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Advocates for ex-offenders are hailing an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission report they hope will improve job opportunities for individuals often turned away because of criminal histories.

The EEOC, in an “enforcement guidance” issued last week, ruled that  undue emphasis on an ex-offender’s background in some some instances violates federal statutes governing employment discrimination. 

The EEOC said the specter of discrimination becomes even more pronounced when hiring managers factor race or ethnicity into employment decisions.

Citing studies reflecting a felony conviction rate of African American men that tops 25 percent, the National Employment Law Project welcomed the new guidelines as an antidote to what it termed “especially severe” discrimination against ex-offenders of color.

Michael Holmes, executive director of the St. Louis Agency on Training and Employment (SLATE), says the obstacles encountered by individuals with a criminal backgrounds cuts across racial lines.

“We have a major public institutions that discriminate against both white and black people because they have a criminal record,” said Holmes. “Now they can’t use that as a way to eliminate (an ex-offender) with the skills they are looking for.”

The ruling could give a boost to thousands – by some estimates up to 18,000 - ex-offenders in the St. Louis region who are currently-out-of-work and searching for employment.

“Some businesses do have a blanket policy about not hiring ex-offenders,” said David Kessel, chief operating officer of the Employment Connection, a St. Louis non-profit that helps ex-offenders overcome job barriers. “(The EEOC) guidance gives employers clarification on what they should be doing to make better hiring decisions.”

Kessel believes the unemployment rate for ex-offenders in the St. Louis area runs as high as 75 percent.

The EEOC guidelines were not universally acclaimed.

The National Retail Federation criticized a recommendation that employers eliminate queries about criminal and arrest records on application forms.

A ban on the “box” that alerts a company of an an applicant’s brushes with the law will restrict an “employers’ ability to ensure the safety of their workers and customers,”  Senior Vice President for Government Relations David French said in a statement.

A 2011 NRF survey revealed that 87 percent of its members turn to criminal background checks prior to hiring bad credit personal loan lenders.

Les Johnson, the vice president for grant and management services for ARCHS, an advocate that sponsors programs that support at-risk populations including ex-offenders, praised the EEOC initiative.

But he cautioned the hiring process will continue to require discretion and common sense on the part of applicants with criminal records.

A paroled bank robber, for instance, needs to make a better choice than seeking employment with a financial institution. Just as a convicted drug offender may want to steer clear of opportunities at a pharmacy.

“We’ve always said that a criminal record should not be the sole qualification for an (ex-offender) applying for a job as fork lift driver at a warehouse producing pallets,” Johnson said. “But we also ask ex-offenders to take responsibility on the front end, explain to the employer what the offense (entailed), that time has been served, amends have been made and that they are now trying to earn a decent wage.”

The EEOC report also points employers to the difference between a conviction and arrest.

“The fact of an arrest does not establish that criminal conduct has occurred, and an exclusion based on an arrest, in itself, is not job related and consistent with business necessity,” the EEOC said.

Holmes questioned why ex-offenders have a particularly difficult time landing job offers from governmental institutions.

He understands why a local or state government office would want to avoid public backlash over tax-payer supported salaries going to people with criminal records.

But points out that many of those same institutions welcome state and federal funds for job training.

“You’re taking training money, but not hiring ex-offenders? That’s crazy,” Holmes said.

Companies that stiff-arm ex-offenders, he added, need to take responsibility for contributing to a vicious cycle.

“In prison, they get three meals a day, healthcare and a roof over their head and when they get out they don’t have any money. If they can’t provide for themselves, they’re going do what they know in order to survive and go back to crime rather than starve to death,” Holmes said. “If you do your time, and you’re qualified for a job, then you should be given another chance.”

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More bad news for Chinese telecom giant Huawei this week is raising questions about the company’s ability to do business with the West.

Huawei, which is second only to Sweden’s Ericsson in telecom equipment sales, was blocked on Monday from bidding on a $36 billion Australian national broadband contract.

