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A disgruntled Yahoo shareholder questioned the qualifications and integrity of recently hired CEO Scott Thompson after exposing a misrepresentation about the executive’s education.

The fabrication confirmed Thursday by Yahoo Inc. gives New York hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb more artillery as he tries to topple a board of directors favored by Thompson, who became CEO of the troubled Internet company four months ago.

Loeb, whose fund Third Point owns a 5.8 percent stake in Yahoo, gained more leverage when he discovered Thompson doesn’t have a bachelor’s degree in computer science from a small college in Easton, Mass., as Yahoo stated in a regulatory filing last week.

Thompson only has an accounting degree from Stonehill College, an accomplishment that Yahoo also listed in the filing. The accounting degree was the only one listed in Thompson’s resume last year by eBay Inc. when he was still running that company’s PayPal payment service. He graduated in 1979, according to Stonehill’s website.

Yahoo confirmed Thompson’s credentials had been exaggerated in the recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company, which is based in Sunnyvale, Calif., brushed off the distortion as an “inadvertent error.”

But Loeb pounced on the misinformation as a violation of Yahoo’s code of ethics and called for an independent investigation to determine whether Thompson had misled the company’s board about his technology credentials. He also cited the mix-up as an example of Yahoo’s poor corporate governance.

“If Mr. Thompson embellished his academic credentials we think that it 1) undermines his credibility as a technology expert and 2) reflects poorly on the character of the CEO who has been tasked with leading Yahoo at this critical juncture,” Loeb wrote in a letter to Yahoo’s board on Thursday. “Now more than ever Yahoo investors need a trustworthy CEO.”

In the past, other companies have suspended or fired executives who were caught lying on their resumes.

Yahoo hired Thompson to reverse years of financial lethargy that set in at the company even as more advertising shifted to the Internet. The funk has weighed on Yahoo’s stock, which has been hovering between $10 and $20 for most of the last three years. Yahoo shares fell 27 cents to close at $15.40 on Thursday. That’s well below the $33 per share that stockholders could have gotten in May 2008 if the board had accepted a takeover offer from Microsoft Corp.

The company stood behind Thompson in its statement payday loan. “This in no way alters that fact that Mr. Thompson is a highly qualified executive with a successful track record leading large consumer technology companies,” Yahoo said. “Under Mr. Thompson’s leadership, Yahoo is moving forward to grow the company and drive shareholder value.”

Tensions between Loeb and Thompson escalated since late March when Yahoo appointed three new directors to its board. In doing so, Yahoo snubbed Loeb, who had been lobbying for a board seat along with three allies who he believes have the skills necessary to help Yahoo rebound from its long-running struggles. At the time, Thompson made it clear that he and the Yahoo committee overseeing the search for new directors had concluded Loeb wasn’t the best candidate.

Loeb is waging a campaign to persuade Yahoo’s shareholders to elect him and his allies to the board at the company’s annual meeting. The date of that meeting still hasn’t been set.

Besides ripping Thompson, Loeb also sought to discredit Patti Hart, one of the Yahoo directors he wants bounced from the board. Hart led the committee that recommended Yahoo’s new appointments to the board.

In his letter, Loeb noted that Yahoo’s recent SEC filing says Hart holds a bachelor’s degree in marketing and economics from Illinois State University. In its response, Yahoo clarified Hart received a bachelor’s degree in business administration with specialties in marketing and economics.

Thompson, 54, has mostly cut costs to boost profits since taking over as Yahoo’s CEO. Last month, he laid off about 2,000 employees, or 14 percent of the workforce, in the biggest payroll purge in Yahoo’s 17-year history. He also disclosed plans to close about 50 Yahoo services that haven’t been attracting enough users or generating enough revenue.

He has made modest progress on other financial fronts. Yahoo registered its first year-over-year increase in quarterly net revenue since 2008 during the three months ending in March.

Even though he doesn’t have a computer science degree, Thompson has a background in technology. He served as PayPal’s chief technology officer for three years before being promoted to the payment service’s president in 2008. He also previously worked as chief technology officer at credit- and debit-card processor Visa USA.

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U.S. investors were set to hold steady at Tuesday’s open, awaiting new reports on manufacturing, auto sales and corporate results for clues about the strength of the U.S. economy.

The Dow Jones industrial average (), S&P 500 () and Nasdaq () futures were all little changed. Stock futures indicate the possible direction of the markets when they open at 9:30 a.m. ET.

