Harold Maass of The Week The Best of Today's Business

NEWS AT A GLANCE

FDIC looks to raise reserves as banks teeter

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is looking to shore up its finances to handle an expected glut of bank failures. The FDIC's options include borrowing from the Treasury Department, The Wall Street Journal reported, for the first time since the early 1990s, at the end of the savings-and-loan scandal. The money would be repaid. (Reuters) The FDIC said yesterday that its fund to cover bank deposits fell to $45.2 billion in June, from $52.8 billion in March, and is lower now due to the federal takeover of IndyMac. (CNNMoney.com) There are now 117 banks on the FDIC's "problem list." Things are bad for banks, said Michael Heller of rating firm Veribanc, "But is it panic time like in the late '80s and early '90s? No way." (Los Angeles Times)

Heineken profits despite rising costs

Dutch brewing giant Heineken reported a 35 percent rise in first-half profit, to $598 million, as the brewer raised prices, cut costs, and acquired half of the brands of the broken-up Scottish & Newcastle. (MarketWatch) Costs, including ingredients and packaging materials, rose 15 percent in the period, and dropping consumer confidence and European smoking bans hit overall beer sales. But Heineken said demand remains strong for pricier beers like its flagship brand. (Reuters) "Heineken is managing to pass on raw-material costs, which is important," said analyst Nico van Geest at Keijser Securities NV in Amsterdam. (Bloomberg)

China Mobile profit, subscriber base rises

China Mobile, the world's largest wireless carrier by subscribers, reported a 51 percent rise in quarterly profit, to $4.48 billion, beating expectations. China Mobile and its new rival, China Unicom, are aggressively competing for new customers in rural China. (Reuters) As of June, China Mobile had 415 million of China's 590 million wireless customers. Analysts say China's wireless sector's growth depends on whether the government develops 3G phone infrastructure, and on how it revamps the telecom market. (AP in Forbes.com) Also in China, PetroChina -- the world's second-largest company, after Exxon Mobil -- reported a 35 percent drop in first-half profit, to $7.8 billion, as rising refining costs and price caps offset record oil prices. (Bloomberg)

The trouble with wind power

Clean energy, such as that produced by wind turbines, is getting easier to produce. But its dirty secret is that production isn't the problem -- getting it to market on the aging U.S. power grid is. Today's grid is based on a 100-year-old plan that energy companies came up with to prop one another up; it now has about 500 owners. There is great potential for wind generation in the Great Plains, experts say, but there is no good way, currently, to get that power to heavily populated areas that need it. If you think of the grid as a network of county roads and city streets, "we need an interstate transmission superhighway system," said Federal Energy Regulatory Commission member Suedeen G. Kelly. (The New York Times)

BEST COLUMNS OF THE DAY

The deceptive benefits of the reverse mortgage

On its surface, "the reverse mortgage sounds like a pretty sweet deal," says Fortune's Eugenia Levenson in CNNMoney.com. With these once-marginal, now-popular products for homeowners 62 and older, you don't make any loan payments until you move, or die, and you won't lose any money if your house is worth less than what you owe. But reverse mortgages can actually be a very expensive way to borrow. First there's the "avalanche of up-front charges," and while basic rates are lower than for home equity loans, reverse mortgages are compounding "rising debt" loans. If you qualify, you're probably better off with a regular home-equity loan, or you can sell your house and "trade down or rent."

Credit to credit unions

Credit unions have "a kind of sleepy, backwater image," says Brett Arends in The Wall Street Journal. But they actually offer "some surprisingly good deals." Since they don't have to make profits for outside shareholders or spend heavily on marketing, and probably don't "pay their chief executive $10 million while writing off billions in subprime loans," credit unions often offer lower loan rates and higher deposit rates than commercial banks. If you're interested , look around for credit unions you can join -- most have membership restrictions -- look to see if they're insured by the FDIC-equivalent NCUA, and look at what they offer. You can always "cherry pick" services, like "leaving your checking account at Greedy Bank, Inc."

GOOD DAY FOR: Disappointing Barbie, after a California jury awarded Mattel between $40 million and $100 million in its copyright infringement lawsuit against the maker of Bratz dolls, MGA Entertainment. Mattel had sought a ruinous $2 billion. The jury decided that MGA had not willfully infringed on Mattel's copyright, and so awarded no punitive damages. Bratz had taken market share from Mattel's Barbie. (Reuters)

BAD DAY FOR: Average Joe, after Starbucks rolled out the first of its $11,000 Clover coffee machines at 10 Seattle stores. Starbucks bought Clover-maker The Coffee Equipment Co. in April, acquiring the exclusive right to use the complex, cup-at-a-time brewing machine. Independent coffee shops were miffed that Starbucks isn't selling the machine outside the company. (AP in CNNMoney.com)

NOTED: ConocoPhillips is exiting the gas station business, selling its remaining 600 stations to Seattle-based PetroSun West LLC, The Wall Street Journal reported. Oil companies are leaving the low-margin gasoline business, often for oil exploration. But Conoco, the No. 3 U.S. oil firm, will still refine oil and sell the gasoline wholesale. PetroSun plans to add food, financial services, and dry cleaning to its new gas stations. (MarketWatch)

This column was written by Peter Weber and edited by Harold Maass of TheWeekDaily.com.