Financial thoughts

At long last, the Holy Grail of Internet IPOs is here. Facebook filed Wednesday to raise $5 billion in an initial public offering.

In 2011, Facebook earned $1 billion on sales of $3.7 billion. As of December 31, Facebook had 845 million monthly active users.

The company crossed the line into profitability in 2009, five years after it launched in founder Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room. Facebook earned $229 million that year on sales of $777 million, and has remained profitable ever since.

It’s not yet known on which stock exchange Facebook will trade, though it said it plans to use the ticker symbol "FB."

Facebook will likely re-file its paperwork several times over the coming months. Those updates will add more details and could even restate some of the financial information detailed in Wednesday’s filing.

In this initial paperwork, companies don’t declare how many shares they’re going to sell, or how much those shares will cost. Those details will be added in an updated filing shortly before trading begins.

Without that share price information, Facebook’s valuation is still speculative.

Facebook has its own guesses, though. The company said it conducted its own valuation of its stock at the end of each quarter, and as of December 31 determined it to be worth $29.73 a share.

Zuckerberg’s letter to investors: ‘Hacker Way’

Revenue breakdown: Advertising accounted for 85% of Facebook’s 2011 revenue, or almost $3.2 billion.

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

Those fees brought in $557 million for Facebook last year.

Revenue from Zynga, which makes FarmVille and other games played on Facebook, represented 12% of Facebook’s total revenue in 2011.

About 44% of Facebook’s revenue came from overseas last year, compared with 38% in 2010 and 33% in 2009.

As of December 31, Facebook had $3.9 billion in cash and liquid assets.

Exec compensation: Another choice tidbit: In 2011, Facebook CEO Zuckerberg raked in a $500,000 base salary. But he requested — and will receive — only $1 per year in salary starting January 1, 2013.

Don’t feel too bad for Zuck, who remains the largest shareholder in the company he created. His total compensation in 2011 came to $1.48 million, according to Facebook’s calculations.

He was one of the lowest-paid among Facebook’s executive ranks. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg topped the list with a total package Facebook estimated at $30.9 million, almost all of it in stock.

Engineering VP Mike Schroepfer made an estimated $24.7 million — again, mostly in stock — while CFO David Ebersman collected an $18.7 million pay package. (For more on Ebersman, see Fortune’s profile: "The man behind the Facebook IPO.")

As far as the regular rank-and-file at Facebook, the company had 3,200 full-time employees as of December 31. That was a 50% increase from the previous year, and Facebook said it "expect[s] this growth to continue for the foreseeable future."

Facebook also noted that it has bought out some small companies mainly to acquire employees, and said that it intends to continue that strategy.

How much Facebook is worth: Trading won’t begin for several months, as Facebook now has to field questions from regulators and court investors for its stock sale.

Most analysts estimate Facebook’s valuation will fall somewhere between $85 billion to $100 billion. But the value of Web companies can be extremely volatile.

A recent example: Zynga (). The FarmVille maker’s IPO filing reported that it valued its shares in August 2011 at $17.20 each, which gave the company a valuation of $14 billion. But when Zynga went public in December, shares sold for just $10 — valuing the company at $7 billion.

Several other Internet companies made their public debuts in 2011, but the end of the year proved to be a turbulent time for the sector. Shares of Groupon (), Pandora (), Zillow (), LinkedIn () and Angie’s List () all suffered steep double-digit losses for November, though most clawed back at least a bit in December or January. 

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Nigerian oil union Pengassan said it will only shut down oil output as

Learn what faxless payday loans are and how online payday loans can be used as a quick fix to pay off your bills.

Home prices fell for a fourth straight month in November as distressed sales continued to weigh on prices, data analysis firm CoreLogic said on Monday.

CoreLogic’s (CLGX.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) home price index fell 1.4 percent in November from the previous month. Compared with November of last year, prices were down 4.3 percent, steeper than the 3.7 percent year-over-year decline seen in October.

Excluding distressed sales, prices were off just 0.6 percent in November on a yearly basis. Homeowners in danger of foreclosure, or in “distress,” often sell their homes at a significantly reduced price Payday Loan for Bad Credit.

“Distressed sales continue to put downward pressure on prices and is a factor that must be addressed in 2012 for a housing recovery to become a reality,” Mark Fleming, chief economist at CoreLogic, said in a statement.

