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ExxonMobil Pipeline Co. crews have finished initial cleanup work on four sites contaminated when a pipeline carrying crude oil broke underneath the Yellowstone River three weeks ago.

The Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Environmental Quality will assess whether the cleanup is adequate.

DEQ Deputy Director Tom Livers tells The Billings Gazette that state standards require the cleanup to continue until the effort would be more harmful than beneficial to the environment.

So far, 46 sites have been identified for cleanup after an estimated 1,000 barrels of oil leaked into the river, starting on July 1.

International Bird Rescue of California was brought in by Exxon to clean wildlife affected by the spill. Jay Holcomb with the rescue group says they’ve only had to treat three birds.

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An investment scheme to sell shares in a company purporting to build Russian vodka stands has cost local financial consultant Paul Burkemper a $100,000 fine and his ability to sell securities in the state of Missouri.

The sanctions were outlined in a consent order signed by Burkemper and the secretary of state’s office Wednesday and follow a cease and desist order issued by regulators in May 2010 that shut down the scheme. Under the agreement, Burkemper is banned for life from selling securities in the state.

Burkemper, whose office was in Sunset Hills, partnered with Ilya Vishnevetsky, formerly of Clayton, to sell shares to investors in I.P. Holding LLC, based in St. Louis. Investors were told their money would go toward building more than a dozen kiosks that would sell vodka in St. Petersburg.

But the securities were never registered with the state and investors did not receive required financial information regarding the venture, such as a business plan, statement of financial condition or risk disclosure.

Burkemper and Vishnevetsky also formed a business in 2008 called Select Auto to export cars from the U.S. to Russia. And they used some of the money from the vodka business to buy cars for Select Auto, without disclosing that to investors, according to the consent order.

At least 11 people invested $1.9 million in the vodka venture from 2006 to 2008. In the consent order, the state concluded that Burkemper made untrue statements and failed to disclose material facts in connection with the investment offer.

Burkemper was an agent of Overland Park, Kan no teletrack payday loan.-based VSR Financial Services from May 2004 through August 2009, and he approached some of his VSR customers with the vodka investment offer without disclosing the investment to VSR.

“It should be a big red flag if you’re working with a broker, it is against state law for them to engage in something on the side,” said Laura Egerdal, a spokeswoman with the secretary of state’s office.

“Oftentimes, these involve high amounts of risk or are just flat out scams.”

Through his attorney, Albert Watkins, Burkemper declined to comment.

Watkins said Burkemper is no longer selling securities but has started a consulting firm in St. Louis advising those in the securities industry how to avoid securities violations.

Many of the 11 investors in the vodka stand venture were Burkemper’s friends and family members, and Burkemper was deceived by Vishnevetsky into believing the vodka stands were being built in Russia, Watkins said. The lawyer also said Burkemper received electronic images of kiosks in development and copies of leases in Russia that later proved to be fakes.

Burkemper “has cooperated with regulators and federal law enforcement and has accepted his responsibility as the registered financial adviser, and for having getting everyone, including himself, involved in this investment,” Watkins said.

The secretary of state’s office had fined Vishnevetsky $34,000. He could not be reached for comment.

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In an effort to modernize the Illinois electric grid, state legislators approved a controversial bill last month to jump-start more than $3 billion of investment by the two largest utilities.

Led by Chicago-based ComEd, the utilities lobbied hard for the ’smart grid” measure, which would jolt the state’s electric distribution network into the 21st century and impose sweeping regulatory changes. Environmental groups have embraced the measure. Consumer advocates have condemned parts of it as a ploy to boost profit. Gov. Pat Quinn has vowed to veto it.

Regardless of how the drama plays out in Illinois, there’s no rush to follow suit on the other side of the Mississippi River. As with electric deregulation a decade ago, the Missouri utility industry would rather watch and wait. Regulators, utility executives and consumer advocates in Missouri see peril in rushing to spend billions of dollars on new technology that may not pay immediate dividends.

