Harpoon to raise funds; Verizon donates $100G

Hub beer maker Harpoon will host "Brewed for Boston" nights at its Northern Avenue brewery to raise funds for victims of the Marathon bombings.

On the next three Tuesday nights, the brewery will donate 100 percent of its beer pint and pretzel sales to the One Fund Boston, which was established by Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino to assist families affected by the bomb attacks.

The Brewed for Boston Nights will be held from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. on April 23 and 30, and May 7 in the Harpoon Beer Hall at 360 Northern Ave. Employees from all Harpoon departments will donate their time to work the extended hours.

Admission is free, and local caterers will donate light appetizers for attendees.

The Verizon Foundation today also announced a $100,000 donation to the One Fund Boston and said it would match employees' online contributions to the fund.

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Bombings give Marathon legend Bill Rodgers ‘a reason to run’

Monday's bomb attacks have prompted running legend and four-time Boston Marathon winner Bill Rodgers, who hasn't run the Hub race since 2009, to start lacing up for next year's 26.2-mile race.

"It gives me a reason to run. I wouldn't run a marathon just for the heck of it. I don't feel the need to do it," Rodgers, 65, said. "There's a reason to do it now."

Though he's put 170,000 miles of running on his body over the course of more than 1,000 races over five decades, the Boxboro resident told the Herald today he didn't think twice about the decision.

Rodgers last ran the Boston Marathon in 2009 after a 10-year hiatus. The local racing superstar claimed Marathon victories in 1975, 1978, 1979 and 1980.

Speaking with the Herald before departing for Roanoke, Va., to run this year's Blue Ridge Marathon on Saturday, Rodgers said the tragic attacks have done the "exact opposite" of what the terrorists intended and have united 45 countries in solidarity.

"I think these terrorists want to strike fear into people and hurt and they did that to a degree, but not to a degree that I think they believed they were going to do," he said. "I think the attitude will be untouched (at next year's Marathon), but they will have to do more security because we got to keep our eyes open real good. I'm for that because we want to catch these people."

Rodgers, who just released a memoir called "Marathon Man: My 26.2-Mile Journey from Unknown Grad Student to the Top of the Running World," said his older brother, Charlie, is thinking of running in the Marathon next Patriots Day even though he's never run a marathon.

"When you see the Marathon, it's incredibly inspiring. It's one of the most overused words out there but in this case, it's completely right on," he said. "We have something special here in Boston. We won't let some punks hurt it."

"I only know that all the runners I talk to feel the same — nothing's going to stop them and they want to be here on the next Patriots Day," he added. "They support the B.A.A. and they want to make a statement as American citizens as well."

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State extends tax reprieve due to Marathon bombings

The Department of Revenue said today it will extend the one-week reprieve the agency began Tuesday for taxpayers affected by the Boston Marathon bombings, expanding the IRS' three-month extension to file personal income tax returns, payments and extensions.

"Since most taxpayers use information from their federal tax return to complete state tax forms, we wanted to ensure that we were offering at least the same relief as the IRS," said Commissioner Amy Pitter. "There are two major differences from the IRS — one is that the automatic Massachusetts extension applies to affected individuals outside Suffolk County as well, the other is that our relief extends to many impacted businesses."

Suffolk County residents and all Massachusetts personal income tax filers impacted by the violence will have until July 15 to file any returns, extensions or estimated payments that are normally due April 16. Taxpayers will not need to file any additional forms or get prior authorization from DOR for the three-month extension, officials said.

Business and corporate taxpayers directly impacted by the explosions will also have an additional three months to file returns that were due April 16. These taxpayers will still be required to file their regular withholding and sales/use and meals tax returns, officials said, yet if they are unable to file and/or make payments because of impacts from Monday's bombings, they can seek an abatement for the late filing and late payment penalties.

By law, DOR cannot waive any interest accruing with respect to payments that were due April 16, officials said. This tax filing season, 3.5 million Massachusetts taxpayers are expected to file returns, with more than 94 percent of them being filed electronically.

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Record sale on JFK Street

The $33.15 million price tag for an unassuming commercial building on John F. Kennedy Street speaks to the strength of urban retail and mixed-use properties — and the value of a Harvard Square location.

The sale puts a $1,511-per-square-foot price on the four-story, 20,570-square-foot retail and office building at 39 JFK St.

