Studies challenge wisdom of GOP candidates' plans (AP)

WASHINGTON – Key proposals from the Republican presidential candidates might make for good campaign fodder. But independent analyses raise serious questions about those plans and their ability to cure the nation's ills in two vital areas, the economy and housing.

Consider proposed cuts in taxes and regulation, which nearly every GOP candidate is pushing in the name of creating jobs. The initiatives seem to ignore surveys in which employers cite far bigger impediments to increased hiring, chiefly slack consumer demand.

"Republicans favor tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, but these had no stimulative effect during the George W. Bush administration, and there is no reason to believe that more of them will have any today," writes Bruce Bartlett. He's an economist who worked for Republican congressmen and in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

As for the idea that cutting regulations will lead to significant job growth, Bartlett said in an interview, "It's just nonsense. It's just made up."

Government and industry studies support his view.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which tracks companies' reasons for large layoffs, found that 1,119 layoffs were attributed to government regulations in the first half of this year, while 144,746 were attributed to poor "business demand."

Mainstream economic theory says governments can spur demand, at least somewhat, through stimulus spending. The Republican candidates, however, have labeled President Barack Obama's 2009 stimulus efforts a failure. Instead, most are calling for tax cuts that would primarily benefit high-income people, who are seen as the likeliest job creators.

"I don't care about that," Texas Gov. Rick Perry told The New York Times and CNBC, referring to tax breaks for the rich. "What I care about is them having the dollars to invest in their companies."

Many existing businesses, however, have plenty of unspent cash. The 500 companies that comprise the S&P index have about $800 billion in cash and cash equivalents, the most ever, according to the research firm Birinyi Associates.

The rating firm Moody's says the roughly 1,600 companies it monitors had $1.2 trillion in cash at the end of 2010. That's 11 percent more than a year earlier.

Small businesses rate "poor sales" as their biggest problem, with government regulations ranking second, according to a survey by the National Federation of Independent Businesses. Of the small businesses saying this is not a good time to expand, half cited the poor economy as the chief reason. Thirteen percent named the "political climate."

More small businesses complained about regulation during the administrations of Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, according to an analysis of the federation's data by the liberal Economic Policy Institute.

Such findings notwithstanding, further cuts in taxes and regulations remain popular with GOP voters. A recent Associated Press-GfK poll found that most Democrats and about half of independents think "reducing environmental and other regulations on business" would do little or nothing to create jobs. But only one-third of Republicans felt that way.

The GOP's presidential hopefuls are shaping their economic agendas along those lines.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney says his 59-point plan "seeks to reduce taxes, spending, regulation and government programs."

Businessman Herman Cain would significantly cut taxes for the wealthy with his 9 percent flat tax plan. Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota said in a recent debate, "It's the regulatory burden that costs us $1.8 trillion every year. ... It's jobs that are lost."

The candidates have said little about another national problem: depressed home prices, as well as the high numbers of foreclosures and borrowers who owe more than their houses are worth.

After the Oct. 18 GOP debate in Las Vegas, a center of foreclosure activity, editors of the AOL Real Estate site wrote, "We didn't hear any meaningful solutions to the housing crisis. That's no surprise, considering that housing has so far been a ghost issue in the campaign."

To the degree the candidates addressed housing, they mainly took a hands-off approach. "We need to get government out of the way," Cain said. "It starts with making sure that we can boost this economy and then reform Dodd-Frank," which is a law that regulates Wall Street transactions.

Bachmann, in an answer that mentioned "moms" six times, said foreclosures fall most heavily on women who are "losing their nest for their children and for their family." She said Obama "has failed you on this issue of housing and foreclosures. I will not fail you on this issue." Bachmann offered no specific remedies.

Romney told editors of the Las Vegas Review-Journal: "Don't try and stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom. Allow investors to buy homes, put renters in them, fix the homes up and let it turn around and come back up."

Perry spokesman Mark Miner said the Texas governor's "immediate remedy for housing is to get America working again. ... Creating jobs will address the housing concerns that are impacting communities throughout America."

Bartlett, whose books on tax policy include "The Benefit and the Burden," recently wrote in the New York Times: "People are increasingly concerned about unemployment, but Republicans have nothing to offer them."

