Colors have made great impact on product selling, marketing and advertising in physical as well as virtual world. It is necessary to know what color says what before pushing a product in market.

"Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions" says Pablo Picasso.

Emotions make great impact on advertising and marketing of products. Similarly color plays major role in marketing your product. I am not talking in the sense of marketing garments products or cosmetic products. Even in utilities and consumer durable products, it works. Selecting colors in a very specific sequence can indicate things about you.

Peter sells says that the color choices advertisers make are more than aesthetic decisions; colors have been known to affect (and reflect) a person's mood or emotions, current style trends and cultural beliefs and symbols.

According to paint company Glidden, colors represent personalities. Market researchers have also determined that color affects shopping habits. Impulse shoppers respond best to red-orange, black and royal blue. Shoppers who plan and stick to budgets respond best to pink, teal, light blue and navy. Traditionalists respond to pastels - pink, rose, sky blue.

It is known that colors inspire different feelings in us. Like as exciting, active, soothing, tension, joy, happiness, brightness, royalty, strength.

Advertiser and merchandiser to make the customer purchase the product or service have used color. It used to draw attention to the product, and to highlight a particular product’s characteristic.

Coloring History

Johann Wolfgang Goethe was one of the first who connect color and psychology. In his book "Theory of Colors" he explained concepts of association of colors in life.

In 1947 Max Lüscher presented his color test to an international conference in Lausanne. Dr. Lüscher himself has been employed as a color consultant in such diversified fields as pharmaceuticals, packaging, flooring, architecture and advertising. "

Even we have theories of color by Issac Newton and Chen-Guang Lu.

Now, check out what color says what?

Color means….

Black
Authority, power, boldness, seriousness, is distinguishing and classic.
Black is synonymous with sophistication and elegance. This is the reason to use it for high end, expensive products. It is good for background products. It is ideal for text on a light background. Black also implies submission.

Pink
Caring and sharing, pink indicates a strong personality. It suggests femininity, gentleness, well being and innocence. For business you must be aware of its feminine links and implications. Emotional in character, connotes a sensitive heart. The affectionate and concerned Individual prefers pink. Gently, you offer love, attention and nurturing to those in distress and needing guidance.

Blue
This one primarily attracts men, it appeals to lot of people. Blue is cool, soothing and orderly security, authority, faithfulness and dignity. For business it suggests sanctuary and fiscal responsibility. It is the most popular and the second most powerful color. People are more productive in blue rooms. Softer shades like baby are soothing, darker shades convey a premium image.

If you choose blue, you have a basic need for a calm, harmonious, and tension-free existence. Capable, conservative and sensitive to others, you make a loyal and trustworthy friend.

Red
Those who select red are aggressive, impulsive and strive for "Success". The desire to experience the fullness of living leads to constant activity. Red is an excitement, strength, sex, passion, vitality, aggressiveness and commands attention. Business wise it associated with debt is great for boldness and accents.

This color is an eye stealer. It has a strong masculine appeal. Most dynamic and passionate color, symbolizes love, rage and courage. Demanding attention, red has great emotional impact.

Yellow
Yellow is an eye-catching color. It is an attractive color – truly joyous and virtuous in its purest form. Yellow exudes warmth, inspiration and vitality, and is the happiest of all colors.

If your favorite color is yellow, this indicates that you look forward to the future, and that you are intellectual, highly imaginative and idealistic Yellow signifies communication, enlightenment, sunlight and spirituality.

Green
It symbolizes health. Because of its freshness it’s used with health food products. If you selected green, you seek stability, balance and persistence. You are a moral and affectionate individual. Businesses use it to communicate status and wealth.

It is the easiest color on the eye and can improve vision. It is a calming, refreshing color.

Orange
It is associated with autumn and it inspires strong emotions for holidays, home and good things to eat. In bright tones, orange is jovial, cheerful and playful. Deepened, it becomes exotic and exciting. If orange is your choice, you have abundant energy with an eye for structure and organization.

Your social nature finds you surrounded by family and friends. For business it is good for highlighting information on charts and graphs.

What if Too Many color?
"Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways." Oscar Wilde

Thus it is very important for marketer while using colors in design, packaging or advertising and it is similar to not on web world too.

