I’ve already seen Matthew Broderick call in sick so he can ride roller coasters, chase little kids at a museum and frolic on the beach in a Ferris Bueller-like day of revelry - and driving a Honda CRV to get from place to place.

And I’ve already seen the tattoo-rific David Beckham in his undies for H&M’s new ad campaign.

So is there any reason left to tune in to the big game on Sunday night?

Oh right, I guess there is the football. But with more companies than ever uploading their Super Bowl commercials in advance on YouTube and other websites this year, there will be fewer surprises on Sunday night. So will people take a pass on the commercials and actually use that time for a bathroom break?

Seethu Seetharaman, a marketing professor at Washington University, doesn’t think so. He thinks the early releases will just whet people’s appetite and help build excitement leading up to the game. After all, some companies are only putting out teasers or trailers of their ads.

“There is the danger of newness being lost,” he acknowledged.

But one of the most memorable and buzzed-about commercials last year - the kid dressed up as Darth Vader in a Volkswagen ad - was released online in advance of the big game, he noted.

That gets closer to Seetharaman’s main point. He questions the wisdom of companies wasting - err, spending - $3.5 million on a 30-second spot at all when they could get free exposure through a viral, online campaign.

Craig Kaminer, president of the St. Louis-based marketing agency Twist, also emphasized the free part of releasing commercials early on YouTube.

“You can get millions of additional people to see it and it doesn’t cost you anything,” he said. “At the end of the day, advertisers are interested in one thing and that’s getting to the most number of people to spread their message.”

And while some people may have seen some of the commercials before Sunday night, up until then it will have mostly been an individual experience. But during the game, it will be a communal activity with your family and friends, he said.

That is something I can understand. For the first time in many years, I found myself glued to the television at a friend’s Super Bowl party last year. Actually, I alternated between the TV and my iPhone.

I gave myself whiplash as I devoured snarky tweets from my friends - and yes, from the random group of witty people I don’t know who I follow on Twitter - as they dished out their real-time commentary on the ads.

That’s something you can’t recapture the next day.

So I’ll be tuning in on Sunday - with my smartphone at my side.

SIN IS IN

This year is shaping up to be a pretty good year for sin.

At least, that’s what the research firm IBISWorld concludes in a recent report tracking industries that it has assigned to each of the seven deadly sins.

With more disposable income at our fingertips - and with the help of new technologies - IBISWorld said Americans will find more ways to indulge themselves in 2012. Apparently, this will be a bountiful year for envy, lust and sloth. Yippee! But growth will be a bit slower for those who peddle in pride and greed. Boo!

The firm does takes liberties with its labels. For example, I’m sure there are plenty of gun manufacturers out there who would object to being placed into the “wrath” category. But nonetheless, it makes for some colorful reading.

So here’s a quick snapshot:

• Envy: Jewelry store sales are projected to grow 4.5 percent this year.

• Lust: Online dating sales are expected to increase 3.5 percent.

• Sloth: The “do-it-for-me” market of maids, nannies, personal chefs, gardeners and butlers is expected to grow 3.4 percent.

• Gluttony: Fast-food restaurants are expected to grow 2.6 percent.

• Wrath: Gun and ammunition manufacturers are projected to be up 2.3 percent.

• Pride: Tanning salon sales are expected to increase 2 percent.

• Greed: Commercial banking is expected to be up 1.9 percent.

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The Purchase, N.Y.-based company says the charge represents the after-tax portion of a potential settlement in the case. Wall Street had speculated the bill would run about $1.2 billion to $1.8 billion if MasterCard Inc. and rival Visa Inc. settle the suit.

The charge reduced MasterCard’s fourth-quarter profit. The company earned $19 million, or 15 cents per share, on revenue of $1.73 billion. Removing the charge, it says profit came to $4.03 per share,

Analysts were expecting profit of $3.92 per share, on revenue of $1.73 billion.

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The pace of the U.S. economic recovery remains “sluggish” and is likely to slow somewhat this year, said New York Fed President William Dudley. Unemployment is likely to remain “unacceptably high” for some time, he added, while inflation is likely to be below the Fed’s new 2-percent objective for several years.

“Clearly, much work remains to achieve the Fed’s dual mandate of maximum sustainable employment in the context of price stability,” Dudley told reporters in a regular briefing.

The Fed, which has kept interest rates near zero for more than three years, “has done and will continue to do its part in supporting the recovery - but it is not all-powerful,” he added.

“Other complementary policy actions in housing, fiscal policy and structural adjustment or rebalancing of the economy will be essential if we are to achieve the best available recovery.”

