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(Reuters) – General Electric Co (GE.N) jumped into the retail deposits business on Tuesday, buying the online bank from life insurer MetLife Inc (MET.N) in a deal that will let GE's capital arm expand its funding base and lessen reliance on wholesale markets.

The speed of the move took some analysts by surprise, as it has only been three weeks since GE said it wanted to start taking bank deposits from consumers.

In the wake of the financial crisis, during which GE had to seek a lifeline from Warren Buffett, GE Capital has been trying to diversify its funding base so that it is not so dependent on commercial paper and bond sales.

"This acquisition gets GE Capital halfway to the stated (funding) goal, much faster than consensus expectations," Sterne Agee analyst Ben Elias said in a research note.

GE Capital is taking on about $7.5 billion in deposits -- just enough to put it in the top 100 banks nationwide, roughly. It tipped its hand clearly earlier this month, when a top executive said the company needed a U.S. retail channel next year.

"We've got it in other parts of the world. We haven't done it in this country. We're going to do that very soon, just to give us more diversification in terms of how we fund the business," GE Capital Chief Executive Mike Neal said at an investor conference earlier this month.

MetLife shares rose 0.8 percent to $31.35 and GE shares fell 0.6 percent to $18.12 at midafternoon Tuesday.

For MetLife, the sale is what St. John's business professor Anthony Sabino described as a "win by subtraction."

The country's largest life insurer has been trying since July to sell MetLife Bank, its online retail arm, which was a small part of its overall business but which also led to bank holding company oversight from the Federal Reserve.

In October the Fed blocked the company from paying a dividend or buying back stock.

"This agreement is a significant step toward MetLife's no longer being a bank holding company," said MetLife CEO Steven Kandarian in a statement. Kandarian and others have talked of a "level playing field," where MetLife is regulated as an insurer and not as a bank.

Financial terms of the deal, which is expected to close in mid-2012, were not disclosed. Sterne Agee's Elias estimated GE paid "several multiples" less than the 300 basis points Capital One (COF.N) paid in buying ING's (ING.AS) U.S. online deposits.

Deutsche Bank was financial adviser to MetLife and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz was legal adviser.

(Reporting By Ben Berkowitz in New York, with Tanya Agrawal in Bangalore; editing by Anil D'Silva, Matthew Lewis, Dave Zimmerman)

NEW ORLEANS – The United States has record supplies of natural gas and plenty of reasons to promote natural-gas powered cars, but so consumers, manufacturers and fuel suppliers haven't shown much interest.
Now, a major natural gas developer's plans to vastly increase the number of truck stops that offer liquid natural gas could help boost its use in the vehicles that burn the most fuel, while promoting its availability to a wider market.
Lots of natural gas is available, if U.S. drivers decide to use it. In just a few years, domestic natural gas supplies have increased by trillions of cubic feet through shale finds, boosting the supply to the point where plans are in place to export part of the overflow.
The growth of natural gas vehicles in the United States so far has been dominated by fleets of buses, taxis, and garbage haulers. Only one natural gas car is commercially produced in the country: the Honda Civic GX, recently renamed the NG. It has sold a grand total of about 13,000 in 13 years of production.
The reasons for the lackluster sales of natural gas cars are many: the fuel is only available at a handful of public stations, tethering the vehicles within a certain distance of a fuel source. And even though the pump price of natural gas can run $1 to $2 less per gallon equivalent than gasoline, natural gas vehicles carry a higher sticker price.
The focus for the natural gas vehicle industry in the United States has been the fuel-guzzlers: commercial vehicles, especially tractor-trailer rigs.
Rich Kolodziej, president of the trade association NGV America, says that makes sense in terms of overall fuel usage. He said a driver who puts 12,000 miles a year on a car at 25 miles to the gallon will use about 500 gallons of gasoline annually. But a diesel-driven 18-wheeler can easily go 120,000 miles a year. At six miles per gallon, that comes to 20,000 gallons.
"If you're trying to reduce foreign imports of oil, you're trying to reduce greenhouse gases and emissions in urban areas, where do you put your effort? You put it on the big vehicles," Kolodziej said.
For reasons of tank space, liquid natural gas is used by commercial trucks, while compressed natural gas is the fuel of choice for cars.
According to the international trade association NGV Global, there are 12.7 million natural gas vehicles in the world, including 6.8 million in the Asia-Pacific rim, 4.2 million in Latin America, 1.4 million in Europe, and 122,000 in Africa.
The U.S. has just 112,000 of them — less than 1 percent of the global total, and less than a tenth of 1 percent of the 253.7 million vehicles in the U.S.
Most of them are in fleets.
"The big reason that they work well for fleets and not the average person on the street is that most fleet vehicles are used for relatively short trips," said John O'Dell, senior editor of Edmunds.com, which follows the vehicle industry. "They go back to the barn in the evening where they have a refueling station that can handle them.
"There is not a really good fueling system in this country," O'Dell added. "You have to have the infrastructure out there to convince people to buy natural gas cars."
Kolodziej said that there are about 180,000 gasoline stations — and only about 1,000 locations to fill up with natural gas.
But that may be changing.
The T. Boone Pickens-backed Clean Energy Fuels Corp. is embarking on a major expansion of natural gas fueling and plans to add liquefied natural gas pumps at 150 truck stops nationwide over the next 24 to 36 months.
"We've mapped out a strategy to cover every major interstate in the domestic United States," said Clean Energy Fuels chief marketing officer James Harger.