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The list of business management skills presented in this article covers basic points which help understand about how to manage effectively. There are many other points to consider. This article however, presents an overview of the important information.

The skill set required for running a business includes many things like planning, organizing, co-coordinating, etc. Actually the number of skills needed to manage a business are many. However, a greater emphasis is laid on developing some of the important skills. Bringing people together and channelizing their efforts towards a goal is the essence or core of any business activity. The following business management skills list should help in getting an idea about how to run a business successfully.

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List of Business Management Skills

The topic of business management skills is vast and it should ideally cover information about the details about planning, devising solutions, co-coordinating the workforce, motivating the employees, meeting the standards of a certain level, etc. However, the important business management skills discussed in the article should also provide an idea as to how a business needs to be run smoothly. These points should act as guidelines in running a business organization.

The following basic business management skills needed for efficient management should be mastered so as to take care of the smooth operations of a business. No matter how cliched the ideas sound, their underlying thought and effectiveness helps manage a business in a better manner. Let us understand which skills are needed for efficient management, through the following paragraphs.

Planning
It is one of the important manager skills which need to be possessed by a successful entrepreneur / manager. The goal / target set by an organization is the focus of all planning activities. Forecasting and predicting the consequences of a particular step or action should be taken into account. It is therefore an important part of planning. The activity of planning also involves the process of analysis of data / information. Analyzing the information helps in taking decisions. The problems if any, and which may affect the smooth running of a business, need to be given due consideration in the planning process itself. Appropriate solutions for these problems should be devised beforehand in the process of planning. Information on effective manager skills should help in delving deep into this topic.

Communication Skills
Communication skills prove to be of great use, not only for running a business, but in all walks of life. There are many different situations in a business environment where communication skills prove to be useful. Negotiating with the supplier is one such area where good communication helps. Get more information on negotiation skills. The manager / owner has to face employees, business associates, and many people in a work environment. Good communication is therefore, a must-have skill.

Organizing
The workforce needs to be organized in a manner that optimum use of their skills is made. Organizing and co-coordinating the workforce is one of the most important business skills needed. It keeps the employees focused on their goals and enables them to work and proceed in a harmonious manner.

Financial Management
Managing the finance is important from the point of earning profits. Having a good knowledge of the financial statements helps manage the business in a proper manner. After all, finance / money is the fuel that keeps a business running. This Buzzle article on basic management principles regarding finance and other aspects, should provide an overview of the skills needed to manage efficiently.

Logistics
The subject of logistics deals with managing the inventory. It is necessary to arrange for adequate amount of stock required for running a business. Efficient management of this stock also is important. It helps in using the capital required for business in a better manner.

Dealing with Legal Issues
A person who wants to run a business needs to be aware of legal issues which could potentially affect the smooth running of a business. The different subjects covered under this topic include the knowledge of tax requirements, industry regulation, business structures, industrial relations, etc. Staying updated with all the related information helps dodge these legal potholes by fair means.

Ethical Business Practices
Ethical business practices helps a business organization to survive on a long-term basis in the market. The environmental issues need to be taken into account and optimum use of natural resources made in the process of running the business. This particular point may not fit into today's business 'ethics' that are largely profit oriented. However, a person who is looking to continue business on a long term, should find the environmental issues to be important. The study of these management skills for new managers should especially be useful.

All the business management skills listed above, help in dealing with problems that crop up in the process of managing a team or bigger organization. It is possible to develop these skills over time by studying the nature of work and practically applying them to a particular business model.

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WASHINGTON — Behind closed doors, Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, called it “the worst financial crisis in global history, including the Great Depression.”

He said that 12 of the country’s 13 most important financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs, had been on the verge of collapse “within a week or two.” (The apparent exception: JPMorgan Chase.)

Imagining the impact of a Citigroup bankruptcy, he recalled, was “sort of like saying, ‘Well, four out of your five heart ventricles are fine, and the fifth one is lousy.’ ” (The human heart actually has two.)

Mr. Bernanke’s remarks, from a November 2009 interview with government investigators, were among the fresh details in the blow-by-blow chronicle of regulatory negligence and Wall Street recklessness released Thursday by a federal commission.

The report by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission draws on more than 700 interviews, millions of e-mail exchanges and other records that have not previously been disclosed.