"In the Boston market, I think you would be hard-pressed to find anything close to that," said Michael d'Hemecourt, president of Boston Realty Advisors, which brokered the sale. "From a pricing perspective, we beat out the Apple store … and the Banana Republic store on Newbury Street."

The Apple building on Boston's Boylston Street traded for $1,221 per square foot in December, while the Banana Republic store building at 28 Newbury St. sold for $1,404 per square foot in December.

"Pricing for urban retail and mixed-use assets at the end of last year and this year is incredibly strong and, quite frankly, stronger than it was in the froth of the 2007 market," d'Hemecourt said. "You have everybody chasing core assets right now."

The JFK Street property was purchased by a Newton company backed by Newton resident Gerald Chan, CEO and chairman of Morningside Group, a private equity and venture capital firm. Chan also is a board member of Hang Lung Group, which is led by his brother and one of the largest real estate companies listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

"They were just aggressive with Harvard Square and liked the asset," d'Hemecourt said. "It shows the strength of the market. It's a fairly small market and assets rarely become available. So when they do, you tend to almost always see record pricing."

Kaplan Test Prep, American Express, CVS, Leo's Place Diner and Whitney's Cafe are the tenants in the fully occupied building.

The sellers were Bruce and Ellen Roy Herzfelder, who purchased the building for $25.75 million in 2008. He ran an unsuccessful campaign for state treasurer in 2002 and cofounded VetCor, a Hingham-based chain of veterinary hospitals. She was state secretary of environmental affairs under Gov. Mitt Romney.

Chan-backed companies also purchased the retail and apartment building at 18-28 JFK St. for $31.7 million in December and two other Harvard Square apartment buildings.     

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Asia stocks up as investors look to G-20 summit

BANGKOK — Asian stock markets posted modest gains Friday, ignoring a raft of disappointing U.S. corporate earnings as officials from the world's biggest economies meet in Washington to search for ways to remedy sluggish global growth.

Officials of the Group of 20 were to wrap up discussions later in the day and issue a statement that is expected to touch on the need for steps to encourage economic growth while avoiding currency devaluations to gain advantages in trade.

The G-20 is composed of the world's major developed countries such as the United States, Japan and Germany and fast-growing developing nations including China, Brazil and India.

Analysts at Credit Agricole CIB in Hong Kong said market sentiment was hurt by the release of some disappointing U.S. economic news. More people applied for unemployment benefits last week and manufacturing slowed in the mid-Atlantic region.

Those reports followed several recent signs of weakness in the economy, including a sharp slowdown in hiring last month and poor retail sales.

"Looking forward ... the focus will likely be any G20 statements on currency manipulation," the bank said in a commentary.

Japan's Nikkei 225 index rose 0.5 percent to 13,285.31. Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose 0.8 percent to 21,677.15. South Korea's Kospi added 0.3 percent to 1,906.07. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.2 percent to 4,935.

In Europe, the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares dropped almost 0.1 percent to close at 6,243.67 on Thursday while Germany's DAX fell 0.4 percent to 7,473.73. The CAC-40 in France ended flat at 3,599.36.

Disappointing earnings from Morgan Stanley, UnitedHealth Group and eBay pushed Wall Street stocks lower. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 0.6 percent to close at 14,537.14. The Standard & Poor's 500 index lost 0.7 percent to 1,541.61. The Nasdaq composite fell 1.2 percent, to 3,166.36.

Benchmark oil for May delivery was up 33 cents to $88.06 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose $1.05, or 1.2 percent, to finish at $87.73 a barrel on the Nymex on Thursday.

In currencies, the euro rose to $1.3067 from $1.3048 late Thursday in New York. The dollar rose to 98.64 from 98.12 yen.

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Follow Pamela Sampson on Twitter at http://twitter.com/pamelasampson

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Experts: Mass. economy won’t sprout in spring

The Bay State could soon hit a "spring stall" when it comes to recovery and growth as federal budget cuts and European economic weakness threaten to choke off job opportunities, experts said yesterday.

"I don't see a whole lot of oomph out there to get job growth in Massachusetts," said Robert Nakosteen, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst's Isenberg School of Management.