Of the top 100 statistical areas measured by population, 77 showed year-over-year declines, down from 80 in October.

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Yemen’s opposition on Sunday accused outgoing President Ali Abdullah Saleh of trying to torpedo a power transfer deal by sparking a new crisis, as troops loyal to him clashed with opposition forces, killing three.

The violence was evidence that the president’s signature on a power transfer deal has not ended months of turmoil that have benefited al-Qaida-linked militants.

Sunday’s clashes followed Saleh’s decision not to leave the country, a move likely to embolden his relatives, who control key security posts.

His opponents demand the removal of all of Saleh’s relatives from top security positions. Huge crowds of protesters have called for Saleh himself to be put on trial for the killing of hundreds of protesters, though the power transfer deal gives him immunity from prosecution.

Vice President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi told his new national unity government on Sunday, in their first official session, that the power transfer agreement, engineered by Yemen’s powerful Gulf Arab neighbors, must be implemented soon.

“We need to move vigorously and effectively to implement the Gulf initiative and its mechanisms,” he said.

The new government’s first task is to push through the law shielding Saleh from prosecution for alleged corruption and for violence against protesters. Saleh made that a condition for signing the deal to relinquish power after 33 years of rule over the Arab world’s poorest nation.

Yet more than a month after Saleh signed, and after the possibility of his flying to the U.S. was raised, Saleh is still in Yemen, still wielding significant power and showing few, if any, signs of giving in.

Ten months of mass protests and armed clashes between forces loyal to Saleh and his opponents, including army units that followed powerful tribal leaders siding with the opposition, have left a power vacuum. The Yemen branch of al-Qaida, considered one of the world’s most dangerous, has taken advantage of that to dig in to positions in the country’s south, taking over towns and villages.

Yemen’s military fights frequent battles with the Islamist militants but has failed to dislodge them no checking account payday advance.

In the latest skirmish between Saleh backers and opponents, anti-government tribesmen in el-Fardha Nehem region, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northeast of the capital Sanaa, said two people were killed and two others wounded when Saleh’s Republican Guards, led by his son, shelled their homes.

Opposition spokesman Mohamed Sabri accused Saleh of undercutting security as a way of arguing that he must stay in power.

“This man does not respect his commitments with others,” Sabri said. “Saleh is creating a new crisis.”

In the capital, a civilian bystander was killed when Republican Guard troops clashed with supporters of tribal chief Sadeq al-Ahmar, who was once a regime ally, but defected to the opposition in March, activists said.

Supporters of al-Ahmar and Saleh’s troops exchanged fire in Sanaa’s northern district of Hassaba, according to a security official and witnesses, resulting in the death of the bystander. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

The fighting Sunday ended after the vice president held talks with both sides. He was also able to quell violence in el-Fardha Nehem region.

Large crowds of Yemenis rallied in major cities Sunday, demanding the outgoing president be put on trial for the deaths of protesters.

The U.N. estimates that hundreds of protesters have been killed and thousands wounded since last February, when anti-government protests erupted across major cities.

Tens of thousands marched in the streets of Sanaa, chanting that Saleh “must stand before a judge.” Another large crowd of marchers echoed the chant in Taiz, Yemen’s second largest city.

Activist Fathi al-Hamadi said the “only place for Saleh to go to is the court dock.”

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MEMC Electronic Materials Inc. will slash 1,300 jobs — almost 20 percent of its workforce — and cut production as it copes with plunging prices for polysilicon, the key raw material in solar wafers and semiconductors.

The O’Fallon, Mo.-based company will eliminate 250 U.S. jobs by next spring, including 70 of 830 positions at the company’s corporate headquarters in O’Fallon, spokesman Bill Michalek said. MEMC will idle a polysilicon plant in Merano, Italy, and may close it permanently. It will reduce capacity at a plant in Portland that it acquired last year; and limit the ramp up of its newest silicon wafer plant in Kuching, Malaysia.

Officials said the actions were necessary to align the scope of operations with fast-changing markets that have been increasingly defined by a flood of Chinese-made polysilicon and a slowdown in solar and semiconductor demand.

