrowers may find themselves in trouble. But total student loans probably amount to less than 10 percent of outstanding mortgages. Every single student loan could default and it still probably wouldn’t match total mortgage defaults during the recent downturn. More importantly, unlike mortgages, Wall Street isn’t knee-deep in securities comprised of bundled student loans, as it was with mortgages. (It also helps that it’s also harder to speculate in student loans; an investor can flip a house, but not a brain.)

The other big difference with student loans is the dominant role the federal government has assumed in the market in the last few years: it accounts for roughly 85 percent of student debt.

That matters for several reasons.

First, the government is answerable to voters and not shareholders, so it’s more likely than private investors to take steps such as those announced by President Barack Obama to try to relieve student debt burdens.

Second, notes Mark Kantrowitz of the website Finaid.org, it’s important to remember what actually causes a bubble to burst. It’s not simply a run-up in prices. What bursts the bubble is a liquidity crisis, when borrowers suddenly can’t get the money they need pay day loan lenders. Even during the depths of the 2008 financial crisis, when private student loans dried up, the government’s dominant role kept student loans flowing.

That doesn’t guarantee the bubble won’t slowly and painfully deflate over time. But it insures against the chaos of a “crash” where suddenly students can’t get loans at all _ a scenario that could shut down untold numbers of colleges whose students rely on financial aid.

None of that, however, changes the fundamental risk for individual student borrowers: they could borrow heavily to pay for a college education and find the return much less than expected.

It’s here, looking at the debate from an individual borrower’s point of view as opposed to the entire economy, that the debate over the term “bubble” gets tricky. Can an education lose value?

Certainly a college degree can.

A key measure is the wage premium for bachelor’s degree recipients over those with just high school diploma, and there are various ways to measure it. All show the wage premium is substantial, though after rising steadily for years it appears to have slipped some lately. Wages for the median bachelor’s degree recipient are roughly $55,292, compared to $34,813 for those with only high school, according to the latest data from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce.

That reflects a premium that has fallen from roughly 67 percent a few years ago to 59 percent (the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data put the 2010 premium at 65 percent for weekly wages). Still, all told, estimates for the lifetime earnings advantage of a college degree range from a conservative $500,000 to more than $1 million, according to the Census Bureau. Even with recent price increases, for the average student loan borrower that remains a very high return on investment.

It’s true the unemployment rate for new college graduates is more than 10 percent. But unemployment for college graduates overall is 4.2 percent, compared to 9.7 percent for those with a high school degree.

Could college prices rise so much, and the premium fall so far, that a degree is no longer worth it? Of course, for some degrees. But in a modern economy, it’s difficult to imagine that happening across the board. Here’s where a degree is truly unlike other assets _ most should correlate at least somewhat with skills that are useful in the world. Particular degrees may prove bad bets, but to imagine the premium on education itself dropping off a cliff is to imagine a world where things have gone so wrong that job skills no longer matter.

Or, as Kent Smetters, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, puts it: “In that case, nobody’s worried about paying back their loans. Everyone’s heading for bunkers in Idaho and canned goods and that kind of stuff.”

Here’s the rub: Nobody earns a generic “college degree.” Degrees are earned from different schools, with different reputations, and in different majors with much different payoffs. What counts most, says Georgetown’s Anthony Carnevale, are the courses you take and your major. Roughly 30 percent of associate’s degree recipients earn more than people with bachelor’s degrees. A graduate with a mere certificate in engineering will earn roughly 20 percent more than the average bachelor’s recipient.

That suggests there isn’t one big bubble, but many smaller but significant ones stretching across different sectors _ certain liberal arts grads, artists, lawyers who borrow six figures for law school and can’t find a job, and students at for-profit colleges. The signs of a bubble at for-profits are unmistakable: Enrollment has tripled in a decade, roughly 96 percent of graduates have loans and borrowing is substantially higher than at other types of institutions. Default rates recently jumped to 15 percent.

But what’s most important is the huge numbers who never earn a degree at all. At community colleges and for-profit schools, roughly one in five aiming for a bachelor’s degree fail to secure it. Even at four-year public universities, the failure rate within six years is almost half. Anyone who borrows a large amount of money and then fails to complete a degree is in a world of hurt _ quite possibly worse off than if they’d never even tried to go to college in the first place.

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A year has passed since entrepreneur Kim Harris concluded that the security of a paid professional position with health benefits outweighed the autonomy of operating a mobile dog grooming business.

Counting on the graduate degrees she earned in social work and criminal justice, the East St. Louis resident waded into the job market confident of a return to the full-time workforce.