The candidates and their supporters dispute this, of course. A series of scheduled debates may give them chances to explain why their proposals would hit the right targets.

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BofA plans 30,000 job cuts; investors underwhelmed (Reuters)

(Reuters) – Bank of America Corp said it is cutting 30,000 jobs in the coming years as it looks to slash annual expenses by $5 billion, but investors were disappointed in the scant new detail the bank provided about its plans.

The bank's chief executive, Brian Moynihan, said Bank of America is focusing for now on cutting costs in consumer banking and is taking steps like combining data centers to reach its target. Many of the job cuts will come from attrition and eliminating positions that are open now, the bank said.

Bank of America's shares have lost more than half their value this year as mortgage litigation and a weakening economy threatened to sap the bank's profits for years.

Media reports last week said the bank could cut as many as 40,000 jobs, and many investors had hoped the bank would announce a dramatic turnaround plan on Monday to show how it is addressing its difficulties.

The Moynihan speech "was pretty underwhelming. They need to address the bigger issues the bank faces," said Jason Ware, equity analyst at Salt Lake City-based Albion Financial Group.

Moynihan was speaking at a Barclays Capital financial services conference in New York, and the bank announced the 30,000 layoff figure in a separate statement later Monday morning.

Bank of America is in the middle of a broad cost-cutting initiative known as New BAC after the company's stock symbol. The first phase aims to reduce expenses by $5 billion by 2014.

The bank is targeting an expense-to-revenue ratio to 55 percent, compared with the first quarter when it was about 57 percent. Bank of America is cutting from roughly $73 billion in annual expenses, excluding interest expenses.

The next phase of cost cutting will focus on corporate and institutional businesses, like commercial lending.

Bank of America built itself through acquisitions over decades and, according to analysts, has not properly integrated systems or closed unnecessary branches. The bank had 5,700 branches nationwide and 287,000 employees as of June 30.

Bank of America has about 50 senior employees reviewing some 150,000 ideas for cutting costs, Moynihan said.

The bank's talk of cost cuts came as U.S. President Barack Obama unveiled a plan to boost employment amid the struggling economy.

Bank of America shares were down 2 cents at $6.96 on Monday afternoon on the New York Stock Exchange.

BOOSTING CAPITAL

Bank of America shares have lost nearly half their value this year amid rising fears the bank will need to sell more shares to boost capital levels.

By many estimates, the bank will need to raise about $50 billion in coming years to meet new global capital requirements, a level the bank says it can reach through earnings and asset sales.

Investors fear mortgage settlements could boost the bank's capital requirements, and that any stock offering would further dilute shareholder equity. The bank's share count has risen from 4 billion in 2007, before the financial crisis peaked, to more than 10 billion this year.

The bank's share price decline was temporarily arrested in late August by a $5 billion investment from billionaire Warren Buffett, who purchased preferred stock and warrants to buy 700 million common shares over the next decade.

The initial news of the Buffett investment sent Bank of America shares soaring more than 20 percent, but they have since retreated to levels seen before the investment.

At the Barclays conference, Moynihan said the bank was not required by regulators to seek outside capital. He also said the Buffett deal was "absolutely the right thing" for the bank to do.

(Reporting by Joe Rauch and Dan Wilchins; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn, John Wallace and Matthew Lewis)

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Rival debt plans in doubt, alternatives sought (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republicans and Democrats rushed to rework rival deficit reduction plans on Wednesday, but with the fate of both proposals heavily in doubt top lawmakers pursued a behind-the-scenes compromise to avert a crippling U.S. debt default.

With the deadline less than a week away, global stock markets fell sharply on growing fears that the two sides will fail to break the stalemate. That would mean the United States would not be able to borrow more money after August 2 and could run out of cash to pay all of its bills.

Even if a deal is reached to raise the $14.3 trillion U.S. debt ceiling, a budget plan that flinches from hefty cuts in the deficit may result in a downgrade of America's top-notch credit rating, which could sow financial chaos worldwide.

Against this backdrop, congressional leaders scrambled to find common ground, but complications surrounding their competing proposals could mean efforts to forge a compromise will go right down to the wire.