While the official 633-page document comes after the Dodd-Frank law tightened up financial regulation, its findings are certain to be pored over for years — and not just by historians.

On Wall Street, analysts were already scouring 1,200 supporting documents the panel released on its Web site; an additional 700 documents and some 300 transcripts of audio interviews are to be posted before the panel’s mandate expires Feb. 13.

The report examined the risky mortgage loans that helped build the housing bubble; the packaging of those loans into exotic securities that were sold to investors; and the heedless placement of giant bets on those investments.

Enabling those developments, the panel found, were a bias toward deregulation by government officials, and mismanagement by financiers who failed to perceive the risks.

The Fed, under Mr. Bernanke’s predecessor, Alan Greenspan, failed to develop mortgage lending standards that could have stemmed the flow of bad mortgages into the financial pipeline, the panel found. “The Federal Reserve was clearly the steward of lending standards in this country,” said one commissioner, John W. Thompson, a technology executive. “They chose not to act.”

Mr. Greenspan declined to comment.

Just as the 10-member commission splintered along partisan lines — with the four Republican members offering two separate dissents — so did the response to the document.

“We certainly applaud the efforts of the commission,” the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said, in remarks echoed by Senator Tim Johnson, Democrat of South Dakota, the new chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.

But Representative Spencer T. Bachus, Republican of Alabama and the new chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said that the panel had “failed to reach even a rough consensus on the causes of the financial crisis” and that the Democratic majority had been “minimizing the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in causing the crisis.”

Those two mortgage finance entities, the main report found, contributed to the 2008 crisis but were not among its chief causes.

It concluded that Fannie and Freddie had loosened underwriting standards, bought and guaranteed riskier loans and increased their purchases of mortgage-backed securities because they were fearful of losing more market share to Wall Street competitors.

The main report said that was not because of the government’s affordable-housing goals, which conservatives like Peter J. Wallison, a Republican commissioner, believed were the primary culprit.

The culpability of the housing finance agencies is likely to influence debate in Congress over the future of housing finance. But the bulk of the report consists of a long, well-known narrative that is largely beyond dispute.

The report offered new details about how Citigroup and the American International Group, which received bailouts, were internally divided as the crisis worsened: some parts of each company continued to invest in housing-related investments even as others pulled away.

It offered new evidence that officials at Citigroup and Merrill Lynch had portrayed mortgage-related investments to investors as being safer than they really were. It noted — Goldman’s denials to the contrary — that “Goldman has been criticized — and sued — for selling its subprime mortgage securities to clients while simultaneously betting against those securities.”

It showed that the Fed and the Treasury Department had been plunged into uncertainty and hesitation after Bear Stearns was sold to JPMorgan Chase in March 2008, which contributed to a series of “inconsistent” bailout-related decisions later that year.

Neither the Fed nor the Treasury commented on the report, nor did most of the financial institutions mentioned in it, though a spokeswoman said Citigroup was “a fundamentally different company today than it was before the crisis.”

Sprinkled throughout the report were vivid quotes from major players.

Sabeth Siddique, a top Fed regulator, described how his 2005 warnings about the surge in “irresponsible loans” had prompted an “ideological turf war” within the Fed — and resistance from bankers who had accused him of “denying the American dream” to potential home borrowers.

The Office of Thrift Supervision, a soon-to-be-closed agency that was supposed to regulate A.I.G., was so outmatched that its former director, John M. Reich, compared it to “a gnat on an elephant.”

Some bankers came across as simply bumbling. E. Stanley O’Neal, chief executive of Merrill Lynch, told the commission about a “dawning awareness” through September 2007 that mortgage securities had been causing disastrous losses at the firm; weeks later, the report noted, he walked away with a severance package worth $161.5 million.

The Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in September 2008, which sent markets into a tailspin and led to a string of costly bailouts and was probably the most dramatic moment of the crisis, was reviewed in depth in the report.

The prominent Wall Street banking lawyer H. Rodgin Cohen, who represented Lehman among other big banks, said he thought the government, in refusing to bail out Lehman, had seemed that it was “playing a game of chicken,” hoping that other institutions would save Lehman.

The commission’s chairman, Phil Angelides, said he hoped the report would help bear witness to a preventable catastrophe. “Some on Wall Street and Washington with a stake in the status quo may be tempted to wipe from memory this crisis or to suggest again that no one could have seen or prevented it,” he said.