The Australian government is working to connect virtually the entire country to a high-speed fiber-optic broadband network, and Huawei wanted to supply the project with much of the necessary infrastructure equipment. The government-run National Broadband Network Co. wanted to consider Huawei, but the Australian Security Intelligence Organization recommended that the Chinese company not be allowed to bid for security reasons, Australia’s Financial Review reported.

Getting barred from foreign contracts is becoming a frequent problem for the Shenzhen, China-based company.

Also this week, the New York Times reported that a cybersecurity joint venture between Huawei and security firm Symantec (, Fortune 500) ended in November because of Symantec’s concerns that its relationship with Huawei would prevent it from getting a sensitive U.S. government security contract. Symantec did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and a spokesman for Huawei denied the Times’ account.

The setbacks for Huawei are just more links in a long chain of defeats in Western countries — particularly in the United States.

U.S. lawmakers and regulators have blocked Huawei from three proposed acquisitions and many more partnerships over the past decade, including a bid for 3Com and a supply deal with Sprint, both of which contract with the U.S. military. 3Com was eventually purchased by Hewlett-Packard (, Fortune 500).

Huawei has no problems getting contracts in many places around the globe. The company does business in 140 countries and serves 500 operators, including 45 of the 50 largest global telecom companies.

But it can’t count Verizon (, Fortune 500), AT&T (, Fortune 500), Sprint (, Fortune 500) or T-Mobile USA among its customers. Or the American government pay day loans.

Huawei faces three key obstacles, all of them geo-political in nature.

First, Huawei’s CEO is Ren Zhengfei, once a civil engineer for the People’s Liberation Army. The most advanced, persistent cyberattacks emanate from China, and the U.S. government believes many are sponsored by the Chinese government. Those attacks have captured intellectual property from U.S.-based corporations and secrets from the U.S. military.

Second, Huawei — like all companies based in the Communist country — has ties with the Chinese government.

Finally, the company has historically been willing to supply Iran with networking equipment, which Iran reportedly used to track its citizens. Huawei has since said it would scale back its relationship with Iran.

Huawei says it is being unfairly treated and mischaracterized.

"Huawei recognizes that there are geopolitial tensions; however, Huawei is a private company owned by its employees, financed by major commercial banks," said Bill Plummer, a spokesman for the company. "We would encourage anyone who wants to learn about the company to engage in facts."

Over the past year, Huawei has become increasingly vocal about what it sees as misinformation spread about the company. Most notably, Huawei released an open letter last February detailing its relationships with governments both in China and around the world.

The company constantly points to the many countries that it does do business in, including the United Kingdom, as examples of its integrity and focus on security.

There’s a big incentive to keep haggling, pushing and persuading. The United States is a $30 billion telecom market — and growing. As mobile traffic soars and 4G networks roll out, there’s a huge need for infrastructure spending.

But with Australia’s big "N-O" to Huawei and recent revelations about why Symantec was so eager to dump it as a partner, it’s clear Huawei still has a lot of convincing to do. 

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The resilience of the largest U.S. financial firms when tested against a recession more severe than the last one shows regulators have succeeded in pushing banks to build fortress-like balance sheets.

The Fed yesterday said 15 of 19 banks would be able to maintain capital levels above a regulatory minimum in an

Employment grew solidly for a third straight month in February, a sign the economic recovery was strengthening and in less need of further monetary stimulus from the Federal Reserve.

Employers added 227,000 jobs to their payrolls last month, the Labor Department said on Friday, while the unemployment rate held at a three-year low of 8.3 percent even as people flooded back into the labor force to hunt for jobs.

Not only was job growth a bit stronger than the 210,000 economists polled by Reuters had expected, but the government said 61,000 more jobs were created in December and January than previously thought.

Nonfarm payrolls have now grown by more than 200,000 for three months in a row - bolstering President Barack Obama’s chances for re-election. Employment growth has averaged 245,000 a month over the last three months.

“It looks like the economy is starting the year with some positive news for consumers and households,” said Gary Thayer, chief macro strategist at Wells Fargo Advisors in St. Louis.