The prospect of a quick resolution suffered another blow when a vote on a deficit reduction plan offered by House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, the top Republican in Congress, was pushed back to Thursday from Wednesday amid a mutiny by some fiscal conservatives in his own party as well as stiff opposition from Democrats.

A separate plan crafted by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, also faced a setback on Wednesday when the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said the proposal would cut $2.2 trillion from deficits, about $500 billion less than Democrats had claimed.

Boehner rushed to revise his two-step proposal after a CBO analysis found it would cut spending by $350 billion less than the $1.2 trillion over 10 years he had claimed. Obama opposes it because it would extend borrowing authority only until early next year, risking a rerun of the debt impasse during the 2012 election campaign when the president is seeking a second term.

Amid the political brinkmanship, the two parties have been having ongoing conversations about how to break the impasse, Democratic Senator Kent Conrad said.

"One thing I'm quite confident of is we are not going to default. Leaders on both sides recognize now that that would be a disaster," Conrad said.

But weeks of acrimonious dealings may make it hard to narrow the partisan differences. Republicans control the House and President Barack Obama's Democrats control the Senate.

POTENTIAL FOR COMPROMISE

Signaling a potential for compromise, Reid said when asked if the two plans were the only options: "We can change any one of them very easily." But Reid said every Democratic senator would vote against the current Boehner proposal if it is passed by the House and goes to the Senate.

While Democrats and Republicans publicly were pushing their respective proposals, bipartisan talks quietly continued.

Senate Democratic aides said they hoped that once Boehner's plan is killed -- either by the House or Senate -- then support will grow for Reid's one-step remedy, which Obama backs.

As currently written, Reid's approach would save more than the Republican plan and would extend the debt limit beyond the November 2012 elections. "More people will turn their attention to our bill and give it a second look" and "some version" of it would be put to a vote, a Democratic aide said.

Meanwhile, the gridlock dragged global stocks down on Wednesday, particularly in Europe. Major U.S. exchanges slipped by 1 percent or more on nervousness over unfavorable company news and the faltering debt talks in Washington.

Worried investors shifted funds into traditional safe havens gold and the Swiss franc, which both rose to record highs in dollar terms.

Still, there have been no signs of panic in markets because most investors expect a deal to be struck by the deadline.

Adding to that view, Deven Sharma, president of rating agency Standard & Poor's, told a congressional committee the ratings agency does not think the United States will default on its debt. "Our analysts don't believe they would," he said.

(Additional reporting by Deborah Charles and Donna Smith; Writing by Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Will Dunham)

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Rival debt plans pushed as deadline looms (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Lawmakers were locked in a standoff on Monday over dueling debt plans that offered little prospect for compromise, increasing the threat of a ratings downgrade and national default that could sow chaos in global markets.

Little more than a week before the August 2 deadline to raise the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling, President Barack Obama's Democrats and their Republican rivals pursued separate budget proposals in Congress, with no clear path to bring them together.

The impasse rattled investors worldwide, sending stocks and the dollar down and pushing gold to a record high, but falling far short of the panicky sell-off that some politicians in Washington had feared after weekend talks broke down.

Details emerged of the House of Representatives Republicans' two-stage deficit reduction plan that would start with an initial $1.2 trillion in savings over 10 years. It is sure to be rejected by Obama because it would raise the U.S. debt limit for only a few months, meaning the issue likely would have to be revisited early next year.

Meanwhile, congressional Democrats detailed their competing plan for $2.7 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade but with a debt limit increase that would carry through the November 2012 presidential and congressional elections. Republicans appear unlikely to support this approach.

Republicans control the House and Democrats control the Senate.

Market players warned of a damaging downgrade of the United States' gold-plated AAA rating if the stalemate goes down to the wire.

Neither plan being discussed by lawmakers may be enough to avert a downgrade by ratings agency S&P, which has indicated it wants to see a $4 trillion deficit reduction plan over 10 years. The risk of a lower U.S. credit rating has become the markets' main worry.

Joining a growing chorus of global concern as the world's largest economy showed signs of legislative dysfunction, the International Monetary Fund urged swift U.S. action on its debt to avert broad negative fallout.

Obama and congressional leaders have tried to reassure global markets that the country will be able to service its debt and meet other obligations after August 2, when the United States will run out of money to pay all of its bills.