But little on Wall Street has changed. One commissioner, Byron S. Georgiou, a Nevada lawyer, said the financial system was “not really very different” today from before the crisis.

“In fact, the concentration of financial assets in the largest commercial and investment banks is really significantly higher today than it was in the run-up to the crisis, as a result of the evisceration of some of the institutions, and the consolidation and merger of others into larger institutions,” he said.

Susanne Craig contributed reporting from New York.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Tuesday warned the future prosperity of the United States is at risk unless it significantly boosts investment in education and scientific research, telling Americans the country is facing a "Sputnik moment" that will define whether it leads or follows on the global stage.

In his annual state of the union address, Obama bluntly told the nation it "lags behind" other countries in academic achievement and said America's "lead has slipped" in vital areas of physical and digital infrastructure.

But Obama also sought to rally Americans by comparing the challenge of competing against emerging economic giants such as China and India to the U.S. space race against the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s.

"Half a century ago, when the Soviets beat us into space with the launch of a satellite called Sputnik, we had no idea how we would beat them to the moon. The science wasn't even there yet. NASA didn't even exist," Obama told a joint session of Congress.

"But after investing in better research and education, we didn't just surpass the Soviets . . . we unleashed a wave of innovation that created new industries and millions of new jobs. This is our generation's Sputnik moment."

Obama's call for targeted spending to boost American competitiveness came in tandem with a broader message of fiscal austerity designed to position himself in the political centre as the U.S. edges closer to the start of the next presidential campaign.

The president proposed a five-year freeze on discretionary federal spending — a belt-tightening plan that would not extend to budget-busting entitlement programs including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, or to national security.

The plan would lower America's $1.3-trillion annual deficit by $400 billion over the next decade, Obama said.

But the president said he would not allow budget cuts to come at the expense of additional funding requests for biomedical research and clean-energy technology — a pet issue for Obama.

The president said he will also seek more money to train math and science teachers, citing statistics showing the U.S. had slipped to ninth in the world in the proportion of young people with college degrees.

"We have to do better," he said. "The future is ours to win, but to get there we can't just stand still."

While the nationally televised address was mostly short on specifics, Obama challenged Congress and the country to embrace a series of long-term goals. They include a proposal to generate 80 per cent of the nation's electricity from clean-energy sources by 2035; to provide access to high-speed rail for 80 per cent of Americans in 25 years and to "deploy the next generation of high-speed wireless coverage" to 98 per cent of the country in five years.

"At stake is whether new jobs and industries take root in this country, or somewhere else. It's whether the hard work and industry of our people is rewarded," he said. "It's whether we sustain the leadership that has made America not just a place on a map, but a light to the world. We are poised for progress."

Obama's speech comes at time of lingering uncertainty about the nation's economic recovery and the health of the U.S. job market, with the unemployment rate stuck at 9.4 per cent.

Despite his sober assessment of America's lack of competitiveness, Obama said he was confident about the country's potential to rebound if lawmakers make the right choices.

"The world has changed. The competition for jobs is real. But this shouldn't discourage us. It should challenge us," he said.

It was Obama's second official state of the union address and his first to a Congress no longer fully controlled by Democrats.

Almost three months after his party endured a midterm election "shellacking" that put Republicans in control of the House of Representatives, Obama's address came as he is enjoying a political rebound in the polls.

A CNN/Opinion Research survey this week put Obama's approval ratings at 55 per cent.

The president's renewed popularity is being credited in large measure to his December tax-cut deal with Republicans — a compromise that angered his Democratic base but was popular among independent voters.

He received near-universal praise for the recent speech he delivered on political civility following the attempted assassination of Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

Obama returned to the themes of his Tucson speech on Tuesday night, in words and symbolism.

The White House's guests for the state of the union included the parents of nine-year-old Christina Taylor Green, the civic-minded girl who was killed during the Tucson rampage.

The Green family and Daniel Hernandez, the 20-year-old political intern credited with saving Giffords' life, were seated with first lady Michelle Obama for the speech.

"There's a reason the tragedy in Tucson gave us pause. Amid all the noise and passions and rancour of our public debate, Tucson reminded us that no matter who we are or where we come from, each of us is a part of something greater — something more consequential than party or political preference," Obama said.