“The trend is toward better jobs data with companies showing more conviction that the economy is finally gaining strength.”

Stocks opened modestly higher on the report, while prices for Treasury debt fell as traders dialed down the prospects for more bond buying by the Fed. The dollar rallied broadly.

“I think we’ll begin to … debate about the Fed exiting its ultra-accommodative policy stance sooner than expected,” said Omer Esiner, chief market analyst at Commonwealth Foreign Exchange in Washington.

A second report on Friday showed the trade deficit widened 4 percent on high oil prices and record imports, which will weigh on domestic growth.

Manufacturing, which in January recorded the largest jobs gain in a year, had another sturdy performance in February and there was also strong demand for temporary help, a potential harbinger of future permanent hiring.

Although the labor market is gaining some muscle, the pace of improvement remains too slow to do much to absorb the 23.5 million Americans who are either out of work or underemployed.

Fed Chairman Bernanke last week described the jobs market as “far from normal” and said continued improvement would require stronger demand for U.S. goods and services.

Still, he suggested the outlook would have to deteriorate for the central bank, which meets next week, to launch another round of bond buying to drive interest rates lower.

The employment report added to the list of data highlighting the economy’s underlying strength.

The data also provided a hopeful sign for the global recovery with growth slowing in China and the euro zone sliding into recession. The jobless rate in the 17-nation euro zone area rose to 10.7 percent in January, the highest since the euro started circulating in 2000.

NUMBERS GOOD FOR OBAMA

In contrast, the unemployment rate has dropped 0.8 percentage point since August, providing some relief to Obama, who faces an election battle in which the economy has been center stage faxless payday loans.

Economists predict the jobless rate could fall below 8 percent by the November election, even if the recent firming in the jobs market lures Americans who have given up the search for work back into the labor force.

The labor force participation rate - the percentage of working-age Americans either with a job or looking for one - rose to 63.9 percent from 63.7 percent in January, suggesting Americans are growing more optimistic on job prospects.

The increase in size of the workforce was the largest since April 2010.

White House economic adviser Alan Krueger said the report provided “further evidence that the economy is continuing to heal from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.”

Republicans were less forgiving.

“While there is some good news in this report, it is hard to celebrate while so many Americans remain out of work and those who do have a job haven’t seen a raise in years,” said Republican Representative Dave Camp, the chairman of the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee.

While some parts of the jobs market have benefited from unseasonably warm winter weather, economists say a genuine improvement is under way, even though they expect a slight pull back in March.

Private companies again accounted for all the job gains in February, adding 233,000 positions. Government employment fell a modest 6,000, declining for a sixth straight month.

Manufacturers hired 31,000 new workers, with all the gains concentrated in the segment that produces long-lasting goods.

Auto companies, which have stepped up production, are taking on new workers and adding shifts and overtime to meet pent-up demand after production was disrupted early last year following the tsunami and earthquake in Japan.

Factory employees worked more hours last month, helping to lift the average hourly earnings for all workers by three cents in February.

Average hourly wages increased 1.9 percent in the 12 months through February, suggesting little wage inflation even though unit labor costs grew much more strongly than initially thought in the third and fourth quarters of 2011.

The overall workweek held steady at 34.5 hours - holding at the highest level since August 2008.

Outside manufacturing, construction payrolls fell 13,000, the first decline in four months. Temporary hiring, seen as a harbinger for permanent hiring, added 45,200 jobs in February after rising 32,100 the prior month.

Although hiring has quickened, the economy faces persistent long-term unemployment. In February, about 43 percent of the 12.8 million unemployed Americans had been out of work for more than six months.

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The Treasury Department said Wednesday it is selling $6 billion worth of the $41.8 billion in common stock it holds in insurance giant American International Group Inc., which received the biggest bailout of the financial crisis in 2008.

The stock sale is a step by the government toward disentangling itself from AIG. It still owns 77 percent of the company’s common shares. Treasury said AIG plans to buy as much as $3 billion of the stock being sold.

Treasury also said it has a deal with AIG for it to repay the government’s remaining $8.5 billion preferred-stock investment in the company.