“It is clear we must adjust our business model,” Ahmad Chatila, MEMC’s chief executive, said on a conference call with analysts and investors. “We believe these actions will strengthen MEMC in the near term and position us for more profitable growth in our core businesses.”

MEMC expects the restructuring to reduce annual operating expenses by more than 15 percent and boost cash flow by $200 million a year.

Theodore O’Neill, a New York-based alternative energy analyst at Wunderlich Securities, said the actions were necessary. But he’s not convinced it will insulate the company from the polysilicon prices that continue to spiral downward.

“The company is doing what I think they have to do,” he said. “My concern is they’re chasing a rabbit down a hole.” On Thursday, O’Neill cut his rating on MEMC shares to “sell” from “buy” and lowered his price target on the stock to $3 from $11.

The polysilicon boom has gone bust in only a few years as manufacturers around the globe simultaneously raced to add production capacity. The result: Prices that topped $400 a kilogram in 2008 have fallen below $40. They have plunged 45 percent just this year.

Meanwhile, the solar energy market in Europe has suffered as subsidies have begun to dry up. And demand for semiconductors has waned, too. Unlike in past years when consumers snapped up LED televisions and iPads, “we don’t have any hot consumer electronic that’s pulling massive amounts of polysilicon through the sales channel,” O’Neill said.

MEMC isn’t alone among polysilicon producers. “Other vendors in the solar supply chain will be forced to take similar action” in 2012, an analyst at Gilford Securities predicted in a research note on Thursday.

Last month, the International Trade Commission agreed to investigate a complaint by seven solar manufacturers that Chinese competitors were dumping products to injure competitors by driving down prices. MEMC was not among them, and is part of a coalition that believes the case could spark a trade dispute and raise prices for the entire industry.

Low-priced Chinese solar products were also cited by California-based Solyndra Inc. in its September bankruptcy. The case has been scrutinized by Republicans in Congress because the company received a half-billion-dollar federal loan guarantee from the Obama administration.

But just as falling prices have hurt solar wafer producers, they have benefited consumers and generated business for U.S. solar installers such as Clayton-based Microgrid Energy, which has seen its volume of solar work triple from last year.

“Probably once a month we see prices come down,” said Marc Lopata, Microgrid’s president.

Lopata said costs for installed solar energy systems have fallen by about 25 percent from a year ago to $6 a watt or less, depending on the size. And with rebates and tax incentives, consumers are getting about 60 percent back.

MEMC said it will combine its struggling solar materials unit, where 45 percent of jobs are being eliminated, with its SunEdison solar development unit under a single management team at the end of the month to squeeze out efficiencies. In some instances, SunEdison will buy solar wafers from other manufacturers rather than use those made in-house.

The company said it will take charges totaling as much as $1.38 billion in the fourth quarter. More than half of the amount is related to the restructuring plan announced Thursday, with the rest a product of likely goodwill impairments and deteriorating business conditions.

Weak solar and semiconductor markets also prompted MEMC to lower its fourth-quarter earnings forecast by 5 cents to 10 cents a share, excluding the charges. The company said revenue could be $239 million less than expected as some of its SunEdsion sales in Europe could get pushed back to 2012.

Shares of MEMC, which had lost nearly two thirds of their value over the past year, fell sharply in early trading Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange but closed down just a penny at $4.20.

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Sale, schmale.

Used to be, customers would come running when stores cut prices. But these days, more Americans are becoming blase about bargains.

Jennifer Beasley recently left a Toys R Us in Cary, N.C., unimpressed by the retailer’s offers that day of 50 percent discounts on things like a $150 Sylvania tablet computer and a $45 My Baby Alive Doll.

“The sales just aren’t as good this year,” says Beasley, 30, who has three children. “It’s almost not worth getting up.”

People have been shopping more than ever this holiday season, largely because of a flood of sales. But Americans have become so used to deep discounts that they expect each sale to be bigger and better than the last. That means retailers will likely have to keep slashing prices, which could hurt their bottom line.

“I think they’re going to have to continue to do the kind of `come on’ pricing that you saw on Black Friday,” or the day after Thanksgiving, says Alison Paul, head of consulting firm Deloitte’s U.S. retail practice.