On tap for Tuesday are new readings on manufacturing, construction spending and auto sales. Investors will be searching for signs to assuage concerns that the recovery in the U.S. economy may be stalling.

The latest round of corporate results include reports from BP () and Pfizer (, Fortune 500).

U.S. stocks finished in the red Monday, ending a mostly sour month on a weak note. Following three months of solid gains, all three major U.S. indexes posted their worst monthly returns of the year in April.

Resurfacing concerns about Europe and a possible hard landing in China have helped put a brake on the momentum from earlier this year.

A report on manufacturing in China rose slightly, which could help allay concerns about the economy slowing too quickly.

Meanwhile, Australia’s central bank announced it was cutting its key interest rate by 0.5 percentage point to 3.75%, due to below trend growth both in Australia and globally. It was the bank’s biggest rate cut since February 2009, when global financial markets were still in near free fall.

On Monday, Spain’s government said its economy declined for the second straight quarter, revealing that the nation is in recession. The report came with Spanish bond yields still at perilously high levels, and just days after Standard and Poor’s downgraded the country’s credit rating.

World markets: Britain’s FTSE 100 () edged higher 0.4% in midday trading. Markets in Paris and Frankfurt were closed for the May Day holiday.

Japan’s Nikkei () ended down 1.8%, while markets in Hong Kong and Shanghai were closed for the holiday.

Economy: The April installment of the Institute for Supply Management manufacturing Index is expected to come in at 53, down from 53.4 in March, according to a survey of analysts by Briefing.com. Any reading above 50 still indicates growth in the sector that has helped to lead the U.S. economic recovery.

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April U.S. auto sales are forecast to be up to a seasonally-adjusted annual sales pace of about 14.3 million vehicles. That would be a rise from the year-ago rate of 13.4 million, but down from March sales’ pace of 14.7 million.

U.S. automakers General Motors (, Fortune 500) and Ford Motor (, Fortune 500) are both forecast to report lower sales.

March construction spending is expected to have risen by 0.5%, according to economists’ estimates.

Companies: Oil company BP posted a drop in quarterly earnings to $1.52 a share from $1.76 a year earlier, missing estimates of analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters. BP joined Exxon Mobil (, Fortune 500) and ConocoPhillips (, Fortune 500) as major oil companies to miss forecasts for the first quarter. Shares of BP lost 2.8% in premarket trading.

Drugmaker Pfizer (, Fortune 500), a Dow component, reported earnings of 58 cents a share for the first quarter, down from 60 cents a share a year earlier but 2 cents better than forecasts. Shares of Pfizer slipped 0.7% in premarket trading.

Delta Air Lines (, Fortune 500) announced plans Monday to purchase an oil refinery outside of Philadelphia, a novel approach to reducing its fuel costs. Shares gained 1.7% in premarket trading.

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Currencies and commodities: The dollar lost ground slightly against the euro, but gained on the British pound and Japanese yen.

Oil for June delivery lost 30 cents to $104.57 a barrel.

Gold futures for June delivery fell $1.50 to $1,662.50 an ounce.

Bonds: The price on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury edged higher, but the yield was little changed at 1.91%.  

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Germany’s top central banker is rejecting calls for the European Central Bank to cut interest rates and offer more support to banks and bond markets.

Jens Weidmann says that “monetary policy is not a panacea and central bank firepower is not unlimited,” particularly within the constraints of a currency shared by 17 countries.

Weidmann heads Germany’s Bundesbank and sits on the 23-member governing council of the ECB.

He was responding to calls by some international finance officials for the ECB to do more to support the eurozone economy and its indebted governments. Weidmann said the central bank system in Europe has already done a lot and can’t be a substitute for inaction by governments on budget-cutting and pro-growth reforms.

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British ministers say a ban on displaying packs of cigarettes inside supermarkets and other large stores will send a message that smoking is no longer acceptable.

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said Friday _ as the restrictions came into force _ that the ban would show that Britons “no longer see smoking as a part of life.”

The ban applies only in England and will be extended to smaller stores by 2015. It means cigarettes must be hidden behind screens, or under shop counters fast cash now.

England is following the lead of Iceland, Ireland, and Canada, all of which previously introduced similar measures.

A ban on smoking indoors in public places, such as pubs, was introduced in Scotland in 2006 and in England in 2007.

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As more details emerge about the massive $26 billion foreclosure settlement between the five biggest mortgage lenders and the states’ attorneys general, a growing number of borrowers are realizing that the deal will do little, if anything, to help them out.