“Everybody agrees we’re using way-old technology and older infrastructure, and we have to move toward upgrading and updating our electrical grid,” said Missouri Public Service Commission Chairman Kevin Gunn. But “this is the perfect example where the Show-Me state motto is the right way to go.”

The term smart grid generally refers to technological upgrades designed to improve reliability and efficiency of the nation’s power grid. Most attention has focused on new digital meters, but other infrastructure aims to minimize outages, allow for increased use of renewable energy and allow consumers to buy cheaper power during off-peak hours.

“This is a major transformation of the power grid that’s going to take a numbers of years, it’s going to occur in stages, piece by piece,” said Peter Fox-Penner, a principal at the consulting firm Brattle Group.

national backlash

Across the country, smart grid projects, especially those involving new digital smart meters, have sparked a backlash. In Texas, regulators were asked to investigate the accuracy of the new meters. In San Francisco, customers are worried about electromagnetic radiation. A few California cities have declared moratoriums on the new meters. Privacy advocates worry about what utilities will do with the data they collect on consumer energy use.

All of this provided fodder for discussion last summer as the Missouri PSC held a smart grid workshop with representatives from utilities, the Energy Department and smart grid vendors. Regulators and utilities continue to closely watch demonstration projects in Fulton and Kansas City that are paid for partly with stimulus grants.

In Illinois, it’s the debate over the regulatory framework being proposed by utilities that’s raising second thoughts payday loans in one hour. David Kolata, executive director at Citizens Utility Board, a Chicago-based utility watchdog, said the group backs the bill’s smart grid provisions. What it objects to are more sweeping changes in the legislation that could expose consumers to higher rates.

“It’s increasingly clear that we’re not going to build our way out of future energy issues” by adding new power plants, he said. “But there cannot be a blank check” for utilities.

Whatever the cost, the benefits of a smart grid could be enormous. Some say it could do for the nation’s patchwork electric grid what the Interstate highway system did for car travel, and revolutionize energy use the way the Internet changed the flow of information.

Today’s grid is a giant one-way road where electricity is pushed from a few large generating plants to millions of customers. Utilities charge the same rate for every kilowatt-hour, even though electricity costs vary widely throughout the day. And consumers have little idea how much power they’re using, and so they have little incentive to use less at peak times when electricity prices are high.

The smart grid would make better use of intermittent power sources such as windmills and solar arrays. New meters could make it possible for utilities to charge different rates for electricity at different times of the day, so consumers can run the dishwasher or clothes drier at night to save money. And new smart thermostats and appliances would be able to automatically adjust power use in response to changing prices.

Such improvements would help utilities avoid building expensive new power plants that run only a few hours on hot summer afternoons to help meet peak demand. They would improve air quality and cut down greenhouse gas emissions.

barriers to entry

But getting from here to there won’t be easy or cheap. The Electric Power Research Institute estimates implementation of a nationwide smart grid will require investment of as much as $476 billion.

Advancing the smart grid also requires consumers to buy in. And it has been a tough sell so far. Earlier this month, Kansas City-based Black & Veatch released results of an industry survey showing the main impediment to smart grid implementation is a lack of customer interest and knowledge.

Much of the controversy has focused on the new digital meters. Some consumer advocates, like John Coffman, an attorney for the Consumers Council of Missouri and AARP, worry the devices will prove too expensive and need replacement too quickly. Coffman also worries it could make it too easy for utilities to disconnect customers who fall behind on bills.

For now, the new meters aren’t in Ameren Missouri’s plans. The cost of smart meters

As its strike against local building contractors moves into its fourth week, the St. Louis Bricklayers union plans to ask a federal mediator to step in if the contentious impasse continues when the two sides reconvene on Monday.

Business Manager Don Brown of the bricklayers’ Local 1 blames the stalemate on the St. Louis Mason Contractors Association, which Brown accuses of trying to use the economic downturn to loosen the unions’ grip on local construction projects.

“It’s a tactic that hasn’t been tried here before,” Brown said. “They’re trying to get members to resign from the union. It’s telling guys, ‘You can scab on your own union.’”