A price for the common shares wasn’t specified. AIG shares closed at $29.45 in trading Wednesday. The share price at which taxpayers would break even on their AIG investment is about $28 or $29.

The government stepped in with $182 billion to rescue New York-based AIG from collapse in the depths of the financial crisis. Treasury has recouped $18 billion of the $68 billion it provided the company through its Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. The remainder of the money came from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. AIG has repaid all but $17.5 billion of those loans.

Treasury made an initial sale of AIG stock in May 2011. The sales were expected to resume after the value of AIG shares increased. Last year, the stock lost nearly half its value, partly fueled by government sales of the company’s stock and a volatile stock market.

Under the agreement for repaying the $8.5 billion preferred-stock investment plus interest, $5.6 billion will come from AIG’s newly announced sale of part of its stake in Hong Kong-based insurer AIA Group Ltd., $1.6 billion from a sale of securities by the New York Fed, and another $1.6 billion from AIG’s sale of its American Life Insurance Co. subsidiary.

“The people of AIG have achieved another significant milestone in our progress toward our goal that American taxpayers recoup their entire investment in AIG at a profit,” AIG President and CEO Robert Benmosche said in a statement.

AIG had a $19.8 billion profit in the fourth quarter of last year, nearly all of it due to a tax-related accounting gain. The company also earned $17.8 billion for 2011, its second straight year of profits.

Despite the two years of profitability, AIG’s recent financial results have been inconsistent. Over the past two years, only half of its quarterly reporting periods have been profitable.

Treasury said it has hired Citigroup Global Markets Inc., Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC and Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC as joint coordinators for the common stock sale.

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Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Friday issued a call to action to restore housing markets, saying depressed house prices and sales are a serious drag on the economic recovery.

“The state of housing has been an impediment to a faster recovery,” he told a home builders’ conference.

“We need to continue to develop and implement policies that will help the housing sector get back on its feet,” Bernanke said, laying out a few ideas from a recent Fed “white paper” on housing.

Bernanke’s recommendations for potential policy remedies fly in the face of complaints from some Republicans lawmakers that the Fed was making an unwarranted intrusion onto the turf of other policymakers.

The white paper, issued last month, was the result of several months of study by a Fed staff on a problem officials at the central bank have concluded is a key missing ingredient to a healthier economic recovery.

In his speech, Bernanke touched only on some of the less controversial ideas broached by the Fed in the paper.

He called on lenders and regulators to look at rules and practices that may hold back the origination of sound mortgages, pointing at overly tight credit as one reason the housing recovery has been slow.

An overhang of vacant homes and a glut of foreclosures is also weighing on housing activity, Bernanke added. He said it could make sense in some markets to turn some of the foreclosed homes into rental properties, a policy the Obama administration is already pursuing.

Another top Fed official - Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank President Sandra Pianalto - also pointed at housing on Friday as a key impediment to a stronger recovery, calling it “a significant headwind.”

Pianalto, who is a voter this year on the Fed’s policy-setting panel, said declines in housing wealth were keeping consumers away from stores and making harder for businesses to borrow. Bernanke said the loss of housing wealth may be chopping $200 billion to $375 billion off of consumer spending per year.

Several Fed officials have come forward since the white paper was released to push for action, although it has caused discomfort in some quarters of the central bank’s system.

Bernanke made the case that overly tight credit in mortgage markets had undercut the effectiveness of the Fed’s aggressive efforts to stimulate growth.

The Fed cut overnight interest rates to near zero in 2008 and has bought $2.3 trillion in bonds in a further effort to drive mortgage and other borrowing costs lower.

In a typical recovery, a rebound in housing fuels hiring and income gains, but that has not been the case this time, Bernanke said.

In the face of the congressional criticism of the white paper, Bernanke recently told lawmakers he was sorry if the central bank’s efforts were misunderstood as anything but a helpful effort to spell out policy options.

He defended the study again on Friday.

“One of our main objectives … was simply to make people aware how central to the recovery housing is,” Bernanke said in response to a question from the audience.