Proponents of the settlement deal tout that roughly 1 million homeowners who owe more on their homes than their homes are worth are expected to have their mortgage balances lowered through principal reductions and another 750,000 would be able to refinance into loans with lower interest rates.

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However, that’s only a fraction of the 11 million homeowners who are currently underwater on their homes, according to CoreLogic. And it’s also a mere sliver of the 3.5 million people who lost their homes to foreclosure over the past four years.

"The impact [of this settlement] will be small," said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics. "It’s not a home run; it’s a single."

Principal reductions will also only apply to certain borrowers who have mortgages still held by the five major lenders: Bank of America (, Fortune 500), CitiBank (, Fortune 500), Wells Fargo (, Fortune 500), J.P. Morgan Chase (, Fortune 500) and Ally Financial.

Borrowers who have a mortgage held by Fannie Mae (, Fortune 500) or Freddie Mac () — roughly half the market — are out of luck. Loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration are also ineligible.

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"If it’s offered to one group, it should be offered for all," said Stacy Ovendale from Seattle, who says her home has lost nearly 50% of its value. "When my mortgage was written up, I had to take whatever program was available to me at the time, which happened to be FHA. … It’s so frustrating because my loan is with Bank of America but since it’s FHA, my mortgage is current and I have chosen to be responsible, there is nothing they can offer me in the way of principal reduction."

Edward DeMarco, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, said he won’t allow the agencies to reduce borrowers’ loan balances because it is unfair to taxpayers and works no better than other foreclosure prevention methods, such as lowering interest rates, extending loan terms or delaying payments.

To Cat Gouldman, who lives in the D.C. area, it’s a raw deal. Like her mortgage, most loans are not retained by the original lenders. They’re sold to Fannie or Freddie best payday advance. Borrowers aren’t given a choice when their loans are sold.

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In fact, the mortgage Gouldman and her husband took out changed hands several times. First, it was sold to Wells Fargo, then to IndyMac and then it was taken over by Fannie. Her home has lost about half of its value, she said, and she’s upset that she won’t be able to get the same principal relief that other borrowers will receive.

"This is not the right message for the federal government to send out," she said. "Do homeowners walk into banks asking if their loan is backed by Fannie Mae? I don’t think so."

"I think it’s a travesty," said Derek Buckingham of Everett, Wash., who has a Freddie loan. "The government appears to still have no accountability for the problems they helped incentivize the banks to create."

Some borrowers may qualify for much larger reductions than others, as well.

Bank of America, for example, said it will slash mortgage balances by an average of $100,000 or more for roughly 200,000 homeowners. The goal, according to BofA, is to reduce the amount owed on the home to 100% match the current market value. Meanwhile, the other four major mortgage lenders, CitiBank, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and Ally Financial, are expected to reduce qualified borrowers’ principal to between 115% and 125% of the value of their homes — an amount that the Department of Housing and Urban Development said should average about $20,000.

For the homeowners who bought responsibly and made their payments faithfully, the real inequity comes in the fact that their tax dollars are paying for government-funded programs to prevent foreclosures while irresponsible borrowers accrue the benefits like the ones offered in the settlement.

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"So, these people who are underwater get a break from the banks, and other hard working folks like us get screwed?" wrote Karthik Subramanian, of Aurora, Ill., in an email.

"What I think is unfair, is that people who didn’t overleverage their homes, who paid their mortgages on time, who didn’t borrow more than they could afford, even if the bank said they could afford more, the people who had good common sense and have done the right thing, are left with all of this business loaded on their backs," wrote Jamie Smith of Sonoita, Ariz.

That said, every homeowner could benefit from such bailouts if they help to turn around the ailing housing market, where home price declines and slow sales continue to threaten the fragile economic recovery. The settlement, however, may not help enough borrowers to do even that, said Moody’s Zandi. 

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U.K. house prices fell in February for a third month in four, as economic uncertainty weighed on demand for housing, Halifax said.

Prices (UKHB3MYR) dropped 0.5 percent from January to an average 160,118 pounds ($253,400), the mortgage unit of Lloyds Banking Group Plc (LLOY) said in a statement in London today. From a year earlier, values were down 1.6 percent.

While inflation is cooling, a recovery in consumer confidence is being kept in check by rising unemployment and concern about the impact of Europe

Can the market sustain its rally, or will prospects of a Greek default shatter investors’ risk appetite?