Aside from the low rates, the Fed has also bought $2.3 trillion in long-term securities in an unprecedented drive to spur growth and revive the economy after the worst recession in decades. Yet the recovery has been slow and the outlook issued by the Fed this week was bleak, leading the central bank to say it expects to keep rates “exceptionally low” at least through late 2014.

Dudley, a permanent voter on the Fed’s policy-setting committee, added that he expects “moderate” growth this year, and warned the risks are skewed to the downside in part because of Europe’s debt crisis business cards design.

The economy continues to operate with “significant excess slack,” he said, adding: “Inflation has retreated and may be headed down further.”

On Wednesday, Chairman Ben Bernanke said the Fed stood ready to offer more stimulus in the form of bond purchases if inflation remains below 2 percent - a formal target unveiled earlier that day - and if unemployment, now at 8.5 percent, remains high.

The speech by Dudley, a policy dove focused on driving down the high jobless numbers, could add confidence to those who, since the Wednesday meeting, see another round of asset purchases - including mortgage-backed securities - as all but inevitable.

Still, the slow overall recovery has cast some doubt on the U.S. central bank’s far-reaching strategy, with some, including congressional Republicans, warning that the massive quantitative easing efforts over the last few years could crimp the Fed’s ability to tighten policy when the time comes.

The Fed’s ultra easy monetary policy stance, to nurse the recovery, got some support from data on Friday showing U.S. gross domestic product expanded at a 2.8 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter of 2011.

It was a sharp acceleration from the 1.8 percent clip of the prior three months and the quickest pace since the second quarter of 2010. But it was a touch below economist expectations in a Reuters poll for a 3-percent rate, and nearly 2 percentage points were attributed to the build-up in business inventories.

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Loans taken out for the current school year carried an interest rate of 3.4%, thanks to a 2007 law that phased in rate reductions for subsidized Stafford loans to undergraduate students. But the law did not specify the rate after this year. So unless something is done, rates on new loans will revert back to 6.8% — where they were in 2007.

President Obama urged lawmakers in his State of the Union address Tuesday to stop this rate hike from going into effect. He also asked Congress to extend the enhanced Hope Scholarship program, which increased the maximum tax credit to $2,500. And he wants to double the number of federal work-study jobs.

But it remains to be seen whether this deficit-conscious Congress will act, especially since extending the 3.4% rate would cost $5.6 billion a year, according to Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org. All told, Obama’s proposals would total at least $10 billion a year.

While the president has focused on expanding access to college for low- and middle-income children, lawmakers have taken several steps to whittle away at student aid.

5 colleges slashing tuition

Congress has eliminated subsidized loans for graduate students, as well as most discounts. They also cut $8 billion out of the Pell Grant program for low-income students and reduced the income threshold for eligibility for a full Pell Grant.

"[Since] Congress just passed legislation cutting student financial aid funding, it’s unlikely they’ll pass legislation increasing student aid funding," Kantrowitz said.

Raising student loan rates will prove costly, said Lauren Asher, president of the Project on Student Debt. Someone who graduates with $23,000 in debt will pay an additional $4,600 in interest over 10 years.

Two-thirds of college seniors graduating in 2010 had student loan debt, and the average balance was more than $25,000, the project found.

"In this tough economy, people are concerned about the cost of college and the burden of debt to follow," Asher said. 

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With the global economic outlook gloomy at best as Europe struggles with its debt crisis, there’s a sense at the heavily guarded World Economic Forum in the Swiss Alps that free markets are on trial.

There’s a widespread acceptance that more must be done to convince critics that Western capitalism has a future and that it can learn the lessons of its massive failures.

For David Rubenstein, the co-founder and managing director of asset management firm Carlyle Group, leaders must work fast to overcome the current crisis or else different models of capitalism, such as the form practiced in China, may win the day.

“As a result of this recession, that’s lasted longer than anyone predicted and will probably go on for a number more years … we’re gonna have a lot of economic disparities,” said Rubenstein.

“We’ve got to work through these problems, if we don’t do in 3 or 4 years … the game will be over for the type of capitalism that many of us have lived through and thought was the best type,” he added.

His stark appraisal may have been an outlier, but there was a clear defensive posture among many participants on this opening day of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

There were numerous references to the need to innovate, the need to consult with employees and the realization that power in the world is shifting from the west to the east. While the traditional industrial economies of the United States and Europe have limped through the last few years, often from one crisis to another, many economies in Asia and Latin America have been booming.