"We are part of the American family. We believe that in a country where every race and faith and point of view can be found, we are still bound together as one people; that we share common hopes and a common creed; that the dreams of a little girl in Tucson are not so different than those of our own children, and that they all deserve the chance to be fulfilled."

While robust political debate is vital to a healthy democracy, Obama said the nation deserves leaders who are not so bound to political dogma they cannot compromise in the national interest.

"New laws will only pass with support from Democrats and Republicans," Obama said.

"We will move forward together, or not at all — for the challenges we face are bigger than party, and bigger than politics."

In a show of solidarity, members of Congress wore black-and-white ribbons to honour Giffords, who is now recovering from her wounds at a rehabilitation facility in Texas.

The Democratic lawmaker's seat in the House chamber sat empty during Obama's speech.

Members of Congress also broke from the decades-old tradition of sitting in partisan blocs for the speech. Instead, Democrat and Republican members of Congress paired up for "dates" and sat next to each other to listen to the president.

The show of bipartisan unity among lawmakers in the House chamber did little to mask the significant political differences that are likely to result in a budget battle this spring between Republicans and the White House.

GOP leaders said proposed spending freeze would make a minimal dent in the federal deficit. And in a symbolic vote ahead of Obama's speech, the Republican-controlled House voted to slash federal spending to levels prior to passage of the $787-billion stimulus bill in 2009.

The problem with Obama's proposal is that "it freezes in place an extraordinary increase in spending that's occurred over the last two years," Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader in the Senate, told reporters.

"So it strikes most of us that the effort by the House of Representatives to get us back to 2008 spending levels would be the direction to go if we really wanted to have an impact on our annual deficit problem."

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How do you fully secure something as big and sprawling as an international airport against a terrorist bombing like the one on Monday at Domodedovo Airport in Moscow?

You cannot, security experts I spoke with on Monday say. Airports are by definition public places requiring relatively free access.

The experts have long contended that serious holes in security at airports have been neglected while most of the effort and money goes into looking for weapons on passengers at checkpoints.

But they have also warned that a sensational incident in one place can lead to widespread overreaction and demands for quick fixes.

“It always does,” said Bruce Schneier, a security technology consultant and author who has long argued that there is no such thing as perfect security, and that pretending otherwise is foolish.

Douglas R. Laird, a former Secret Service agent and onetime head of security for Northwest Airlines who now operates an aviation security consulting firm, Laird & Associates, made much the same case.

“At some point, it needs to be made clear that nothing is 100 percent secure,” he said. “With airports, if you were to build a new terminal from scratch, sure, you could do a better job of anticipating certain security issues.

“But still, we’re talking about public areas,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s an airline terminal, a train station or the front of Macy’s — as long as you have free access, you’re going to have these potential issues.”

One measure already in place that could address threats like the terrorist attack in the Moscow terminal is what the Transportation Security Administration in the United States refers to as a behavioral detection officer program. In the program, plainclothes officers trained in what the agency calls “nonintrusive behavior observation and analysis” mingle with crowds, looking for signs of potential trouble in physical behavior.

The T.S.A. has more than 3,000 behavioral detection officers at 161 of the 450 or so commercial airports in the United States. Usually, they work near checkpoints, but they are also elsewhere in airport terminals.

A spokesman for the agency, Greg Soule, said passengers may notice “unpredictable security measures in all areas of U.S. airports, including before the checkpoint.” He said the T.S.A. was monitoring reports from Moscow and sharing information with international agencies.

Christopher Bidwell, the vice president for security at Airports Council International North America, which represents domestic airports, said airports had regularly assigned local law officers to augment the T.S.A. undercover officers and federal air marshals in terminals.

After the Moscow attack, travelers in the United States will quickly see an increase in random security checks “above and beyond the baseline measures currently in place,” he said, including checks in public areas like baggage claim and ticketing.

Airport terminals operate in two zones, the already secure areas and the public areas. As many news reports since the 2001 terrorist attacks have shown, there are problems even in the secure areas, with poorly supervised access points, as well as inadequate credentialing and monitoring of some airport employees and delivery people.

In the public areas, experts say, behavioral detection can be useful as part of a protection program that also includes sophisticated intelligence gathering.