The Dow Jones Industrial Average () closed at its highest level since 2008 Friday. For the year, the Dow is up almost 6%, and the S&P 500 () is up more than 8%. The Nasdaq () has made an impressive 13% run.

Yet, the possibility of a Greek default looms large over world markets. European finance ministers will meet Monday, and are expected to sign off on Greece’s latest economic reform proposal.

Greece needs that sign off from Europe’s finance ministers to avoid defaulting on a €14.5 billion bond payment due March 20. Another delay is unlikely to rattle the markets, but if it becomes clear that Greece will default, markets strategists fear a sharp sell-off.

"Markets have priced in a positive outcome," said Joseph Tanious, global market strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management.

All three indexes posted solid gains for the week, as investors largely ignored concerns over Greece and focused squarely on better-than-expected economic reports in the United States. The S&P was up 1.4%.

With few key economic reports on the agenda this week, and U.S. markets closed Monday in observance of Presidents’ Day, investors will keep an eye on quarterly earnings from major retailers to assess the health of the American consumer fast payday loan no faxing.

"There will be a heightened sensitivity to retailers and their earnings to either confirm that the U.S. economy is picking up and recovering or cast a doubt on the consumer’s appetite," said Tanious.

On Tuesday, retailers Barnes & Noble (, Fortune 500), Home Depot (, Fortune 500), Macy’s (, Fortune 500), Wal-Mart (, Fortune 500) and Saks () will report quarterly results.

On Thursday, Kohl’s, Sears (, Fortune 500), Target (, Fortune 500) and Gap (, Fortune 500) will report.

On Friday, J.C. Penney (, Fortune 500) will release its earnings.

Other quarterly earnings due out next week include Dell (, Fortune 500) and Kraft (, Fortune 500) on Tuesday and Hewlett-Packard (, Fortune 500) on Wednesday

Meanwhile, investors will continue to monitor developments in Iran to determine whether concerns over the country’s nuclear program will drive up the price of oil.

U.S. crude oil rose 3% last week to close at $102.35, and economists worry that further increases in oil prices could threaten the global economy.

"I’m watching oil with trepidation," said Ram Bhagavatula, partner at the hedge fund Combinatorics Capital. "It’s the one thing that could threaten the recovery." 

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It’s been three months since MF Global became the eighth-largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. Did anyone see this coming?

Well, a few people had some idea, and a congressional subcommittee heard from them on Capitol Hill Thursday.

Michael Roseman, MF Global’s former chief risk officer, warned early of the dangers in the firm’s massive bets on troubled European debt. He clashed with ex-CEO Jon Corzine over the strategy before being replaced early last year by Michael Stockman, who also appeared at the hearing.

"I discussed my concerns about the positions and the risk scenarios with Mr. Corzine and others," Roseman told the subcommittee. "However, the risk scenarios I presented were challenged as being implausible."

Under questioning, Roseman said he believed his views on risk "certainly played a factor" in the firm’s decision to dismiss him.

MF Global () filed for bankruptcy on Halloween following a frantic week in which executives including Corzine, the former CEO and an ex-governor and senator from New Jersey, attempted to offload assets and sell the business.

The firm had come under intense pressure in the previous days after its $6.3 billion investment in European debt came to public notice. Trading partners called for increased margin payments and clients took their business elsewhere, leaving the firm scrambling for cash to meet its obligations.

"It almost looks like that they took Mr. Roseman out and replaced Mr. Roseman with a ‘yes man,’" Rep. Stephen Fincher said.

Stockman responded that he had initially signed off on the European bets, but later raised concerns and recommended bringing the firm’s risk down in July of last year.

Corzine, for his part, has acknowledged pushing the aggressive European strategy after arriving at MF Global in 2010, anxious to take it to the ranks of Wall Street’s elite.

The investments themselves didn’t actually lose money, as Corzine noted in Congressional testimony in December. None of the bonds MF Global held came from countries that have defaulted and all were set to mature before 2013. But Europe’s precarious finances and the massive leverage MF Global took on spooked investors and ultimately helped doom the firm need a personal loan with bad credit.

While an examination of MF Global’s risk management may have been the main focus of Thursday’s hearing, for the firm’s former customers, the bigger question is what happened to their money.

Customer funds at futures brokers like MF Global are supposed to be protected even in the event of a bankruptcy. In MF Global’s case, however, staffers were unable to account for roughly $1.2 billion in customer money that is now suspected to have been unlawfully appropriated for the firm’s own purposes.