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Kia has announced the recall of nearly 146,000 vehicles with faulty airbag systems.

The models affected are the 2006-2008 Kia Optima and the 2007-2008 Kia Rondo. Due to a flawed spring system that may become damaged over time, the driver’s side airbag in these cars may not deploy properly in the event of a crash, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a recall alert.

Kia reported the problem last week, and the recall is expected to begin in March, NHTSA said. Customers affected can have the problem fixed at dealerships free of charge.

Kia said in a statement that it was not aware of any injuries or airbag non-deployments associated with the problem to date payday loans. The issue was discovered "as a result of the regular monitoring of field data to ensure product quality," the company said.

For more information, car owners can contact NHTSA’s vehicle safety hotline at 1-888-327-4236 or visit www.safecar.gov. They can also call Kia’s Consumer Assistance Center at 1-800-333-4542 

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PC sales didn’t have a happy holiday sales season, but you wouldn’t know it from the strong earnings posted by Microsoft and Intel.

The PC is struggling — last quarter, shipments fell 6% from the year-ago period, according to research firm Gartner — as tablets and smartphones grab market share.

But both computing giants reported earnings that beat Wall Street estimates. They chalked up softness in PC sales not to obsolescence, but to a worldwide hard drive shortage caused by massive floods in Thailand in November.

The good news on earnings boosted shares of both companies early Friday. Microsoft’s stock rose 2.6% in premarket trading, while shares of Intel edged up 0.7%.

Microsoft earned a record 78 cents per share on record sales of $20.89 billion for the second quarter of its fiscal year.

Despite the strong overall showing, Microsoft (, Fortune 500) felt the pain of the lackluster PC market in its Windows division. Its sales fell 6% over the year to $4.74 billion.

"It’s difficult to say with any sort of certainty" whether PC sales will pick back up when the hard drive supply recovers, said Lisa Nelson, Microsoft’s investor relations director. "But the market should benefit from it."

On a conference call after the earnings release, Microsoft executives said the hard drive shortage will affect sales at least through the current quarter.

The call also revealed that netbooks — essentially small, low-powered laptops — now represent just 2% of the PC market. A year ago, they comprised 8%.

Executives dodged most questions about the upcoming, tablet-optimized Windows 8. The company revealed at a trade show earlier this month that a beta version will be released in late February.

Strength in Microsoft’s other sectors made up for PC weakness.

The Microsoft unit with the strongest sales remains the business software division, which includes Microsoft Office and other software. The sector accounted for $6.28 billion of the company’s revenue, though it gained only 3% over the year.

Office 2010 has sold more than 200 million licenses in the 18 months since its launch easy payday loans.

Gaming systems were also a bright spot, as Microsoft’s "entertainment and devices" sales jumped 15% over the year to $4.24 billion. To date, Microsoft has sold about 66 million Xbox 360 consoles and 18 million sensors for its motion-controlled Kinect system.

Nelson said Xbox now commands 46% of market share for gaming consoles.

But Microsoft said on the conference call that the overall console market "is softer than previously expected."

The "server and tools" area also did well, posting a sales increase of 11% to $4.77 billion. That’s the seventh consecutive quarter of double-digit growth, Nelson said.

Intel beats the street: Intel beat Wall Street estimates with fourth-quarter earnings of 68 cents on sales of $13.9 billion — in line with its own downgraded forecast.

Intel (, Fortune 500) sharply cut its sales forecast last month because of the hard drive shortage. Left without that supply, PC makers scaled back their inventories — which meant they were buying fewer semiconductors from Intel.

But sales at Intel’s "PC client group" were strong, rising 17% over the year to $9 billion. Growth in emerging markets was the main driver.

CEO Paul Otellini cited ultrabooks as one of the company’s biggest opportunities for growth in a press release. Ultrabooks are extremely light-weight notebook PCs that have long battery life and almost as much power as a full-sized laptop.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month, Intel showcased several upcoming ultrabooks that will run on its "Ivy Bridge" 22-nanometer chips.

