(07-13) 07:13 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) —

Consumers put away their wallets in June, sending retail sales crashing by the sharpest amount in nearly two years.

The Commerce Department reported Friday that retail sales fell by 0.9 percent last month, the biggest drop since August 2005. Demand for autos, furniture and building supplies all plunged.

The drop was much bigger than the flat reading that economists had been expecting. It raised new worries about consumer spending, which is closely watched because it accounts for two-thirds of total economic activity.

But in other economic news, the government reported that inventories held by businesses on shelves and backlots rose by 0.5 percent in May. This was a better-than-expected increase that provided support to the view that inventory rebuilding will help lift economic growth in coming months, offsetting the adverse effects of a sharp fall in housing activity.

The 0.5 percent rise in inventories in May surpassed the 0.3 percent increase analysts had been expecting and was the strongest performance in nine months.

Economists said the weaker-than-expected retail sales report called into question Thursday’s big stock market surge, suggesting that investors were overly enthusiastic about an earlier report on sales by the nation’s largest retail chains.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest retailer, posted better-than-expected results, which sent the stock market surging with the Dow Jones industrial average climbing by 283.86 points Thursday, its biggest one-day increase in more than four years.

Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics, said that he believed the growth in consumer spending will keep slowing in the months to come, in part because higher gasoline prices are crimping consumers’ ability to spend in other areas.

Economists still believe that the economy is rebounding after a lackluster start to the year. They are predicting that overall growth, as measured by the gross domestic product, will come in at a rate of 3 percent or better in the just completed April-to-June quarter, a rebound that will be heavily influenced by a rebuilding in inventories after companies slashed inventory growth in the first three months of the year.

Economic growth, as measured by the gross domestic product, slowed to a dismal 0.7 percent rate in the first three months of the year, the weakest performance in more than four years.

But if the consumer falters, those optimistic forecasts of a rebound could be called into question. Analysts are worried that a relentless rise in gasoline prices and a slumping housing market could trigger a slowdown in spending.

In a new reading on consumer sentiment, the RBC Cash Index released Friday showed that confidence slid in early July to 76.1, the lowest reading since last August.

The 0.9 percent drop in June sales reflected a 2.9 percent fall in sales of autos and auto parts as Detroit continues to struggle with slumping demand for its sport utility vehicles in the face of rising gasoline prices.

In a sign of the weakness in the housing market, sales at furniture stores were down 3 percent last month, the biggest setback since February 2003, and sales at hardware stores fell by 2.3 percent.

Sales at specialty clothing stores fell by 1.4 percent while department stores saw sales fell by 1 percent. A broader category which includes such traditional department stores and big chains such as Wal-Mart posted an increase of 0.3 percent in June.

Sales at gasoline service stations dropped by 1.1 percent, a decline that was attributed to a temporary fall in gasoline prices during the month.

Excluding the big decline in auto sales, retail sales would still have been weak, falling by 0.4 percent, the poorest showing in this category since last September.

(07-13) 06:54 PDT VIENNA, Austria (AP) —

Oil prices rose slightly Friday, with prices gaining support from an International Energy Agency report saying global energy consumption would increase next year.

The agency also predicted mixed global refinery performance for the rest of the summer.

Light, sweet crude for August delivery advanced 9 cents to $72.59 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange by midday in Europe. The contract settled Thursday at $72.50 a barrel, down 6 cents after dropping sharply from highs hit early in the session.

August Brent gained 14 cents to fetch $76.54 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange in London. Vienna’s PVM Oil Associates noted “two small platforms in the North Sea that have reportedly stopped producing” as helping to underpin Brent prices.

The report from the IEA Д the developed countries’ energy watchdog Д noted that global energy consumption will likely rise at its fastest clip in recent years in 2008 but high oil prices persisting above $70 a barrel may steadily eat away at demand. The agency forecast world oil demand growth next year at 2.5 percent Д 2.2 million barrels a day, based on expectations for a colder winter in the U.S. and Europe and robust industrial demand in China and the Middle East.

The Paris-based agency also forecast rising global refinery runs this summer Д with possible glitches in the U.S.

It predicted global refinery runs would reach 74.2 million barrels a day in July and peak the following month at 75.2 million barrels a day, assuming U.S refinery problems ease. But the agency warned that “North American crude throughput remains constrained by the large number of refineries running at less than full capacity due to operational problems.”

News that several refineries were restarting shuttered operations were expected to keep gasoline prices in check.

Analysts say the July 1 closure of a refinery in Coffeyville, Kansas, due to flooding, and the shutdown this week of a huge piece of oil processing equipment at a BP PLC refinery in Whiting, Indiana, sent prices in the Midwest and Plains states sharply higher, boosting the national average.

But BP has said its 250,000 barrel-per-day unit would be up and running by the weekend, and refinery utilization rates rose last week, according to Wednesday’s inventory report from the Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration.

Energy futures rose to 10-month highs after another weekly EIA report in late June showed gasoline inventories dropped when analysts had expected a gain. Gas inventories and refinery utilization levels have grown in the two weeks since, but that has done little to kill the rally.