Ratings agencies under fire: Others facing scrutiny Thursday were rating agencies Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, which waited until just days before MF Global’s bankruptcy to flag its European exposure even though the firm had disclosed it back in May.

By the time the rating agencies acted, the bets were already sparking concern among MF Global’s trading partners. The downgrades then sharply acclerated the firm’s downward spiral.

"[T]he abruptness of the downgrades and the suddenness of MF Global’s collapse raise questions about why the credit rating agencies did not consider MF Global’s exposure to European sovereign debt until late October," the House committee said in a memo last week.

Also appearing Thursday was James Gellert, head of the smaller ratings agency Rapid Ratings International, which maintained a grim outlook on MF Global long before its larger counterparts did. Gellert noted in his testimony that MF Global’s business model had been deteriorating for several years prior to its failure, and that the new risks in the European strategy only made its situation more precarious.

"Had MF Global offered a lower risk foundation, MF Global might have been able to withstand the failure of the new business strategy," Gellert said. "As it was, Mr. Corzine inherited an unhealthy company and made it worse by some high-stakes gambles." 

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A handful of large websites will go dark on Wednesday to protest an anti-piracy bill that critics say will wreck the Internet as we know it.

Wikipedia, user-submitted news site Reddit, the blog Boing Boing and the Cheezburger network of comedy sites all plan to participate in the blackout. The protest is their response to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) bill, a piece of proposed legislation that is working its way through Congress.

Introduced in the House of Representatives in late October, the bill aims to crack down on copyright infringement by restricting access to sites that fuel it. Its targets include "rogue" overseas sites like torrent hub The Pirate Bay, which essentially operates as a trading ground for illegal downloads of movies and other digital content.

A similar bill called the Protect IP Act was approved by a Senate committee in May and is now pending before the full Senate.

The controversial legislation has turned into an all-out war between Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Media companies have united in favor of it, while tech’s power players are throwing their might into opposing it.

If SOPA passes, copyright holders would be able to complain to law enforcement officials and get websites shut down. Search engines and other providers would have to block rogue sites when ordered to do so by a judge. Sites could be punished for hosting pirated content in the first place — and Internet companies are worried that they could be held liable for users’ actions.

As BoingBoing wrote: "Making one link would require checking millions (even tens of millions) of pages, just to be sure that we weren’t in some way impinging on the ability of five Hollywood studios, four multinational record labels, and six global publishers to maximize their profits."

White House jumps in: The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform was supposed to hold a hearing with industry experts on Wednesday, which is why sites targeted that day for a blackout.

But Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican from California who opposes SOPA, postponed the hearing on Friday after House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said the bill won’t move in its current form.

Cantor’s comments sparked some news reports claiming that SOPA is dead, but an aide in Issa’s office said "that’s probably a little premature."

Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian was slated to testify in Washington, but he said he will now instead attend a protest rally in New York City organized by the group NY Tech Meetup. They plan to assemble outside the offices of New York senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand.

The White House released its first statement about the bill on Saturday. The Obama administration wrote that it would not support legislation that mandates "tamper[ing] with the technical architecture of the Internet through manipulation of the Domain Name System (DNS) bad credit payday advance."

As originally written, SOPA would have required Internet access providers and other companies to block access to targeted sites in ways that were rife with potential unintended consequences. The White House said its analysis of the original legislation’s technical provisions "suggests that they pose a real risk to cybersecurity."

The White House’s statement came shortly after one of SOPA’s lead sponsors, Texas Republican Lamar Smith, agreed to remove SOPA’s DNS blocking provisions.

Issa’s aide says that isn’t enough: "Merely taking out the DNS-blocking provisions doesn’t not rectify a bill that’s fundamentally flawed."

The controversial bill, once expected to sail quickly through committee approval in the House, is now being extensively reworked before it comes up for a commitee vote.

Rupert Murdoch, the CEO of News Corp. (), voiced his frustration with the White House’s stance in a series of tweets over the weekend.

"Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery," Murdoch wrote on Twitter.

In addition to Murdoch, SOPA has drawn support from groups including the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, which say that online piracy leads to U.S. job losses by depriving content creators of income. Time Warner, the parent company of CNNMoney, is among the industry supporters of the legislation.

Proponents of the bill dismiss accusations of censorship, saying that the legislation is meant to revamp a broken system that doesn’t adequately prevent criminal behavior.

But SOPA’s critics say that say that the bill’s backers don’t understand the Internet, and therefore don’t appreciate the implications of the legislation they’re considering.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of House members has proposed an alternative bill, the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act (OPEN).