For most airports, adding physical security to public spaces is as much an engineering issue as a procedural one, as Mr. Laird pointed out. In places like India, where air travel is growing rapidly and many airports are being built or expanded, new designs allow for stricter access to terminals. Often, people without tickets or reservations are diverted from main terminals.

But Joe Brancatelli, the publisher of JoeSentMe.com, a site for business travelers, said, “They’ve merely pushed back the perimeters.” People still have to come to the airport, he said.

While technology for detecting explosives is being improved, the main defense is vigilance, despite its limitations. Behavioral detection is a part of the highly regarded Israeli aviation security system, for example, though the Israeli process is time-consuming and perhaps more invasive than would be acceptable in the United States, where more than 1.5 million people a day pass through the T.S.A. checkpoints.

Behavioral profiling is “a good idea, assuming it’s done right,” said Mr. Schneier, who nevertheless has serious reservations about how it is being done here. “You can go around looking for people who look suspicious, which works great if you actually know what suspicious looks like, rather than just deciding, this guy dresses funny and his food doesn’t smell right.”

Mr. Laird, who retired from the Secret Service in 1989 to become the global head of security at Northwest Airlines, agreed that a cadre of trained behavioral detection officers can add a layer of security in a place like an airline terminal. But he said the quality of training needed to be emphasized as well as the great difficulty of securing any big public place against terrorists, who can simply choose another site.

“Nothing in public is ever going to be anything near 100 percent secure in a free society,” he said. On the other hand, he said, “good, well-trained cops are a little like good lifeguards. You need to have the ability, but what you look for is: what stands out here?”

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More than 654 people killed in attacks over 15 years
More than 654 people have been killed in Moscow bombings and other attacks blamed on terrorists over the past 15 years. Here's a timeline, beginning with the Jan. 24 explosion at Domodedovo airport.

Jan. 24, 2011 -- Bombing, Domodedovo airport international arrivals hall: at least 35 people killed; more than 180 injured.

March 29, 2010 — Double suicide bombings, Moscow subway, during rush hour: 40 killed; more than 100 injured. A Chechen rebel warlord claimed responsibility for the attack.

Nov. 27, 2009 -- Bombing, high-speed Moscow-to-St.Petersburg train (the Nevsky Express): 26 dead; 100 injured. 700 people were on the train.

Aug. 13, 2007 -- Bombing, the Nevsky Express: 60 injured.

Aug. 31, 2004 — Suicide bomber blows herself up outside Rizhskaya subway station: 10 killed; 50 injured. The Islambuli brigades, an Islamist extremist group, claimed responsibility.

Aug. 24, 2004 -- Two female suicide bombers blow themselves up aboard two Russian Tupolev jets that took off from Domodedovo airport: 90 killed.

Feb. 6, 2004 — Suicide bomber, Moscow subway train, rush hour: 41 killed; 134 injured.

Dec. 9, 2003 — Two female suicide bombers, National hotel. 6 killed; 13 injured. Officials said one of the bombs detonated prematurely.

July 5, 2003 -- Two female suicide bombers, open-air rock music festival, Tushino airfield: 16 killed; 60 injured.

Oct. 23-26, 2002 — Hostage-taking, Dubrovka theatre during a performance of Nord-Ost. Chechen rebels took about 850 people hostage. After two days, Russian special forces stormed the theatre: 129 hostages and 41 Chechen fighters were killed, mostly from the effects of a narcotic gas Russian forces used to incapacitate the rebels.

Feb. 5, 2001 — Bombing, Moscow subway, Belorusskaya station: 20 injured.

Aug. 8, 2000 — Bombing, pedestrian tunnel leading to Tverskaya metro station: 13 killed; 90 injured.

Sept. 13, 1999 — Bombing, eight-storey apartment building: 119 killed; 200 injured.

Sept. 9, 1999 — Bombing, nine-storey apartment building: 94 killed; 249 injured. The Russian government blamed Chechen rebels for the Sept. 9 and Sept. 13 attacks, as well as for bombings at two other apartment buildings elswhere in Russia. Others said the government orchestrated the bombings as a pretext for reigniting the war in Chechnya. Russian troops were ordered back to Chechnya at the end of the month.