Massachusetts lost an estimated 5,500 jobs last month even as the state's unemployment rate dipped a tenth of a point to 6.4 percent, according to the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development.

"There's nothing inherent about spring except this one has the sequester and the payroll tax increase and continuing uncertainty about the debt limit and budget deals," Nakosteen said. "All of those extract a price."

Nakosteen added the state could expect to see "fairly flat" job growth for the duration of the year as residents start to feel the pinch of automatic federal budget cuts, which will also cut unemployment insurance assistance by nearly 13 percent for close to 45,000 residents collecting benefits for more than 26 weeks.

Before March's jobs plunge, Massachusetts had only added 500 jobs in February.

While the state's education and health services, and leisure and hospitality sectors added 2,200 and 300 jobs, respectively, last month, Massachusetts' professional, scientific and business services sector took a big hit — losing 3,400 jobs in March.

"That sector has been growing quite strongly in recent years, fueled by the innovation economy here," said Michael Goodman, a public policy professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, who called March's jobs figures "clearly disappointing."

"The decline in professional and business services is consistent with what one would expect from the kinds of cuts that have been taking place at the federal level," he said.

Northeastern University economist Alan Clayton-Matthews added that unrest in Europe has continued to be "a drag" on the state's economy.

"I expect to see slower job growth over the next several months, but I do not expect to see continued job losses of this magnitude," he said.

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UMass cites Harvard flaw

News that a UMass Amherst graduate student had uncovered significant flaws in an influential paper by two eminent Harvard University economists roiled the profession this week, raising questions about the policies it influences at home and abroad.

Thomas Herndon, a 28-year-old doctoral student in economics, discovered what he saw as glaring omissions in the spreadsheets used for Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff's 2010 study, which had asserted that economic growth slows sharply when government debt exceeds 90 percent of annual economic output.

The study was widely cited by policymakers worldwide, including former Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, to justify cutting spending. So when a working paper by Herndon and two of his professors, Michael Ash and Robert Pollin, pointing out the errors was posted on the UMass Political Economy Research Institute website this week, it quickly went viral.

"It really indicates the profession needs to question its own methods and standards," said Barbara Alexander, an economist and visiting lecturer at Babson College. "Published research needs to be audited and cross-checked, and the data needs to be freely available. ... It's really disturbing because the results in this case have been used to support policies that have been extremely painful for many people in this country and around the world."

In a joint statement, Reinhart and Rogoff said they were "grateful" to Herndon, Ash and Pollin for pointing out a "coding error," but they maintained there is a correlation between high government debt and slow economic growth.

"It is sobering that such an error slipped into one of our papers despite our best efforts to be consistently careful. We will redouble our efforts to avoid such errors in the future," they said. "We do not, however, believe this regrettable slip affects in any significant way the central message of the paper or that in our subsequent work."

Herndon and his professors disagree with that conclusion.

"People argue that spending cuts are a bitter medicine you have to take to get out of a recession," he said, "but we provide strong evidence that disputes that."

Ash, a professor of economics and public policy, said it is "quite likely" that high public debt is not a cause of poor economic performance, but an effect.

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The Ticker

Merrill Lynch fined $250G

Merrill Lynch has been fined $250,000 in connection with improperly selling more than $39 million in unregistered securities, including auction-rate securities to two Massachusetts cooperative banks in violation of federal law, Secretary of the Commonwealth William F. Galvin said.

According to Galvin's complaint, the securities were sold by a Boston branch of Merrill Lynch that did not follow procedures for determining if the banks were qualified and failed to train its personnel on its own policies and procedures

Winthrop Square garage to close

The Boston Redevelopment Authority will close the Winthrop Square Parking Garage indefinitely at midnight after identifying infrastructure issues with the 240 Devonshire St. facility. No vehicles will be allowed to enter the garage after 3 p.m.

THE SHUFFLE

L Acella Construction Corp. of Norwell has promoted Ryan Klebes, left, to the position of senior project manager. Klebes first joined the company in 2003 as a project manager, and was previously an assistant project manager at Lee Kennedy Construction in Boston.

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Poll: Public pessimism on economy is increasing

WASHINGTON — For the third year in a row, the nation's economic recovery has hit a springtime soft spot. Reflecting that weakness, only 1 in 4 Americans now expects his or her own financial situation to improve over the next year, a new Associated Press-GfK poll shows.