Ratings agencies have warned that even if Congress raises the debt ceiling and averts a default, they may still strip the United States of its Triple-A credit rating if lawmakers fail to agree on deeper long-term budget cuts.

Republican House Speaker John Boehner's plan would raise the debt limit in stages, forcing Congress to confront the politically painful issue again before the November 2012 election, when Obama is seeking a second term.

Boehner will push for legislation to cut $1.2 trillion in spending over 10 years and provide a short-term, $1 trillion increase in the government's borrowing limit but include no tax increases. Obama has said he opposes a short-term debt limit hike and instead wants about $2.4 trillion in new borrowing authority, which would extend through 2012.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, laid out a $2.7 trillion spending-cut plan that includes large savings from domestic and defense programs to try to break the impasse and would provide enough borrowing authority to meet needs through 2012.

It would include $1.2 trillion in savings that Democrats say Republicans already had agreed to.

"The Republicans are more interested in embarrassing the president than doing what is right for the country," Reid told reporters. "We should not let these extremists dictate the outcome of this debate or the direction of our country. The time for ideological extremism should end."

(Additional reporting by Richard Cowan, Caren Bohan, Alister Bull, Laura MacInnis and Deborah Charles in Washington, Ryan Vlastelica in New York, Emily Kaiser in Singapore, Yoo Choonsik in Seoul; Editing by Will Dunham)

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Lawyer: Elaborate plans made to keep Anthony safe (AP)

By MIKE SCHNEIDER and MATT SEDENSKY, Associated Press Mike Schneider And Matt Sedensky, Associated Press – 14?mins?ago

ORLANDO, Fla. – Casey Anthony's whereabouts for her first week of freedom were a closely guarded secret Monday, known only to a select few as she tries to start a new life after being acquitted of killing her daughter. One of her lawyers says an elaborate plan was made to protect her from people with "the lynch-mob mentality."

Her options for starting a new life could be limited by lawsuits pending against her, the scorn of multitudes who think she was guilty of the killing and a criminal record from her convictions for lying to police. She walked out of jail on Sunday, shortly after midnight.

Her attorney Cheney Mason told NBC's Today Show on Monday that he's confident in Anthony's safety, but declined to answer questions about where she was.

"She's gone, she's safe and elaborate plans had to be made to keep the people away from her," Mason said. "Her life is going to be very difficult for a very long time as long as there are so many people of the lynch-mob mentality."

Asked about how Anthony was paying for her fresh start, Mason replied that many volunteers have offered their help.

Her notoriety could also help her earn money. Experts who have helped other notorious defendants through rough times say she will have opportunities, but it won't be easy for the 25-year-old, who was found not guilty of killing her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee, but convicted of lying to investigators.

In response to a question about whether Anthony planned to cash in on her fame, her lead attorney Jose Baez told Fox News Channel late Sunday that she has "certain rights as an individual in this country." Attorneys planned to handle Anthony's affairs in a "dignified manner," he said.

"If she decides she wants to speak publicly about it, she'll make that decision," he said.

Baez and other attorneys didn't respond Sunday to email and phone messages left by The Associated Press, nor did a lawyer representing her father and mother. And in the Fox News interview, Baez declined to talk about his client's whereabouts or state of mind.

Another former Anthony lawyer, Terry Lenamon, said he had no clue where she was headed, and that probably only a few people close to her knew.

"I wouldn't want anyone to know," he said. "I think she needs to go underground and I think she needs to spend some time to get her life back together."

Anthony's July 5 acquittal shocked and enraged many around the country who had been following the case since Caylee's 2008 disappearance. Anger has spilled onto social media sites and elsewhere. Her legal team said on Friday it had received an emailed death threat.

Anthony did not report her daughter's disappearance for a month and was arrested after telling a string of lies about the case to police. Caylee's remains were found in December 2008 near the home Casey Anthony shared with her parents.

Prosecutors alleged that Anthony suffocated her daughter with duct tape because motherhood interfered with her desire for a carefree life, but her lawyers said the girl drowned in an accident that snowballed out of control. Some of the jurors who acquitted Anthony said they believe she bears some responsibility for her daughter's death but that prosecutors failed to prove that she murdered the child.