Merchants already are rolling out big holiday sales. The Body Shop is letting customers spin a wheel of chance to win different discounts, including offers of “buy three, get three.” The Gap is selling many of its pajamas, kids’ hoodies and men’s cardigans for 50 percent off. And Target has Barbie, Thomas the Tank Engine and many of its other toy brands for “buy one, get one half off.”

But shoppers are yawning at deals that once excited them.

“The ads and the sales _ I think it’s all hype,” says Karen Finch of Gresham, Ore., who is waiting to buy a tablet for her son until closer to Christmas Day because she thinks the discounts on Amazon.com _ 48 percent off a $500 Blackberry version, for instance _ aren’t good enough. “There’s no substance.”

To be sure, consumers’ perceptions of deals don’t always jibe with reality. Most retailers decline to discuss their pricing strategy because of competitive reasons, but research by analysts at Jefferies & Co. and other firms found that many deals this year are as good as _ if not better than _ last year’s.

For instance, American Eagle offered 40 percent off everything all day on Black Friday _ better than the 20 percent off until noon that it offered for the past two years, according to Jefferies analysts. The average discount at Best Buy on Black Friday was almost 45 percent, up from about 34 percent last year. The average discount at Wal-Mart was about 47 percent, better than last year’s average of 43 percent.

And anyway, what shoppers say and do often are two different things. Consumers told Deloitte in September that they planned to spend about 5 percent less on Christmas this year. But the reality so far is different: Americans spent $52.4 billion over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, the highest total ever recorded for that period and 16 percent greater than last year, according to the National Retail Federation.

“You can’t always listen to what they say,” says Allen Adamson, managing director at the branding company Landor Associates. “What counts is what they do at checkout.”

Indeed, Atty Zschau of Portland, Ore., has been disappointed with the holiday sales she’s seen so far this year. But instead of going home empty-handed on Black Friday, she shelled out $800 _ full price _ for a Dell laptop that will be shared among her family.

“We’re normally `deal’ people,” says Zschau, an acupuncturist. But, “All the stuff that was on sale was not what we wanted.”

The discontent with discounts comes at a time when many Americans are struggling with job losses and stagnant wages. Many shoppers simply have less money to spend this holiday season: The median U.S. household income was $49,445 last year, down from $50,303 two years before.

And deals just don’t seem as good if the iPad tablet computer you want is still outside of your budget. A $1,000 TV marked down 20 percent might seem like a good deal for a shopper who has $800 to spend. But it’s not such a fab find for someone with only $700 in his pocket.

“Discounts are supposed to mean, `I can get it,’” says Michael Norton, a Harvard Business School professor specializing in consumer psychology. “So if you can’t get it, it doesn’t feel like a very good discount.”

Cost-conscious shoppers also have a long memory about the better sales they’ve seen in the last few years, says Alison Jatlow Levy, retail strategist with consulting firm Kurt Salmon. For instance, teen retailer Aeropostale offered discounts on Black Friday of 50 percent off everything and another 20 percent off until mid-afternoon. But that may not have been enough for Aeropostale shoppers who remember that the chain slashed prices up to 70 percent all day in previous years.

“Customers probably remember that last year things were 60 percent off, and this year maybe they’re only 25 or 40 percent off,” Levy says of some store discounts. “But those things probably weren’t 60 percent off until closer to Christmas.”

Rebecca Walden of Birmingham, Ala., learned that lesson the hard way. Last year, she and her husband stayed up late on Thanksgiving night buying Christmas gifts online for their daughter, who was then one-years-old. They were patting themselves on the back about the discounts of 10 to 20 percent off they got on toys like a rocking horse, a play kitchen and a set of 150 building blocks. That is, until they found many of those same items on sale for half off later in the season.

Walden, 33, decided not to repeat that mistake. So she’s done virtually none of her Christmas shopping yet. She’s waiting it out for a deal on a few items, like a sale on a Wiggles guitar, which generally runs at least $65.

“I’m not convinced they’ve hit rock-bottom prices yet and Christmas is still several weeks away,” Walden says. “I think the phrase is `playing chicken.’”

____

Sarah Skidmore reported from Portland, Ore. Christina Rexrode reported from New York.

Follow AP retail coverage at http://www.twitter.com/AP_Retail.

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For more than two months, they were open-air communes where people came to rebuild society and start a nationwide discussion on how to close the wide gap between the rich and the poor. But as Occupy Wall Street tent cities fade away, a growing number of protesters are pushing to put a clear message ahead of the movement.