The sour mood is undermining support for President Barack Obama's economic stewardship and for government in general.

The poll shows that just 46 percent of Americans approve of Obama's handling of the economy while 52 percent disapprove. That's a negative turn from an even split last September — ahead of Obama's November re-election victory — when 49 percent approved and 48 percent disapproved.

Just 7 percent of Americans said they trust the government in Washington to do what is right "just about always," the AP-GfK poll found. Fourteen percent trust it "most" of the time and two-thirds trust the federal government just "some of the time"; 11 percent say they never do.

The downbeat public attitudes registered in the survey coincide with several dour economic reports showing recent slowdowns in gains in hiring, consumer retail spending, manufacturing activity and economic growth. Automatic government spending cuts, which are starting to kick in, also may be contributing to the current sluggishness and increased wariness on the part of both shoppers and employers.

Overall, 25 percent of those in the poll describe the nation's economy as good, 59 percent as poor — similar to a January AP-GfK poll.

Respondents split on whether this was a "good time" to make major purchases such as furniture and electronic devices, with 31 percent agreeing it was, 38 percent calling it a "bad time" and 25 percent remaining neutral.

The economy's recovery from the severe 2007-2009 recession has been slow and uneven. Even so, most economic forecasts see continued economic growth ahead, even if it is sluggish and accompanied by only slowly improving levels of joblessness. Another recession in the near future is not being forecast.

In the new poll, few say they saw much improvement in the economy in the last month. Just 21 percent say things have gotten better, 17 percent say they've gotten worse and 60 percent thought the economy "stayed about the same." And the public is split on whether things will get better anytime soon, with 31 percent saying the national economy will improve in the next year, 33 percent saying it will hold steady and 33 percent saying it will get worse. Further, about 4 in 10 expect the nation's unemployment rate to climb in the next year.

And the public's outlook for its own financial future is at its worst point in three years. Just 26 percent think their household economic well-being will improve over the next year, 50 percent think it will stay the same and 22 percent expect it to worsen.

About 27 percent of those with incomes under $50,000 are the most likely to expect things for them personally to get worse in the next year compared with fewer than 2 in 10 among those with higher incomes.

Democrats, who typically rate the economy better under the present Democratic president than do Republicans, have become less optimistic about their financial prospects since January. Then, 41 percent of Democrats thought their finances would improve in the next year while only 30 percent feel that way now.

Jeremy Hammond, 33, of Queensbury, N.Y., a Web programmer, says Congress should focus on "the incredible debt and lack of spending control." For instance, he said, it's absurd for Congress to try to force the Postal Service to continue Saturday mail delivery — an effort that has so far failed — when the agency says, "We can't afford it.' Hammond, who considers himself a political independent, said he voted for Obama in 2008 but not in 2012.

Obama's overall job approval in the poll is at its lowest point since his re-election, at 50 percent, with 47 percent disapproving. His approval among Republicans is just 10 percent; among independents, 49 percent disapprove.

But, if it's any solace to the president and his supporters, Congress fared even worse. Thirty-seven percent approve of the performance of congressional Democrats, while 57 percent disapprove. For congressional Republicans, 27 percent approved of their performance and 67 percent disapproved.

The Associated Press-GfK Poll was conducted April 11-15 by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Corporate Communications. It involved landline and cellphone interviews with 1,004 adults nationwide. Results for the full sample have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.9 percentage points. It is larger for subgroups.

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AP News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius and writer Charles Babington contributed to this report.

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Follow Tom Raum on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tomraum

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Online:

http://www.ap-gfkpoll.com

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Reports: Boeing Dreamliner could fly next month

WASHINGTON — Published reports say Boeing's grounded 787 jetliners could soon be flying again.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Federal Aviation Administration is set to approve Boeing's fix for the ion-lithium batteries. The 787 Dreamliner has been grounded since mid-January because of smoldering batteries that in one case caused a serious fire.

The Journal says the FAA is expected to announce Friday that Boeing's redesigned batteries are safe. The fix includes more heat insulation and a battery box designed to vent any hot gases from the batteries outside the planes.

There was no immediate comment from the FAA and a Boeing spokesman declined to comment on the report.

The New York Times, which also reported the development, says the aircraft could be back in service next month.

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