Anthony had remained in jail to finish a four-year sentence for lying to investigators. With credit for the nearly three years she'd spent in jail since August 2008 and good behavior, she had only days remaining when she was sentenced July 7.

Her public vilification did not ease with her release from jail. "A baby killer was just set free!" Bree Thornton, 39, shouted as the SUV left the jail.

It won't be impossible for Anthony to get a fresh start, though it will be difficult, said Los Angeles-based attorney Thomas Mesereau. His clients have included the late singer Michael Jackson when he was charged with child molestation and actor Robert Blake when he was charged with murdering his wife.

Anthony could accept requests for paid interviews, or a benefactor may be able to help her in the short term, Mesereau said.

"When you have that degree of celebrity, there is usually somebody who would like to get involved," Mesereau said. "The problem is trusting anyone. People are willing to leak things to the media. They're willing to be paid off for information. It's very difficult to find people whom you can trust."

Casey Anthony's relationship with her parents is strained. During trial, Anthony's defense attorneys argued that her father, George Anthony, molested Casey as a child and covered up Caylee's death. He has denied both claims, and neither has been substantiated.

What is known is that Casey Anthony still faces a slew of legal problems even though the criminal charges have been resolved. She has been sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars by a Texas group that searched for Caylee in the weeks after she was reported missing, and prosecutors are seeking to recoup the cost of their investigation into Caylee's disappearance.

Anthony also is being sued for defamation by a woman named Zenaida Gonzalez who claims she has been harassed and unable to find work after Anthony alleged Caylee was kidnapped by a baby sitter with Gonzalez' name. The woman's attorneys had wanted to depose Anthony before she left jail, but the deposition was rescheduled for October.

Any of those civil cases could put a major dent in any money Anthony receives for writing a book, signing a movie deal or doing interviews. Anthony is broke, and her defense team was paid for with taxpayers' money after $200,000 she received from ABC News was spent.

Several book publishers contacted by The Associated Press said they knew of no memoir that was being shopped around and consider her too tainted to sign a deal.

Anthony could avoid the potential liability of hundreds of thousands of dollars from the lawsuits by filing for bankruptcy, though plaintiffs would probably attempt to keep her on the hook for damages if she signs lucrative deals after filing, said R. Scott Shuker, an Orlando bankruptcy attorney.

An important step in building a new life is getting psychological help to cope with her notoriety, severed family ties and newfound freedom, said attorneys with clients in similar circumstances.

"Everything she has been through, that's more than most people can deal with in a lifetime," said Daniel Meachum, an Atlanta attorney who has represented football player Michael Vick when he was convicted of dog fighting and actor Wesley Snipes when he was convicted of tax evasion.

Media relations expert Marti Mackenzie, who specialized in legal cases, said it's important for Anthony to make some kind of public statement soon. She said a standard news conference is out of the question, but Anthony needs to say she made terrible mistakes, that she is grateful to her defense team and that she has thought about what happened every day of her life in jail.

"In traditional public relations language, it's called feeding the beast," Mackenzie said. "Even if you don't give the beast a full meal, you respond. Because once you're part of media scrutiny ... how it is handled once the case is over will help to set a tone."

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Associated Press writer Curt Anderson in Miami contributed to this report.

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Some worry about nuclear plant evacuation plans (AP)

Retiree Bret Gross of San Clemente loves Southern California weather and the seashore. Yet he's ready for a quick getaway, leaving his car's tank at least half full of gasoline.

Is he worried about earthquakes? Yes. Wildfires? Sure. Floods? Yep.

And then there are those two San Onofre nuclear power reactors five miles down the road. Gross worries that the area cannot be quickly evacuated in a severe nuclear accident.

"Forget the amount of training and plans," he said. "It'll be ugly."

Residents near 12 of 65 U.S. commercial nuclear power sites were interviewed following an Associated Press investigative series that reported population increases of up to 4 1/2 times since 1980 within 10 miles of plant locations.

Those interviewed voiced a mixture of anxiety, confidence and resignation about the safety of reactors. Many doubted they can safely and quickly evacuate in a major accident. Despite the existence of formal evacuation plans, many said they didn't even know where to go. They predicted confusion and panic on crowded roadways.