Association Executive Director David Gillick denies any attempt to bust the union, citing an alliance between the bricklayers and union contractors dating back a century. At issue, Gillick said, is the association’s belief that the future success of regional construction rests on a fundamental shift in the way unions and contractors do business.

“We choose to be union contractors. They choose to be union bricklayers. But if we don’t change the path we’ve been on, the marketplace will change it for us. It won’t be our choice anymore,” said Gillick.

Len Toenjes, president of the Associated General Contractors of St. Louis, said the split between the two parties exemplified a failed reliance on short-term fixes to the complex task of positioning the region to compete in the post-recession economy.

“In order to attract development, we need to be competitive,” Toenjes said. “But striking a reasonable balance is difficult for everybody. And it’s especially hard when two (organizations) that have been doing business for 100 years are suddenly thrust into the global marketplace.”

The public bickering marks an end to a pledge by the union not to negotiate the terms of its next contract in public. Brown said he broke that agreement in response to remarks Gillick made in an interview ten days ago with Charlie Brennan on KMOX radio.

The bricklayers walked off the job when the five-year contract they agreed to in 2006 expired at midnight, June 1. Approximately 500 members of Local 1 haven’t worked since.

Another 200 have remained on projects, part of an “interim agreement” with a handful of contractors who agreed to honor the terms of a new contract retroactively, assuming a settlement can be reached.

Local 1 also hit the pavement five years ago when talks faltered in a resolution of the 2006 pact. That strike lasted only five days.

What separates the tone of the negotiations in 2006 from 2011, said Brown, is the economic climate.

Compensation and work rules are the primary negotiating points separating the two parties. The association is asking for concessions that would peel back salary and benefits by four percent. Local 1 has balked at the proposal, noting that economy-induced declines in construction already slashed the average annual bricklayer salary to $30,702 in 2010.

The hours worked by bricklayers this year have already dropped 38 percent, Brown said. To the union, taking a salary reduction in a depleted construction market makes no sense.

“Even if we agreed to (a pay cut), there still won’t be any residential work out there, because they just aren’t building homes right now, and they won’t start until the banks start releasing money,” said Brown.

The two sides also can’t get together on a rule change that would increase the allowable weight of bricks lifted by workers from 30- to 40-pound masonry blocks.

Brown, citing a study, said a bricklayer hoisting 40-pound blocks 200 times a day would lift the equivalent of five pickup trucks a week or 2 1/2 fully loaded 747 jetliners over the course of a year.

Gillick maintains the 40-pound lift is consistent with union-regulated rules in other jurisdictions, including those in Illinois.

The union and the contractors are in accord on one aspect of the strike: Without an expedited agreement, current projects throughout the region will soon suffer the consequences of the labor stoppage.

Toenjes says some construction sites are already ’seeing an impact.”

And Gillick cautions the situation is “hitting a critical point” as bricklayers are needed to complement the work of carpenters, ironworkers, sheet metal workers and other tradesmen.

“Their patience is running thin, and they won’t be able to let a project dwindle,” Gillick said of general contractors and clients in the region. “They are going to have to make a decision about whether to bring in a union guy or a non-union guy. And in some cases that is already happening.”

On Friday, Day 17 of the strike, neither Gillick nor Brown was optimistic that an agreement might be imminent.

One measure of the distance separating the two men was Gillick’s reaction when asked if he’d agree with Brown to turning negotiations over to a federal mediator.

His answer: Probably not.

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Four new financial companies have joined a rival Canadian-only $C3.6 billion bid for the TMX Group that could block a proposed merger of the Toronto and London stock exchanges.

Maple Group Acquisition Corp. announced Sunday that Desjardins Financial Group, Dundee Capital Markets, GMP Capital Inc. and Manulife Financial have signed on as investors.

Manulife is Canada’s largest insurance company and Desjardins the biggest credit union, with major financial operations in Quebec. Dundee and GMP are smaller wealth managers.