Harris, 45, now realizes she underestimated the depth of the employment crisis.

“Even my undergraduate degree in education hasn’t helped,” said Harris, who supplements her business income with a part-time job as an aide at a Metro East health care facility. “They’re laying off teachers everywhere, too.”

Officials who track St. Louis economic trends are unfortunately unable to offer much in the way of hope to job-seekers such as Harris, one of 132,345 area residents who are jobless and don’t want to be.

Job creation, they say, has stalled on both sides of the Mississippi River, and the prognosis for early 2012 isn’t much better.

Hiring “is stuck on hold nationally and will probably continue to drift down a little,” said Howard Wall, director of the Institute for the Study of Economics and the Environment at Lindenwood University. “We’re just along for the ride, and there’s not much we can do about it instant credit report.”

Vicki Niederhofer, an economic analyst with the Illinois Department of Employment Security office in Belleville, has seen the jobless rate in her state again creep into double digits after a solid year of improvement.

The Metro East lost 2,700 jobs in the year since September 2010 as the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 9.1 percent during the 12-month stretch. (Chicago, by contrast, added 17,000 jobs in the same period.)

“The national headwinds are difficult to fight,” Niederhofer said.

A Post-Dispatch survey of the region’s 40 largest employers seems to bear out Niederhofer’s belief that hiring won’t rebound until recession-weary consumers loosen the purse strings.

Less than a third of companies, government agencies and nonprofit organizations said they were planning to expand their workforce by the end of the year.

In employment economics, the past often serves as prologue.

Given that, Niederhofer cites a 2010 baseline survey conducted by her agency to forecast the Metro East jobs with the “highest projected demand” through 2018.

Health care tops the list, followed by office and administrative support, management, food preparation, transportation and production.

Experts say there are 72 million reasons

A former Goldman Sachs board member on Wednesday surrendered to federal authorities to face criminal charges stemming from a massive hedge fund insider trading case.

Rajat Gupta appeared in Manhattan federal court. The charges were not immediately disclosed.

The Securities and Exchange Commissioner originally brought civil fraud charges against Gupta in March. The SEC alleged that, at the height of the financial crisis, he passed along privileged financial information that helped enrich Raj Rajaratnam, a former billionaire hedge fund manager who was the prime target of the criminal probe.

Gupta’s lawyer responded by accusing the SEC of launching a “flawed case premised in large part on unreliable evidence being used in an attempt to bring down a man of sterling reputation and remarkable achievements without the procedural safeguards historically accorded to all persons similarly charged.”

The Indian-born, Harvard-educated Gupta also has served on the boards of Procter & Gamble and the parent company for American Airlines. He was a guest at President Barack Obama’s first state dinner.

Gupta’s name played prominently at the criminal trial earlier this year of Rajaratnam, who was convicted after prosecutors used a trove of wiretaps on which he could be heard coaxing a crew of corporate tipsters into giving him an illegal edge on blockbuster trades.

Jurors heard testimony that at an Oct. 23, 2008, Goldman board meeting, members were told that the investment bank was facing a quarterly loss for the first time since it had gone public in 1999.

Prosecutors produced phone records showing Gupta called Rajaratnam 23 seconds after the meeting ended, causing Rajaratnam to sell his entire position in Goldman the next morning and save millions of dollars payday loans with no fax.

Rajaratnam also earned close to $1 million when Gupta told him that Goldman had received an offer from Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway to invest $5 billion in the banking giant, prosecutors said.

In one tape played at trial, Rajaratnam could be heard grilling Gupta about whether the Goldman Sachs board had discussed acquiring a commercial bank or an insurance company.

“Have you heard anything along that line?” Rajaratnam asked Gupta.

“Yeah,” Gupta responded. “This was a big discussion at the board meeting.”

Prosecutors sought to maximize the impact of the Gupta tape by calling Goldman Sachs chairman Lloyd Blankfein to testify that the phone call violated the investment bank’s confidentiality policies.

Gupta’s lawyer Gary P. Naftalis said Tuesday night that his client and Rajaratnam communicated for “legitimate reasons.” He said his client didn’t trade in any securities, didn’t tip Rajaratnam so he could trade and didn’t share in any profits.

“The facts demonstrate that Mr. Gupta is an innocent man and that he has always acted with honesty and integrity,” Naftalis said in an emailed statement.

Rajaratnam, who’s in his mid-50s, was sentenced earlier this year to 11 years in prison. His lawyers had argued for 6 1/2 to nine years. Defense attorney Terence Lynam asked the judge to show compassion because of Rajaratnam’s illnesses, saying: “He does not deserve to die in prison.”

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