Clean Energy currently provides fueling services for over 500 fleets consisting of about 22,000 vehicles, such as transit buses, taxis, shuttle buses, school buses, municipal cars and garbage trucks, Harger said.

Still, Clean Energy has its eyes firmly focused on the long-haul trucking industry with its truck stop expansion plan.

Harger and other natural gas proponents are putting stock in pending congressional legislation that would provide tax credits to cover 80 percent of the cost difference between a liquid natural gas tractor-trailer and the diesel variety. Harger said the five-year bill probably would cost about $1 billion a year. The U.S. spends over $1 billion a day on foreign oil.

"This will help jump-start this industry," he said.

C.R. England, a major refrigerated carrier, recently started using five liquid natural gas-fired tractors for its rigs in southern California. The company has about 4,000 diesel tractors, said Tracy Brown, a company operating director. He said the region was chosen because of the ready availability of dedicated Clean Energy refueling depots. The rigs are being used in the Los Angeles region and on a route to and from Las Vegas, Brown said.

Although he would not reveal what Salt Lake City-based C.R. England paid for the liquid natural gas tractors, he said fuel cost savings could lead to overall savings within a year or two. Depending on diesel prices, the company saves $1.50 to $2 per gallon equivalent on liquid natural gas, he said. At the same time, fuel usage is about the same in equivalent diesel gallons.

"They are much cleaner, they are much quieter," Brown said of the new tractors. "We haven't noticed any power reduction from the diesel engines. We're very pleased with these."

As Clean Energy expands its network of public refueling, "it will be more advantageous to have natural gas vehicles on the road," Brown said.

Honda Motor Co. is expanding sales of its Civic NG. The NG carries a basic sticker price of $26,155, while its gasoline counterpart, the Civic LX, lists at $20,505.

Until this model year, the GX had only been offered as a private vehicle in dealerships in California, Oklahoma, Utah and New York. Sales will be expanded for the next model year to 37 states, mostly to dealers within 20 miles of a public fueling station, said Honda spokeswoman Jessica Fini. For the first time, the car will be advertised nationally and will offer a navigation system and an upgraded audio system.

"We think we are expanding the car at the right time with the expansion in public infrastructure," she said.

Honda's goal is to boost sales from about 1,000 cars annually to about 2,000, Fini added — still a tiny fraction of the 259,000 gasoline-powered Civics that Honda sold in 2010.

Gene Paulsen, an aerospace engineer from Gilbert, Ariz., and his wife are on their second GX. They bought their first one in 2000 when the state offered tax credits for choosing the natural gas version of the Civic. They sold it earlier this year to a California woman.

He said his wife now commutes in a used GX he bought in 2009. They mostly refuel from a costly home refueling appliance, and have added a second fuel tank to drive longer distances.

"It works really well for us," he said. "But the fueling infrastructure isn't very good in Arizona. Until you add more fuel capacity to the thing, you're kind of stuck."

Paulsen said fuel for the GX costs about $1.50 per gallon equivalent, calculating the draw on his home's gas system, the cost of periodically maintaining his $10,000 refueling pump and the power cost for running the pressure pump to fuel the car.

"We wouldn't have done this if it was our only vehicle," Paulsen said.

Today Fox News is reporting that Eric Schmidt promised an iPad killer in six months, based on a comment the Google Executive Chairman made last week to Italian paper Corriere della Sera. This is exactly what Schmidt said. "Noi nei prossimi sei mesi contiamo di mettere sul mercato un tablet di altissima qualitàm," he told the paper. Yes, that's Italian. But, any native English speaker can read that nowhere in there does it say iPad.