In other tech earnings news on Thursday, Google (, Fortune 500) announced profit and sales that rose from year-ago results but badly missed Wall Street’s forecasts. IBM (, Fortune 500) posted earnings that topped estimates. 

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The Greek government resumed stalled talks with its private creditors in Athens on Wednesday in the hope of sealing a euro100 billion ($128 billion) debt relief deal needed to avoid a disastrous default this spring.

Charles Dallara, a top official at the Institute of International Finance, a global banking association, returned to Greece after negotiations stalled last week, and held a nearly three-hour meeting with Prime Minister Lucas Papademos and Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos.

“A very crucial meeting, that lasted several hours, has just finished at the prime minister’s office,” Venizelos told Parliament shortly afterward. “The meetings between the Greek government and the IIF have resumed and they will continue (Thursday).”

Earlier, he said the talks “are without a doubt at a very sensitive stage.”

The so-called private sector involvement, or PSI, deal is meant to write off half of the debt Greece owes private bondholders. Creditors would get most of the remaining debt in new bonds with extended repayment periods, as well as a cash payment.

“We want this (deal) to happen in a way that is safe for Greece _ with Greece in the eurozone _ and safe for the real economy and the financial system,” Venizelos said.

Since May 2010, Greece has kept solvent with rescue loans from its European partners and the International Monetary Fund. In the event of bankruptcy, Greece would likely have to abandon the euro and revert to a devalued currency. Since the country imports more than it exports, the costs of fuel and basic consumer goods would skyrocket, further frustrating a population angered by two years of harsh austerity.

The PSI talks have mainly been held up by a disagreement on interest rates for the new bonds.

“The interest rate on the new loans is a key issue here,” Dallara told CNN before Wednesday’s meeting. “Some seem to have a view that we should actually extend the loans at interest rates even lower than what the IMF and (the Europeans) extend their loans at, and there’s not much logic in that in our viewpoint.”

Dallara urged the EU to make clear that a similar deal would not apply to other troubled eurozone countries. “Greece really is a unique situation,” he said.

A Greek government official said Athens is still considering whether to impose so-called collective action clauses on its bonds. Such clauses could force private debt holders resisting a settlement to fall in line with the majority if an agreement is reached. The official asked not to be identified, citing the sensitive nature of the talks Payday advance.

A second government official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said Athens estimates there could be an agreement by the end of the week.

Greece needs to clinch the deal quickly to qualify for more bailout loans before it faces a euro14.5 billion ($18.6 billion) bond repayment on March 20. The bond swap is a key part a new euro130 billion ($166 billion) bailout package in loans and bank support from international rescue creditors.

Recession-bound Greece needs to write off some of its borrowings, if it is to have a fighting chance of emerging from its debt hole.

It has so far relied on austerity measures, which were a condition for it to receive the emergency loans. The Greek government has cut pensions and salaries, raised taxes and sold some state property.

Yanis Varoufakis, a professor of economics at the University of Athens, argued that even with a debt deal Greece could do little to eventually avoid default.

“Let the truth be revealed. Let’s have a default because Greece is insolvent and insolvent entities have to default. It’s a law of nature and of society and of reason, and we should simply succumb to that,” Varoufakis told AP Television.

“If European leaders are worried about the effect this will have on banks, they might as well recapitalize them, not continue to drip-feed the Greek state,” he said.

Dallara, the Institute of International Finance official, said that if Greece is forced to default, it will be messy. “I personally believe that there is no such thing as an orderly default for Greece,” he told CNN. “If there is a default, it is likely to be very disorderly.”

As austerity measures have cut deeply into incomes and unemployment has risen, unions have held frequent strikes and protests over the past two years.

Unions and employers were to start talks on Wednesday on reducing labors costs, but the negotiations were disrupted when protesters from a Communist-backed labor union occupied the central building where the meetings were to take place.

EU-IMF debt inspectors are back in Athens this week to monitor progress of those reforms aimed at slashing the country’s high budget deficits.

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Derek Gatopoulos and Theodora Tongas in Athens contributed to this report.

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