The Miami Herald from Miami, Florida • 289

EIH TESLA ROU-S INTO SOUTH FLORIDA FT1 CLASSIFIEDS: JOBS REAL ESTATE AND AUTOMOTIVE 'I (The Iflinmi HcralD i THURSDAY DECEMBER 17 2009 I EDITOR: JANE WOOLDRIDGE jwooldndgeaMiamiHeraldcom I 305-376-3629 A1 i THE MARKETS STOCKS MUTUAL FUNDS 4C HEALTHCARE COSTS Sen Charles Grassley pointed to a Miami doctor In an attempt to show that the government needs to do something about over-utilization of healthcare prescriber who wrote 96685 prescriptions from the last half of 2007 through the first quarter of 2009 for Medicaid patients AHCA records independently obtained by The Miami Herald show that the doctor is Mendez-Villamil who wrote nearly twice as many prescriptions for mental health drugs as TURN TO DOCTOR 2C like Miami where healthcare costs can be more than twice the national average as healthcare reform advocates look for ways to find the money to spread coverage to the uninsured The Grassley letter does not mention Fernando Mendez-Vil-lamil by name but noted documents from the Florida Agency for Healthcare Administration about a single BY JOHN DORSCHNER jdorschner a MiamiHeraldcom A Miami psychiatrist who writes prescriptions for Medicaid patients at a rate of 150 a day seven days a week has been targeted by a US senator as an example of why the federal government should do more to investigate over-utilization of healthcare The biting letter from Sen Charles Grassley R-Iowa to federal Medicaid officials comes at a time when authorities are looking for ways to reduce what experts believe is massive overspending in areas Early rally fizzles An early advance in stocks stalled Wednesday as the Federal Reserve reminded investors that it would start to wean the economy from an array of emergency supports next year The prospect of an eventual increase in interest rates and an improving economy pulled the dollar off its lows of the day BUSINESS PROFILE PAUL KANGAS fj 1 A i a W-UVK I2J5W? a MARICE COHN BANDMIAMI HERALD STAFF BANKING Credit Suisse to pay $536M to US The financial Institution admitted to hiding illegal business it was doing with Cuba Iran Sudan Burma and Libya Bloomberg News Credit Suisse agreed to pay $536 million to settle claims the bank helped process payments that let Iran and other nations including Cuba avoid government sanctions and gain access to US financial markets The Zurich-based bank entered into a deferred prosecution agreement in settling with the US Justice Department which said Credit Suisse made more than $16 billion in illegal transactions involving Iran Sudan Burma Cuba and Libya from the mid-1990s through 2006 according to a court document filed in Washington Wednesday Suisse will not flout the law again for its own financial Attorney General Eric Holder said at a news conference will be vigilant in enforcing this settlement and in pursuing other institutions and individuals who engage in similar illegal Without US approval the bank sent at least 40 outbound payment messages involving Sudan 32 related to Cuba and 30 for Burma the document said Credit Suisse Lloyds TSB Bank and eight other banks have been investigated for wire transfer information to conceal illegal money transfers Credit Suisse altered its dollar payments by removing Iranian names and references from messages and using code words for sanctioned entities when trading in US securities according to court documents The bank also instructed Iranian customers on how to format dollar-de- TURN TO IRAN 2C PROPER: Managing editor of Nightly Business Report Wendie Feinberg dusts the jacket of co-anchor Paul Kangas Kangas will be retiring at the end of the year NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CO-ANCHOR SIGNING OFF AFTER 30 YEARS PIONEERING ANCHOR PAUL KANGAS IS LEAVING FIRST DAILY BUSINESS SHOW BUSINESS BRIEFS TECHNOLOGY Microsoft settles with EU More than 100 million Europeans will get to pick a Web browser after Microsoft agreed to offer Internet users a choice to avoid fresh fines The deal announced ends all current antitrust charges brought by European Union regulators Beginning in March Microsoft will provide a pop-up screen to all European users of its Windows operating system asking them to choose one or more of five major browsers including Internet Explorer Firefox Chrome and Safari and seven smaller rivals EXECUTIVE PAY SEC wants transparency Federal regulators voted Wednesday to require companies to reveal more information about how they pay their executives amid a public outcry over compensation The Securities and Exchange Commission voted 4-to-l to expand the disclosure requirements for public companies For example the new requirements include information on how a pay policies might encourage too much