Nymex heating oil prices were essentially flat at $2.0998 a gallon, and natural gas futures gained 6.3 cents to $6.560 per 1,000 cubic feet.

Harry Potter ‘Wrockers’ Conjure Musical Magic Garage Bands Take Harry to Heart By RACHEL HUMPHRIES
ABC NEWS Business Unit

July 13, 2007

As millions of Harry Potter fans flock to movie theaters and bookstores this month, a smaller — but just as devoted — group of enthusiasts is hitting libraries, doughnut shops and house parties to hear a new genre of music.

Meet Harry and the Potters, Draco and the Malfoys and the Hungarian Horntails, three bands who are touring venues across the country bringing their own style of “wrock” — that’s wizard rock — to a generation that has grown up reading about the magical world of wands, spells and dragons.

For the last five years, brothers Paul and Joe DeGeorge have dressed in the full V-neck sweater and maroon and gold tie fashion of wizard-school Hogwarts and rocked local venues as Harry and the Potters.

Admittedly, their lyrical musings for songs like “Save Ginny Weasley,” “Wizard Chess” and “Voldemort Can’t Stop the Rock” come from their love of the popular books by J.K. Rowling. But when the DeGeorge brothers couldn’t agree on who would get to “play” Harry in the band, both citing a self-proclaimed resemblance to the fictional character, the two conjured up a magical plot of their own.

“Harry Potter travels through time and starts a band with himself,” said Joe. “I play Harry Potter in year four [of school] and my brother is Harry Potter from year seven.”

Seem logical? Maybe not, but the concept of time travel does play off a theme from Rowling’s books, and perhaps more importantly it allows both 28-year-old Paul and 20-year-old Joe to dress up like their favorite wizard hero. An idea perfectly fitting, considering their songs expressing the angst of “snogging” with love interest Cho Chang, and mysterious Christmas presents — “I got a mysterious gift from my dead dad / It was an invisibility cloak — how rad!”– are sung from the perspective of Harry Potter himself.

The songs’ details won’t be lost on their audiences. More than 325 million Harry Potter books, in 65 different languages, have been printed worldwide and you can be sure the band’s fans are avid readers. The frenzy has taken a firm hold on children, teens and adults alike, and this band doesn’t discriminate. Harry and the Potters shows are open to all ages, with many performances held at local libraries. Kids are some of their most unabashed fans.

“I remember a bunch of 6-year-olds head-banging and doing the best primal dance moves they could muster up,” Paul recounts of one show. “Being in a band that can bring that out in people pumps me up a ton.”

Jesse Farrell, a friend who is touring with the band managing equipment and merchandise, can attest to Harry and the Potters’ magical effect.

“They don’t get chased around,” Farrell said, “but when they roll up in Harry Potter outfits & you’ve got hundreds of teenage girls screaming.”

Harry and the Potters said 600 people turned out for a recent show in Portland, Ore.

The band has caused such a stir in the cauldron of the Harry Potter craze that it’s even sparked the creation of “rival” band Draco and the Malfoys, appropriately named after Harry Potter’s antagonist Draco Malfoy.

Band members and half-brothers Brian Ross and Bradley Mehlenbacher admit that their band was originally conceived to parody Harry and the Potters, who were performing at a local house party. But their Slytherin-themed costumes (green-striped ties), and anti-Potter lyrics — “You may have freed our house elf, and brought doubt to our family name/ but your parents still got toasted by a big, green, glowing flame” — caught on, and another Harry Potter-themed garage band was born.

Their love for the Harry Potter book series is no less than that of the DeGeorge brothers, but Brian and Bradley seem to better recognize the absurdity of the bands, even mocking the idea that Paul and Joe represent two differently aged versions of the popular wizard.

“We look like nothing like Draco Malfoy, and are clearly too old to be going to Hogwarts,” said Brian, 32, of he and his brother Bradley, soon to be 27. “So we say that we’re Draco from years 19 and 15 at Hogwarts.”

All those Potter fans out there know that Hogwarts is only a seven-year school.

Ross contends that the rivalry between the two bands is all for show. In fact, the Potters and the Malfoys are touring together for a month this summer and often collaborate on albums. It’s a catchy concept, two bands portraying the most beloved and hated characters in the Harry Potter series, both celebrating their passion for the fictional wizard world with catchy tunes and kid-friendly rock concerts.

Both bands usually charge $5 to $10 for tickets to their shows, though some performances are free. Like so many other indie bands hoping to make it big, both have put their songs on Apple’s iTunes for download and have created MySpace pages.

To say that J.K. Rowling is their hero is an understatement. Paul DeGeorge would love the opportunity to meet the famed author because, he explains, “it would be like meeting God in a way, she’s the creator of it all.”

A creator, in a sense, she is. Rowling’s books have turned the Harry Potter franchise into an empire, spawning feature films, video games, toys and even wizard-themed snack food. Kids, teens and adults are packing into theaters and bookstores, for screenings of the fifth movie and to anxiously await the release of the seventh, and final, book of the series. Perhaps it was only a matter of time before Potter-themed bands emerged.

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