Related: Amazon Kindle Fire Review Roundup: You Get What You Pay For


Using our basic Italian, derived from our decent Spanish skills and some Google translate help, we're pretty sure that translates to something like "in the next six months we plan to market a tablet of the highest quality." Considering Google owns the Android operating system, this could mean that Google is working with another hardware company to create a new tablet. It's neither exciting nor surprising that within a year, a new Android something would hit the electronics market.

Related: Amazon Is Changing the Future of Online Shopping

However, Schmidt could have alluded to something a bit more interesting: an iPad-slaughter machine. "Vedrete una concorrenza brutale tra Apple e Android di Google. È il capitalismo." Translation: "You will see a brutal competition between Apple and Google Android," continued Schmidt. "That's capitalism." That sounds harsher than just another Android tablet. Google reserves the Nexus brand for its Android-based smartphones, which is why others have inferred that Schmidt may be talking about a new Nexus offering. This intriguing Nexus tablet has been rumored since April 2010, with the mill feeding the unconfirmed tablet ever since. Schmidt has been known to make crazy promises of late—including Google TVs in every home within six months. (That one sounded particularly ridiculous to us.)

Related: You Probably Won't Want Amazon's Kindle Fire for Christmas

As for the iPad killer part. We've heard that kind of big talk before, particularly with Amazon's Kindle Fire. And with its recession-proof $200 price tag, the Amazon tablet has done a decent job disrupting the Apple-dominated market, claiming a million sales per week. But the death part has yet to be determined. Google's Nexus phones have gotten mixed reviews from the techies, some saying they would forgo the iPhone with others sticking by Apple's devices: The iPhone still dominates.

BEIRUT – Syria's army suspended days of punishing attacks on the restive city of Homs and began withdrawing its tanks Tuesday just as Arab League monitors visited the area, activists and officials said. Huge crowds poured into the streets shortly after the pullback, shouting defiantly that they will not be cowed by the crackdown.
Amateur video showed tens of thousands flooding the streets of the city, which had been under siege for days, to march in a funeral. They carried the open casket overhead with the exposed face of an older man with a white beard.
"Listen Bashar: If you fire bullets, grenades or shells at us, we will not be scared," one person shouted to the crowd through loudspeakers. Many were waving Syria's independence flag, which predates the 1963 ascendancy of President Bashar Assad's Baath party to power.
About 60 Arab League monitors — the first Syria's regime has allowed in during its nine-month crackdown on an anti-government uprising — began work Tuesday. They are there to ensure compliance with the League's plan to halt violence against mostly unarmed, peaceful protesters and the pullback in Homs was the first tangible sign Assad was implementing any of the terms.
After signing on to the plan early last week, Assad's regime had only intensified the violence, rather than easing up, and it was condemned internationally for flouting the agreement. Government troops killed hundreds in just the past week. On Monday, security forces killed at least 42 people, most of them in Homs.
Amateur video released by activists showed residents of Homs' tense Baba Amr district speaking to the Arab monitors.
"We are unarmed people who are dying," one resident shouts to an observer. Seconds later, shooting is heard from a distance as someone else screams: "We are being slaughtered here."
In another exchange, a resident tells a monitor: "You should say what you just told the head of the mission. You said you cannot cross to the other side of the street because of sniper fire."
The observer points to the head of the team and says: "He will make a statement." The resident the repeats his demand, and the monitor, smoking a cigarette, nods in approval.
The British-based activist group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said as the monitors visited Homs, tens of thousands of protesters gathered in some neighborhoods to "reveal the crimes committed by the regime."
Later, the Observatory said some 70,000 protesters tried to enter the tightly secured Clock Square as security force fired tear gas and later live bullets to prevent them from reaching the city's largest square. The Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, said security forces were shooting at protesters trying to reach the central square.
The Arab League plan demands the government remove its security forces and heavy weapons from city streets, start talks with opposition leaders and allow human rights workers and journalists into the country. Before Tuesday's redeployment of at least some tanks, there had been no sign that Assad was implementing any of the terms, much less letting up on his brutal crackdown.
Homs, Syria's third largest city, has a population of 800,000 and is at the epicenter of the revolt against Assad. It is about 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of the capital, Damascus. Many Syrians refer to Homs as the "Capital of the Revolution."
Opposition activist Mohammed Saleh said the heavy bombardment of Homs since Friday stopped in the morning and tanks were seen pulling out. Another Homs-based activist said he saw armored vehicles leaving early on a highway leading to the city of Palmyra to the east. He asked that his name not be made public for fear of retribution.
"Today is calm, unlike pervious days," Saleh said. "The shelling went on for days, but yesterday was terrible."
The British-based Observatory said some army vehicles pulled out of Homs while other relocated in government compounds "where (they) can deploy again within five minutes."
A local official in Homs told The Associated Press that the team of monitors met with Ghassan Abdul-Aal, the governor of Homs province. After the meeting, the monitors headed to several tense districts including Baba Amr and Inshaat, which have witnessed the most intense crackdowns since Friday.
The official later said that most of the monitors headed back to Damascus while three will spend the night in Homs. The official refused to give details about where they observers will stay or what they will do for security reasons.