As Ben Verwaayen, the chief executive of Alcatel-Lucent, said, there’s a “very different view” of capitalism in Brazil.

“This is a very different discussion depending where you are,” Verwaayen said.

Many rejected the suggestion from Sharan Burrow, the general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, that capitalism has lost its “moral compass” and needed to be “reset.” Still, representatives of the business community insisted they were learning from the mistakes that dragged the world into its deepest economic recession since the World War II.

Bank of America’s CEO Brian Moynihan said the excesses of banks in the run-up to the banking crisis of 2008 reflected the economies they were operating in, so it was important that policymakers don’t overreact.

Moynihan, whose bank was forced to back down on plans to start charging a $5 debit card fee after protests by the Occupy movement and others, said banks have “done a lot” to reduce excesses. He also noted that boom and bust cycles are a part of the Western capitalist structure.

Many outside the confines of the Davos conference center disagree, after years of crisis in which hundreds of millions of people have lost their jobs even as top executives have continued to reap huge pay packets.

Davos activists on Wednesday sent aloft big red weather balloons carrying a huge protest banner reading “Hey WEF, Where are the other 6.9999 billion leaders?”

The activists were from the Occupy WEF movement, a small group camping out in igloos here and following in the footsteps of the Occupy Wall Street movement that spread to cities around the world.

Davos is a hard-to-reach place to protest, tucked in the Swiss Alps. Some 2,600 of the world’s most influential people are gathered for the forum this week, amid increasing worries about the global economy and social unrest due to rising income inequalities.

The CEO of accounting giant Deloitte, Joe Echevarria, talked about developing “compassionate capitalism.”

“You’re going to have to deal with regulation _ balancing the need to protect society along with stifling growth,” he told The Associated Press in an interview. “I think that has to manifest itself through the choices that governments and businesses make.”

While the bigwigs debated at Davos, key Greek bondholders were holding closed-door meetings in Paris to discuss how _ and whether _ to continue talks central to resolving Europe’s debt crisis that would forgive 50 percent of Greece’s enormous debt.

Mark Penn, global CEO of the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller, told AP “the whole crisis has raised larger questions about how is capitalism working, how do you redefine fairness in the 21st century?”

Later Wednesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel may chart her course for Europe’s crisis in her keynote speech at the Davos forum.

In an interview with six European newspapers published Wednesday, Merkel drove home the need for reform in debt-troubled eurozone nations instead of spending more to beef up the region’s bailout fund.

Surveys ahead of the meeting showed pessimism among world CEOs and plunging levels of public trust in business and government leaders and concerns that fragility in the U.S. and European economies will bring the whole world’s economy down.

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The filing comes three months after Ameren made deep and widely criticized cuts to its existing efficiency programs, saying they penalized shareholders by not compensating the company for lost energy sales.

The program proposed on Friday would more than double what Ameren Missouri was spending on energy efficiency before the cuts, and promises to save its customers 800 million kilowatt-hours a year, an amount of equal to the energy use of 60,000 homes.

Of course, energy efficiency programs aren’t free — and Ameren wants ratepayers to finance them. From 2013 through the end of 2015, Ameren would collect the cost of implementing the plan through a surcharge on customer bills that would equal a rate increase of a little more than 3 percent, said Warren Wood, the utility’s vice president of legislative and regulatory affairs.

But all of Ameren’s 1.2 million customers will benefit from a reduction in energy use, Wood said.

“This filing aligns the business interests of the utilities and their customers,” he said.

The Public Service Commission has 120 days to review Ameren’s proposal. If approved, it would take effect in January 2013.

The plan is the first filed by St. Louis-based Ameren under the Missouri Energy Efficiency Investment Act. The law, signed by Gov. Jay Nixon in 2009, was designed to encourage reductions in energy use by allowing utilities to earn the same profit on energy efficiency investments that they do on investments in power plants, poles and wires. The PSC, utilities and other groups have spent the past two years debating rules to implement the law.

Ameren spent $70 million on efficiency from 2009 to 2011, helping customers save more than 550 million kilowatt-hours. But the those efforts led to $26.4 million in losses, according to Wood. That amount will grow to $60 million by 2014 — the reason why Ameren killed many of the rebates and other incentives at the end of September to the chagrin of energy efficiency advocates.

Wood explained the problem like this: Every time a customer pays their electric bill, some of the money is used to pay for variable costs like coal and other fuel used to run power plants. Another piece goes to cover fixed costs like poles, wires and substations — infrastructure that’s needed regardless of how many electrons flow through the grid.