Alan Collinge has his list ready _ return bankruptcy protection to student loans. Bring back regulations that were removed from the Glass-Steagall Act. End corporate personhood.

“They should come up with a short term list of no brainer agenda items,” said Collinge, wearing a huge sign in the rain at New York’s Zuccotti Park calling for student loan reforms.

More than a dozen other protesters interviewed by The Associated Press also came up with a wish list of specifics to address what they say is corporate greed and economic inequality. The list of demands ranged from the simple _ get corporate money out of politics _ to the ethereal (make sure Washington politicians act with a moral conscience).

Asking Occupy protesters what, exactly, they would do to reform government and the financial system is a loaded question and a source of internal conflict. Collinge, 41, of Tacoma, Wash., said he has unsuccessfully lobbied Occupy’s general assembly meetings in New York to develop a strong platform, but has been rebuffed.

“A lot of people, they think that this should be sort of a catchall” for every issue, he said, the goal being to expose the economic problems in the country, not solve them.

Other cities’ movements have held meetings of committees with titles like “cohesive messaging” to discuss strategy, but haven’t agreed on listing specifics as a movement. The greater purpose isn’t to influence the government or the financial system through classic demands, but to foster broad cultural changes that will gradually empower people to stop depending on big corporations and Wall Street money.

“All the energy has gone into an outcry over economic conditions, with the hope that others will join us and pick up issues they care about,” says Bill Dobbs, press liaison for Occupy Wall Street in New York. “Our best hope is inspiring other people to take action to bring economic justice.”

Some observers and experts predict that Occupy groups may spend the next few months focusing on smaller actions while waiting for the summer when the Republican and Democratic conventions would give Occupiers a world-wide audience.

But ask around, and protesters who spent weeks living in encampments and talking about the country’s woes have a clear idea of what they want.

A number have called for limiting campaign donations and getting big money out of politics. Some Occupy members want to limit the amount of money a person is allowed to give a politician. Others want to ban corporate donations specifically, or the number of campaign ads.

“How did Abraham Lincoln ever become president without a television set?” asked Ryan Peterson, an entertainment company worker from Chicago who lived for weeks in Zuccotti Park. Paul Lemaire, a 20-year-old visual arts student from Brooklyn, wants the two-party system eliminated.

The influence of money in politics is one of the greatest factors behind the gap between the superrich and the poor, said James Parrott, chief economist at the Fiscal Policy Institute in New York, which published a report last year on economic disparity. It shows “that they’re very focused in understanding the root causes” of the country’s economic issues, he said.

The call for tighter regulation of campaign contributions won’t gain traction anytime soon. The Supreme Court, in its landmark Citizens United decision in January 2010, cleared the way for corporations to spend unlimited funds to influence elections, often using money from anonymous donors paperless payday loans. The court struck down most of the so-called McCain-Feingold law that had set tight restrictions on such donations, arguing that government did not have the right to regulate political speech.

Campaign regulation, stopping wars that strain resources, halting corporate personhood _ the spending power given to corporations in the 2010 Supreme Court ruling _ and addressing higher education costs have emerged as key goals of the Occupy movement in Los Angeles. Organizers say they are now focusing on sharpening their objectives, as police moved in to shut down the two-month-old encampment this week.

“We’ve been collecting ideas, seeing what the priorities are, vetting and researching them,” said activist Suzanne O’Keeffe, a member of Occupy LA’s Demands & Objectives Committee.

Los Angeles member Mario Brito said the movement plans to pressure elected and bank officials for a moratorium on foreclosures, and said members would “occupy” bank lobbies, boardrooms and executives’ homes to force the action.

In Minneapolis, five members of the Occupy MN “Cohesive Messaging Committee” gathered to talk strategy this week at a downtown coffee shop, asking that people attending recent General Assembly meetings fill out cards expressing broad themes that were important to them. The group entered the cards into a spreadsheet and found economic justice, democracy, education and campaign finance reform as the common themes.

Collinge, an aerospace engineer who later founded a website about problems with student loans, lists the congressional bill he wants passed to return bankruptcy protections to student loans. The Depression-Era Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial banking from investment banking, is another named law cited at the top of protesters’ demands in cities across the country. Most of the restrictions that regulated the two forms of banking were repealed in 1999, and are blamed by many economists for contributing to the financial crisis in 2007.