Maple, made up of a who’s who of Canada’s major financial players _ including several major banks _ has put forward a US$3.67 billion bid to acquire TMX Group, which owns the Toronto exchange.

TMX rejected the bid, saying there are too many uncertainties, including regulatory and debt risks.

The bid from the London Stock Exchange is worth about US$3 billion.

The Maple bid is meant to keep TMX in Canadian hands after many bank and government officials raised concerns about the so-called “merger of equals” with the London Stock Exchange, which is technically a takeover by the British operator.

But TMX Group is intent on pushing ahead with the London Stock Exchange transaction and has publicly dismissed the threat that shareholders would accept the Maple proposal.

On Sunday, TMX declined to comment on the new Maple Group partners.

TMX’s rejection prompted Maple to go directly to shareholders with its offer. It hopes the addition of more big investors will send them a stronger signal.

A statement from Maple Group didn’t indicate if it would raise its bid, but spokesman Luc Bertrand says the additional investors are another indication that its offer is superior to the merger with the London exchange.

“Our vision for an integrated exchange provides a better way forward for Canada’s capital markets,” he said in the release.

Monique Leroux, Desjardins’ president and CEO, said the Maple bid for TMX “provides Canadians with an excellent opportunity to collaborate and cooperate in order to maintain a strong and growing financial industry that will enhance our economy both in Quebec and across Canada.”

Ned Goodman, chairman of Dundee Capital, said, “Canada’s small-and mid-cap companies and markets will do better with Maple than they will with the LSE. As an independent broker-dealer, we support Maple’s vision.”

Maple went directly to shareholders last month, announcing an informal C$48 (US$48.95) per share proposal -_ which represents a 24 percent premium to the implied value of the merger with the LSE Group.

Members of the Maple Group Acquisition Corp. include Alberta Investment Management Corp., Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, CIBC World Markets Inc., Fonds de solidarite des travailleurs du Quebec, National Bank Financial Inc., Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, Scotia Capital Inc. and TD Securities Inc.

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There are some pretty basic rules about personal finance, and my money mistake involves violating them all. This was no accident mind you. I did it willfully and with no small sense of pleasure. (Keep this article away from young children.)

I was posted to New York at the age of 28 as a business journalist, and intended to live within the somewhat modest means of a newspaper correspondent. And I stuck to my guns, for at least six months. Then I abandoned my guns, hopped over the wall into no man’s land, went AWOL. And in retrospect I’m glad I did, because the investment in my career and the experiences were worth more than the thousands of dollars I figure it cost me.

I blame my fall on the city: Her high rent, irresistible restaurants, the plays, the fashion, the travel beckoning, the fascinating people from all over the world. But for all of that, I might never have strayed.

It’s not hard to keep track of whether you can afford something or not — that’s what bank statements are for. But, I reasoned, this is New York. I will only live here once, and to live and work here and not absorb all its delights would be criminal. The real gamble was that my future, post-New-York self would reap a reward in the form of a higher salary and a better job and that would presumably help me pay down all the debt.

First I gave up the uptown studio apartment that fit my budget and moved to more convenient SoHo on the lower West Side. Then I bought the clothes that kept me in fashion in cutting-edge New York. I shopped smart, sales in out of the way stores.

My new friends liked to dine out (most people I knew in New York used their oven as additional storage space) and pretty soon we were traveling too. Italy, Spain, Italy, the Hamptons, Italy. We travelled together, and an Italian villa back then was a steal — I was practically saving money by going.

Within a few years, I was rich in experience, a billionaire in sights and sounds, a queen of couture. And tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt. The lowest moment, financially speaking, was when I cashed in my RRSP — paid a huge chunk of tax on it, lost the compounding potential, and used the money to pay off a credit card. Or most of it.

Now financial experts would say that’s not the worst move — after all, no investment return will net you the 19 to 29 per cent you pay on credit card debt.

It seems to me I broke every one of the three cardinal rules of personal finance.

Live within your means. As Dickens said: If you spend even a penny less than you earn, happiness follows, a penny more, misery. I certainly did that — minus the misery.