Aug. 31, 1999 — Bombing, underground Manezh shopping centre, close to the Kremlin: 1 killed; 40 injured.

April 26, 1999 — Bombing, Intourist hotel overlooking Red Square: at least 11 injured.

Jan. 1, 1998 — Bombing, Moscow subway, Tretyakovskaya station. three injured. No one claimed responsibility.

June 11, 1996 -- Bombing, Moscow subway, Serpukhovskaya line: four killed; 12 injured. Officials blamed Chechen separatists, but no one claimed responsibility.



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By JONATHAN WEISMAN
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 President Barack Obama will call for a "responsible" effort to shrink the deficit but won't offer detailed plans on spending and taxes in a State of the Union address Tuesday that will presage the broad themes for political debate through the 2012 election.

The president is expected to call for "shared sacrifice" from both parties, and to reach out to the GOP with a nod to possibly lowering the nation's corporate income-tax rate as part of an overhaul of the corporate-tax code, according to people familiar with speech preparations.

President Obama gives an advance look at what he'll ask of Congress on Tuesday. Video courtesy of Whitehouse.gov.

The speech and the Republican response are likely to frame contrasting philosophies that will drive political discourse for the next two years. Mr. Obama has chosen "competitiveness" and "investment" as terms to guide discussion over how to create jobs, daring Republicans to resist his push for new spending in areas that he will call vital to the nation's future. He will seek to wall off education, infrastructure, science and energy from cuts, in effect making them the ground on which the 2012 campaign is to be fought.

Republicans have chosen House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin to deliver the State of the Union response. Mr. Ryan has outlined a vision of smaller, less-intrusive government, extending to popular programs such as Medicare, which he would turn increasingly over to the private sector.

Since what Mr. Obama described as his party's "shellacking" in November, he has tried to appeal to the political center by moving right. He struck a deal with Republicans on taxes and has been remaking the White House with deal makers from Bill Clinton's White House schooled in bipartisan outreach. He also has reached out to business with pledges to pare regulations and consult more closely on trade, taxes and "competitiveness."

The moves appear to be yielding political results. A slew of new polls have put the president's approval ratings at levels not seen since the pitched partisan battles over Mr. Obama's health-care overhaul began in August 2009.

In his address Tuesday, the president is expected to appeal for national unity and a bipartisan effort to grapple with festering problems, especially job creation and the deficit. He will point to the tax deal and other recent bipartisan successes, and say that momentum from last month's lame-duck session of Congress must not be squandered, officials familiar with the speech say.

The president will try to keep the deficit conversation in broad terms, fearing that detailed proposals would put Republicans, Democrats and Washington interest groups into a defensive crouch before real negotiations can take place, according to those officials. White House officials, for instance, have assured Democratic lawmakers that the president will not explicitly call for cuts in Social Security benefits, though he will say changes are needed to put the program on a solid fiscal footing.

At the same time, Mr. Obama will call on both parties to be prepared to put everything on the table. That means Democrats have to be ready to look at changes to Social Security, and Republicans to consider tax-code changes to increase revenue.

Both the White House and House Republicans are making the budget deficit central to their economic programs.

Republicans want immediate, dramatic cuts to domestic programs in Congress's annual spending bills. "We have to shrink government. We have to cut spending. And we need to really look to the private sector to grow jobs," said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

The White House and a bipartisan group of senators are focusing on restructuring the tax code and entitlement programs such as Social Security, which could have more dramatic impacts on the deficit in the long run but would do little in the short term. White House officials say Republican calls for $100 billion in spending cuts this year would choke off the economic recovery while doing little in the long run to tame the deficit.

"The American people say, don't touch Social Security, don't touch Medicare, don't cut defense. That's 84% of the federal budget," Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D., N.D.). who is retiring when his term ends in 2012, said Sunday on ABC's "This Week." "If you can't touch 84% of the federal budget...you're down to 16% of the budget at a time we're borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we spend."

An administration official said late last week that a tax overhaul was expected to get at least a mention in the address, in the context of improving U.S. competitiveness. The U.S. currently has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the industrialized world, and is one of the few major economies that tax companies' overseas profits when they're brought back home. Mr. Obama and his top economic advisers have expressed interest in cutting rates to improve U.S. investment and exports.