In Cairo, the head of the Arab League operations room Adnan Issa told reporters the team only visited Homs and met with Abdul-Aal. Asked if Syrian authorities were cooperating, Issa said: "We hope so. The mission will be sending us reports."

An official at the Arab League's operations room said the Sudanese head of the mission to Syria, Gen. Mohamed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi, was leading the team of at least 12 observers to Homs. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to journalists.

Given the intensified crackdown, the opposition sees Syria's agreement to the Arab League plan as a farce, and some even accuse the League of complicity in the killings. Since Syria signed on to the deal on Dec. 19, activists said nearly 300 civilians have been killed. About 150 more died in clashes between army defectors and troops — most of them defectors.

Syria's conflict is becoming increasingly militarized with army defectors mounting armed resistance.

Opponents of Assad doubt the Arab League can budge the autocratic leader at the head of one of the Middle East's most repressive regimes. Syria's top opposition leader Burhan Ghalioun called Sunday for the League to bring the U.N. Security Council into the effort. The U.N. says more than 5,000 people have been killed since March in the political violence.

On Tuesday, security forces shot dead two people in the Damascus suburb of Douma, two in the southern province of Daraa and one in the northwestern province of Idlib, and two in the town of Qusair near the border with Lebanon, according to the Observatory. The LCC said 30 people were killed, including six in Homs.

Also in Homs, the local official said that before dawn, a bomb targeted a gas pipeline in the city, the third such attack within a month. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said the pipeline carries gas from fields east of Homs to a power station in the central province of Hama.

In another development, state-run news agency SANA reported that a student at Damascus University opened fire with a pistol inside a classroom at the medical department killing one student and wounding four. SANA did not give a reason behind the attack adding that security forces were searching for the student who fled.

The Observatory said the student who opened fire was a former anti-regime detainee who had been recently beaten by the pro-regime students, including the one he shot dead.

___

Associated Press writer Albert Aji contributed to this report from Damascus, Syria.

___

Bassem Mroue can be reached on http://twitter.com/bmroue

Both The New York Times and The Washington Post have separate reports today about the widening wealth gap between members of Congress and the people they represent. Almost half of all Congresspeople are millionaires and their median net worth has climbed to $913,000, compared to $100,000 for the rest of America households. According to the Post, that number drops to $725,000 when excluding home equity (and adjusting for inflation), but the same median figure for American families is just $20,500. And that gap has only grown wider in recent years.

Related: GOP Congressman Scraping By on Only $400,000 After Taxes


The biggest reason for the disparity is the sheer cost of running for office, which is both a full-time job and an expensive undertaking. The average successful House race costs $1.4 million to stage (the average Senate campaign is almost $10 million), and candidates are allowed — and often need — to donate as much as they want to their own effort. The costs of advertising and travel make it increasingly difficult for anyone who doesn't already have money to get their name out there. There have also been concerns raised recently about the ability of politicians to profit from their position, both through contacts made and the ability to trade stock based on privileged information.

Related: The Net Worth of Congress Rose 23.6% Since 2008

Even putting aside the questions of influence and corruption, the biggest concern is that those who elected to Congress are more out of touch with the world of their constituents than ever before. How can they be expected to look out for the interest of citizens when the biggest issues facing them — unemployment, health care, wages — are unknown to most of those who are supposed to be looking out for them? Or worse when addressing those issues directly contradicts their own interest, as when millionaires are asked to vote on a "millionaire's tax"? The biggest political movement of the last year, Occupy Wall Street, has been devoted almost exclusively to addressing the gap between rich and poor, but it's hard to see how any change becomes possible when that gap is greatest among those in a position to do something about it.