risk Company policies that encouraged excessive risk-taking and rewarded executives for delivering short-term profits were blamed for fueling the financial crisis MEDIA Bernanke of Year1 Time magazine named Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke its person of the year for 2009 saying the story of the year the weak economy could have been far worse if not for the mild-mannered academic The recognition may boost standing on Capitol Hill The Senate Banking'Committee is expected to vote Thursday on nomination to a second four-year term AIRLINES AA may boost JAL ties American Airlines CEO Gerard Arpey offered the possibility that American and its partners will increase the $11 billion investment offered to Japan Airlines Arpey said American is also committed to let JAL be its exclusive partner in Northeast Asia American is trying to fend off efforts by Delta Air Lines to lure JAL into the SkyTeam alliance ENERGY Dam deal will pay later been nearly five months since the presidents of Brazil and Paraguay agreed on a breakthrough deal to triple income from the second-largest hydroelectric dam but the money be flowing anytime soon The treaty would increase income from energy generated by the Itaipu dam on the shared Parana River to $360 million money that President Fernando Lugo wants to spend on agrarian reform to benefit 300000 landless peasant families It also calls for Brazil to invest in high-capacity power lilies across Paraguay creating an energy grid that could help one of South poorest countries reshape its agricultural economy MIAMI HERALD WIRE SERVICES Paul Kangas Position: co-anchor of "Nightly Business Report" Lives: North Miami Beach Education: University of Michigan Officer Candidate School US Coast Guard Yorktown Va Personal: Married 33 years to wife Peni a doctor of alternative medicine who also speaks six languages son Mark is a musician Background: Born and raised in Houghton Mich learned to operate a HAM radio at age 12 while he was in the Boy Scouts and still broadcasts under the call letters W4LAA an avid golfer awarded an Emmy for Lifetime Achievement in Business and Financial Reporting this year Quote: straw hats in BY DANIEL CHANG Before he became the trusted stock market analyst and co-anchor of first broadcast dedicated to economic news Nightly Business Report Paul Kangas was a lieutenant in the US Coast Guard deployed aboard an icebreaker in the North Atlantic and then assigned as an aide in Cleveland It was in the Coast Guard that Kangas learned his first important lesson about the stock market: straw hats in In other words Kangas explained stocks when no one wants To be sure it takes more than a maxim to analyze the financial markets But few broadcasters have digested as vast an amount of economic an average night according to Nielsen Media Research will be getting their news from a new anchor Kangas is stepping down on Dec 3L TURN TO KANGAS 2C data daily and then delivered it in concise contextual reports as consistently as Kangas has done for nearly 30 years on NBR But starting in 2010 NBR viewers and there are an estimated 750000 of them on ECONOMY Fed holds line on rates amid weak growth The Federal Reserve is keeping its bank lending rates near zero as the economy tries Jto crawl out of recession wage growth slight and credit tight Companies are still wary of hiring they said In the meantime the Fed wavering from its commitment to keep its bank lending rate at zero to 025 percent where it has stood since last December It said again it will keep rates there for- an In response commercial prime lending rate used to peg rates on home equity loans certain credit cards and other consumer loans will remain about 325 percent its lowest point in decades Super-low interest rates are good for borrowers who can get a loan and are willing to take on more debt But those same low rates hurt savers The rock-bottom rates are especially hard on people on fixed incomes who earn scant returns on savings accounts and certificates of deposit Michael Darda chief econo- TURN JO RATES 2C BY JEANNINE AVERSA Associated Press WASHINGTON The economy is growing but weakly Layoffs have slowed yet jobs remain scarce And interest rates will need to rise but not anytime soon That was the mixed picture sketched Wednesday by the Federal Reserve which pledged to hold rates at a record low to reduce unem ployment and sustain the recovery And the assessment was reinforced by government data on inflation home building and US trade Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues did sound a more optimistic note by pointing to the slowdown in job losses But they made clear the recovery is far from strong: Consumer spending remains sluggish the job market weak.