When electricity demand declines, so does revenue, including that portion that goes to cover fixed costs. Friday’s proposal would compensate Ameren for that lost revenue while still producing tangible benefits for consumers, he said.

Efficiency and consumer advocates hadn’t read through all of the hundreds of pages that Ameren filed as of Friday afternoon.

While they would welcome an increase in efficiency spending in Ameren’s plan, they said they need to analyze the details before endorsing or opposing the plan.

“Are they seeking to be overcompensated (for efficiency investments)? Are they overreaching?” asked Lewis Mills Jr., Missouri’s Public Counsel. “That’s my biggest concern.”

Rebecca Stanfield of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Chicago office said it’s time for Ameren, regulators, and consumer and environmental groups to make energy efficiency work in Missouri.

“We’ve had three years of positioning and brinksmanship on this issue,” she said. “All of the parties need to recognize that there’s tremendous value in what can be created with these programs. Lets look at the big picture of what we could achieve if they are successful.”

No one disputes that energy efficiency must be a significant part of the state’s energy policy. That includes Ameren, which has identified efficiency as the cheapest way to meet energy demand in the future.

Missouri has long been dependent on relatively cheap coal to meet its electricity needs. But prices for the fuel and cost of hauling it from mines in Wyoming have been increasing. And new environmental regulations aimed at cutting back on air and water pollution from coal-fired power plants are certain to lead to further increases.

The state also continues to lag behind most others when it comes to policies to reduce energy use. The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy ranks Missouri 44th in the nation for energy efficiency.

In Illinois, meanwhile, utilities are increasing spending on energy efficiency programs. That includes Ameren’s sister utility, which sells electricity to customers across much of central and southern Illinois.

Ameren Illinois will spend $78 million this year on discounts and rebates for energy saving lighting and appliances to its 1.2 million electric customers and 800,000 gas customers.

One key difference is that Illinois has an energy efficiency standard. The law requires Ameren and the state’s other investor-owned utility, ComEd, to cut energy use by 25 percent from 2007 levels by 2025.

Without a mandate, Missouri utilities must be willing to aggressively push efficiency programs on their own. How to get them do that has been a contentious issue.

Mills, the main advocate for consumers on utility issues, realizes some Ameren customers may chafe at the idea of seeing bills go up, at least initially, to pay for energy efficiency programs.

But energy efficiency can benefit all consumers — even those who don’t take advantage of rebates and other incentives — by lowering statewide energy use, Mills said. That can help utilities defer or avoid building new power plants or running more expensive plants when electricity demand spikes.

“While it looks like rates are going to be going up,” he said, “they’re going to be going up more if we don’t do this.”

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The National Association of Realtors said on Friday existing home sales increased 5 percent month over month to an annual rate of 4.61 million units.

November’s sales pace was revised down to a 4.39 million-unit pace, previously reported as a 4.42 million-unit rate.

Economists polled by Reuters had expected sales to rise to a 4.65 million-unit sales pace. Sales in December were up 3.6 percent from a year ago. A total of 4.26 million homes were sold in 2011, up 1.7 percent from the prior year.

“A sector of the economy that has been a large weight on growth has started to stabilize over the last few months and we will continue to look for momentum in 2012,” said John Doyle, currency strategist at Tempus Consulting in Washington.

The third straight month of gains in sales added to hopes that a tentative recovery in the housing market was starting to take shape, but progress will be painfully slow given a glut of unsold properties that is weighing down on prices.

Data this week showed single-family home starts rose for a third straight month in December and optimism among builders this month was the highest in four-and-a-half years.

But the sector, responsible for the 2007-09 recession, remains challenged by an oversupply of homes amid an 8.5 percent unemployment rate. In addition, declining prices have left many Americans with homes that are worth less than their mortgages.

But there are tentative signs of improvement. There were 2.38 million unsold homes on the market last month, the fewest since March 2005. That represented a 6.2 months’ supply at December’s sales pace, the lowest since April 2006, and compared to 7.2 months’ supply in November.

However, the inventory of unsold homes tends to decline in winter. A supply of 6 months is generally considered as ideal and anything above indicates further declines in house prices. The median sales price fell 2.5 percent to $164,500 from a year ago.

Sales last month rose across all four regions, with gains in both the multifamily home and single-family home segments.

Single family home sales rose 4.6 percent, while multi-family dwellings advanced 8.7 percent.

But the road to recovery will be bumpy. Distressed properties, foreclosures and short sales which typically occur at deep discounts, accounted for 32 percent of overall sales last month, little changed from November.

A third of pending existing home sales contracts were canceled, the NAR said.

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