This legislation would allow rights holders to ask the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) to enforce current laws by targeting the actual content pirates. OPEN’s backers have posted the draft legislation online and invited the Web community to comment on and revise the proposal.

SOPA supporters counter that the ITC doesn’t have the resources for such enforcement, and that giving it those resources would be too expensive. 

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An independent political committee supportive of Newt Gingrich is planning to release a film critical of Mitt Romney’s tenure at a private-equity firm, just days after a Las Vegas billionaire contributed $5 million to the group to bolster the former House speaker’s White House run.

The Gingrich-leaning Winning Our Future PAC said Sunday that the 28-minute video _ which assails Romney for “reaping massive awards” while head of Bain Capital _ will be posted online soon and could show up on TV ahead of this month’s primary elections.

Meanwhile, a person familiar with the development said Sheldon Adelson, a casino mogul and longtime donor to Republican candidates, made the contribution Friday to Winning Our Future, which is run by Gingrich allies. The person, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said Adelson is expected to contribute to groups backing the Republican nominee, be it Gingrich or one of his rivals.

Both the film and the large contribution highlight the growing role that new “super” political action committees are playing this election. Just weeks ago, a Romney-leaning super PAC called Restore Our Future hammered Gingrich with $3 million in negative ads that largely contributed to his eroding support before the Iowa caucuses. Gingrich finished in fourth place.

Now, the tables have turned: Winning Our Future’s case marks the first time Gingrich and his allies have targeted Romney’s time at Bain. They have said Romney’s record is fair game, but up until now have restricted attacks to his time in government.

The film, called “When Mitt Romney Came To Town,” assails Romney for “reaping massive awards” for himself and his investors. Bain has been credited with turning around dozens of companies, including well-known brands like Domino’s Pizza, but its record has been criticized _ notably by the Democratic National Committee _ for slashing jobs in the process.

Rick Tyler, a former Gingrich aide who is now working for Winning Our Future, said the full video would be posted online “soon.” Some segments could be used in shorter TV ads, he said, although there were no immediate plans to run the full piece on television.

Super PACs have sprouted up from a series of federal court rulings, including the Supreme Court’s Citizens United case in 2010 that stripped away restrictions on corporate and union spending in elections. The groups can’t coordinate directly with campaigns but many of them active in this election are staffed by longtime supporters of the candidates.

While some super PACs have to disclose their contributors’ names later this month, many will never be known. Some super PACs have established nonprofit arms that are permitted to shield contributors’ identities as long as they spend no more than 50 percent of their money on electoral politics low fee payday loans. Crossroads, the giant conservative outfit tied to former George W. Bush political adviser Karl Rove, operates both a super PAC, Crossroads GPS, and a nonprofit, American Crossroads.

Crossroads GPS and other Republican-leaning super PACs played a significant role in the 2010 midterm elections, helping deliver the House to the GOP and boost the number of Republicans in the Senate. The 2012 contest is the first to test the influence of such groups in presidential politics.

But no candidate has seen his fortunes affected by the emergence of super PACs more than Gingrich.

Riding high in polls just a month ago, he became the target of a $3 million advertising barrage sponsored by Restore Our Future, a super PAC supporting Mitt Romney run by several of the former Massachusetts governor’s allies. The ads, which pounded Gingrich for his ties to federal housing giant Freddie Mac and his reversal on issues such as climate change, sent his political fortunes plunging in Iowa.

Romney and Gingrich tangled over the role of super PACs in a nationally televised debate Sunday. Romney said he had not seen Restore Our Future’s ads but defended their content.

“Governor, I wish you would calmly and directly state it is your former staff running the PAC,” Gingrich said to Romney, warning his own allies would be on the air soon.

Gingrich has pledged to carry on and is hoping to resuscitate his campaign in South Carolina, which holds its primary Jan. 21. With Romney heavily favored to win the New Hampshire primary Tuesday, his rivals are looking to slow his momentum when the contest moves to the South.

Several super PACs have already played a role in the Republican campaign. They include Make Us Great Again, a super PAC backing Texas Gov. Rick Perry; Our Destiny, supporting former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman; and the Red White and Blue Fund, which helped revive Santorum’s campaign in Iowa and is running ads in South Carolina.

Priorities USA Action, a super PAC backing President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, has spent modestly during the Republican nominating contest and is expected to step up its role in the general election.

___

Gillum reported from Washington. Associated Press Writer Shannon McCaffrey in Atlanta contributed to this report.

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