Kalle Lasn, the co-founder of Adbusters, the Canadian magazine that helped ignite the Occupy movement, supports a 1 percent global “Robin Hood” tax on big financial transactions. Similar taxes and increases have been proposed for years, including the Obama administration’s “financial crisis responsibility fee” tax proposal of last year, intended to raise $90 billion over the next decade.

As individual protesters and movements fashion a platform, experts and organizers warned that defining the movement more broadly keeps everyone in and keeps responsibility in the hands of the power brokers.

“They’ve achieved a lot by having the open ended process that they’ve had so far,” said Parrott, the Fiscal Policy Institute’s chief economist. “They should be selective in that there are some people who are trying to glom onto the stage that they’ve created” with ideas that aren’t part of the main movement.

Will Birney, who left his job as a waiter in Westport, Ct., to join Occupy’s New York movement, has one wish, although it can’t be passed into law or regulated by the Treasury Department.

“I would instill a fair conscience, if people could look to morality,” said Birney, 26.

He knows he’s reaching, but says that’s the point of the movement.

“I’m not even thinking we’re going to get concrete solutions out of this,” he said. “All I want is a change.”

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Going to the coffee shop? Forget your wallet. Just take your mobile phone.

Bank of Montreal customers can now make payments simply by waving their mobile phone in front of a PayPass reader, the bank announced Tuesday.

The bank, which already has 7 million PayPass credit card holders, says the same service is available by simply attaching a PayPass sticker to your mobile phone.

BMO is the first major Canadian bank to offer what amounts to an interim step on the road to fully fledged mobile payment technology.

Since more than 25 million Canadians — or 70 per cent of the population — own mobile phones, the bank said the tag makes purchases easier, especially in fast-food outlets, gas stations and convenience stores.

“Say I’m in line at Tim Hortons. The phone is in my hand. I don’t have to pull my card out of my wallet. There’s a significant convenience factor,” David Heatherly, vice-president, payment products, BMO Bank of Montreal, said in an interview.

The same terms and conditions apply to the phone tag as to the regular PayPass card. For purchases under $50, no PIN, swipe or signature is required.

New with this product, however, is the option of having the details of the transaction recorded in an email.

The tags are a “bridge technology,” Heatherly said, noting that eventually the capability to swipe and pay will be embedded in all mobile phones.

They will work at the 19,000 locations across Canada that have PayPass readers.

PayPass accounts for 10 per cent of all MasterCard transactions in Canada, the credit card company said.

PayPass tag users have the same zero-liability purchase protection and anti-fraud capabilities available on all BMO MasterCard products, the bank also said. And they can collect the same rewards that they earn on their BMO MasterCard credit card.

The service is free, the bank said. Also read: 5 things you should never do with a credit card

5 things your credit card company won’t tell you

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On Tuesday, Missouri lawmakers will start debating $360 million in proposed tax breaks to help turn St. Louis’ underused airport into a bustling international cargo hub.

Yet, as currently written, that bill could commit Missouri to spending $300 million of that to build factories and giant freezers

The Toronto stock market was sharply lower Wednesday morning, a day after staging a big rally to end a major slide that had been precipitated by fears of another recession.

The S&P/TSX composite index dropped 127.02 points 11,982.24 and the junior TSX Venture Exchange gained 14.99 points to 1,726.21.

The main index had soared 438 points Tuesday after the U.S. Federal Reserve provided some relief with a promise to leave interest rates ultra-low until mid-2013. But on Wednesday, there was little appetite to extend gains after investors snapped up stocks beaten down during a market rout that carved 10 per cent from the TSX over the previous six sessions.

The central problems confronting markets remain: dwindling confidence in political leaders and central bankers to get a grip on the European government debt crisis and a growing conviction that the U.S. is sliding back into recession. A downgrade of U.S. government debt by S&P last Friday served to further sour investor sentiment.

The U.S. Federal Reserve said Tuesday that it would likely keep its Fed funds rate at near zero per cent through 2013 to help the ailing U.S. economy.

The Canadian dollar was down 1.3 cents to 100.86 cents US as investors believe the Fed