Start saving early. The miracle of compound interest means the sooner you start the less you will need to save later. Throw in the tax benefits of a registered retirement savings plan and you get a real kick to your savings.

I started saving in an RRSP pretty much as soon as I had income after university. I managed, by my mid-twenties, to be maxing out my annual amount. Then I cashed it all out, losing $40,000 and a lot more potential. But there’s more.

Avoid credit card debt. Paying only the monthly minimum on a big balance is the surest route to penury. Though you will find yourself newly popular with credit card companies who will generously raise your spending limit. Knowing this, I dutifully avoided credit debt until I got to New York. Until then I had used it for the inevitable short-term bridging periods incurred by a combination of extreme poverty and an inconvenient need for food.

So there you have it. Money mistakes one through three. But as for the outcome — well, Dickens would not approve. It ended pretty much the way my 28-year-old self thought it would. I got a higher profile, a high paying job in New York and, when that helped me land a better, even higher paying job back in Canada, I paid off my credit card debt in six months.

Was it a mistake? On a straight math basis yes. It was foolish. But would I do the same thing over again? In a New York minute.

Manitoba native Amanda Lang is CBC’s senior business correspondent for TheNational, and is co-host of the Lang & O’Leary Exchange. She has worked for CNN, the Financial Post and the Globe & Mail.

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Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and the CEO of Chrysler say it

Investors trying to duck a blow from the stock market by moving to bonds may be positioning themselves to take a left jab that they didn’t see coming easy pay day loans.

As the economy has weakened lately, investors pulled about $3 billion from stock funds and poured more than $8 billion into bond funds

BEAMSVILLE, ONT.

Stocks ended a rough week with slight gains Friday after Libyan government forces declared a cease-fire and a group of the world’s seven largest countries announced a plan to bring the yen down from historic highs.

Financial stocks rose after JPMorgan and other large banks increased their dividends. JP Morgan said it was increasing its dividend to 25 cents a share from 5 cents. Wells Fargo and U.S. Bancorp also raised their dividends.

Japan’s currency has soared since an earthquake struck the country a week ago and caused devastating tsunami waves and damage to several nuclear plants. A stronger yen makes it more difficult for Japan’s export-driven economy to recover by making Japanese goods more expensive overseas.

“This is a bit of a relief rally,” said Paul Zemsky, head of asset allocation at ING Investment Management. “The situation in Japan looks to be stabilizing, or at least not getting any worse, and it looks like it may be solvable.”

News early Friday that Libya’s foreign minister had declared a cease-fire helped push stocks higher, but opposition forces said shelling was still occurring after the announcement and they accused the Libyan government of lying. Britain and France were taking the lead in plans to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya.

The Dow Jones industrial average gained 83.93 points, or 0.7 percent, to 11,858.52. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 5.49, or 0.4 percent, to 1,279.21. The Nasdaq composite index gained 7.62, or 0.3 percent, to 2,643.67.

All three stock indexes ended the week lower after markets were battered by worries over Japan’s ability to get its nuclear crisis under control. The Dow lost 1.5 percent, the S&P 500 1.9 percent and the Nasdaq 2.6 percent.

Japan is the world’s third-largest economy after the U.S. and China and buys 10 percent of U.S. exports. Tokyo’s benchmark Nikkei index closed 2.7 percent higher after the announcement from the Group of Seven nations late Thursday.

Thousands of people have been killed in the earthquake and tsunami that followed, and hundreds of thousands are homeless. Quake damage and power cuts have forced Toyota Motor Corp. and other manufacturers to suspend production in parts of the country.

Oil prices hovered between small gains and losses after Libya’s foreign minister declared a cease-fire. The announcement came hours after the Union Nations authorized air strikes against the country.

Nike Inc. fell 9 percent after the company’s earnings came in below what analysts were expecting. Nike said rising costs would cut into its profits over the second half of the year, even as sales increased.

More than two stocks rose for every one that fell on the New York Stock Exchange. Consolidated trading volume was 5.3 billion shares.

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