On Friday, Jason Furman, principal deputy director of the National Economic Council, said reducing rates on corporations "could have meaningful benefits, especially in an increasingly global economy where business activity responds to tax rates." He also suggested that the White House will focus on longer-term proposals to redesign the tax system's basic architecture.

Such overtures and a renewed focus on fiscal matters have sparked hope that a comprehensive deal can be reached to reshape the government's finances.

"The president knows full well that we're going to have to cut discretionary spending right away, and Republicans know we've got to focus on structural changes to entitlements," Rep. Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.) said Sunday.

But such an agreement won't be easy. Republicans are on edge over news that Mr. Obama will call for increased "investment" in areas he believes are necessary to keep the nation competitive internationally, such as education, infrastructure, scientific research and renewable energy.

White House officials see no contradiction on spending more in some areas while pursuing some short-term spending cuts and trying to reach a broad deal on taxes and entitlements. Republican plans to immediately cut spending, especially on programs funded by the stimulus law of 2009, would kill programs that have men in hard hats right now, they say.

—John McKinnon contributed to this article.

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The staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission will recommend Friday that the agency adopt tougher rules for how stockbrokers sell investments to clients, Fox Business has learned.

If eventually adopted by the commission, the regulations could make it easier for clients to sue their brokers when an investment goes bad. But critics say new rules could lead to higher investing costs, fewer products and a flood of unnecessary litigation.

According to financial industry and investor advocacy sources, the staff will recommend that brokers be required to put a client's interest first, under a stronger "standard of care" in many sales of investments.

The higher standard is commonly known as "fiduciary duty,” under which a financial advisor acts as a “fiduciary” -- a trusted custodian working foremost on the client’s behalf. It would cover more than 600,000 broker-dealers and millions of their customers.

The recommendations will come in a staff study ordered by Congress as part of the new Dodd-Frank financial regulation reform legislation. The measure also allows the agency to launch a rulemaking on the issue at its discretion.

With potentially billions of dollars of commissions and fees at stake, the provision has triggered an all-out war among Wall Street firms, investor advocates, separately-regulated investment advisors and even insurance brokers who may also peddle investments. In 2009, in the wake of the financial crisis, Wall Street preemptively endorsed tougher sales rules for stockbrokers—the battle is over how tough.

Raising broker sales standards has been a top priority for SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro. According to the SEC’s website, the commission has already penciled in time in Spring to consider propose rules on the issue “as may be appropriate."

One consumer advocate involved in the discussions, Barbara Roper of the Consumer Federation of America, said the recommendations in the study have ''the potential to dramatically alter both the way in which investment advice is delivered and the way in which investment advisers are overseen by regulators."

The rules would not cover all broker sales of stocks, bonds and other investments.  The Dodd-Frank legislation specifically limits any new rules to  "personalized investment advice" that stockbrokers give clients, such as to buy a stock recommended by a firm's research department.

Now when a broker does that, under SEC regulations, the broker only has to make sure that the investment is "suitable" for the client -- a standard that is open to widespread legal interpretation and has been attacked by investor advocates as too weak to protect customers.

Higher standards of duty would not protect an investor who calls a broker and gives him a buy order on a stock that the client has researched independently or is purchasing on a “hot tip” from a buddy  – that would not constitute "personal investment advice" from a broker. 

In effect, the recommendations from the SEC staff would impose a similar standard of care now required for 275,000 separate professional investment advisors whom the SEC regulates as fiduciaries. They usually charge a fee based on the assets they manage for a client, while stockbrokers often are paid by commission. The SEC issued a related study on investment advisors on Wednesday.

Sources say that in the staff recommendations on the study coming Friday, wording will be critical to any later SEC rulemaking---especially the staff’s description and definition of the stronger standard. Supporters of tough standards worry the study could lay the groundwork for loopholes that would allow brokers to avoid new responsibilities.

Wall Street officials are equally nervous. “ ‘Personalized investment advice’…I want them to define that,” said one official close to the process.

Another source close to the process said SEC staff members are expecting considerable scrutiny of their work and have labored to avoid loopholes, though they acknowledge the fine print in final rules will have to be resolved by the agency’s five commissioners after months of hearings, public comment and additional analysis.

The SEC received more than 3,500 comment letters on the study.