Some vowed to ignore instructions to take initial shelter at home — a strategy increasingly favored by disaster planners in the face of population expansions. Some residents said they have devised their own emergency plans, intending to ignore official directives.

By law, evacuations must be prepared for areas within about 10 miles of every nuclear plant, but many plans haven't kept up with changing populations, according to the AP investigation.

Also, federal regulators don't set standards for how quickly people must be capable of evacuating. Meanwhile, aging reactors have been operating at higher power, risking larger radioactive releases.

Planning for evacuations falls to local communities and states, all under supervision of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Even the best planning, however, is challenged by the extraordinary growth around many plants. Population more than doubled in evacuation zones of a dozen nuclear sites over three decades, according to AP's analysis. The population within 10 miles of San Onofre ballooned by 283 percent to 98,631 since 1980.

Despite population growth, many residents insisted they are relatively comfortable living near nuclear plants. Many work at a plant or live with someone who does.

Yet even some strong nuclear advocates assumed evacuations would bog down.

South of Miami, the population around the Turkey Point plant quadrupled to 155,118 over the past 30 years. Two miles away in Homestead, retired industrial engineer Clara Waterman Powell said nuclear power is "the way of the future." She said she trusts plant workers, yet she can't imagine an orderly evacuation. "If everybody got in the car and started driving, where would we go?" she asked.

In Fort Calhoun, Neb., about five miles from the nuclear plant with the same name, 86-year-old Feris Stevenson said he doesn't worry much about its safety. To him, it's "just another power plant."

Regarding a possible accident, he added, "Why worry about something you can't do anything about?" He thinks it would be hard to evacuate, especially with the Missouri River flooding areas around the plant. "We've got one major road getting out of here," he said, referring to U.S. Highway 75.

Larry Jones and his wife, Jean, have lived in Blair about three miles from the Fort Calhoun plant for 30 years. "It's always in the back of your mind," she said.

The couple said they are unsettled by the memory of hearing long ago that the plant, which opened in 1973, was not designed to last until now. The AP investigation found that federal regulators have been relaxing safety standards to keep aging reactors within the rules and therefore extend their lives.

Serious weaknesses also were found in evacuation plans, including the failure to test different scenarios involving the weather or the time of day. And evacuation zones have remained frozen at 10 miles since they were established in 1978, before the accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima Dai-ichi in Japan.

Some watchdogs say evacuation standards also are kept lax to keep plants running, as nearby populations swell.

At the two-unit Calvert Cliffs site, population within 10 miles has ballooned by 224 percent since 1980, to 48,843.

Darlene Cocco-Adams, an attorney who lives in Lusby, Md., nine miles from the site, predicted havoc in a nuclear emergency. She said there's just one main road leading out of town, and it sometimes backs up "like New York traffic."

"You couldn't get out of here fast enough," she said.

Many residents living near plants said they regularly receive emergency instructions, usually from the plant operator. Some post them on refrigerators or carefully file them. Others simply toss the document, or stuff it into a drawer and forget about it.

"I just throw it away because we're goners anyway" in a severe accident, said Debra Dominski, 52, who has lived in London, Ark., two miles from the twin reactors of Arkansas One in Russellville, for the past 20 years.

Steven Kerekes, a spokesman for the industry's Nuclear Energy Institute, said "evacuations can work well," with traffic rerouted in a single direction during an emergency.

He said a June survey conducted for NEI found that 81 percent of 1,152 adults living within 10 miles of a nuclear facility said they know what to do in an emergency, with 45 percent "very well informed."

Glenn Cannon, director of emergency management for Pennsylvania, said evacuation is possible. "How quick it is depends on the population you're trying to move and what those road resources are," he said. The state is home to nine operating reactors on five sites, including one unit at the Three Mile Island facility, where the nation's worst nuclear accident occurred in 1979.

Gwen Keenan, bureau chief for preparedness at Florida's emergency agency, acknowledged that evacuations could be complicated by people who flee even though they are told to stay put.

"The roads have the capacity. We have the capacity to get out the word," she said of Florida. "I think the biggest wild card is the behavioral aspect: Will people listen?"

The U.S. nuclear industry's most explosive growth has occurred on the Florida's east coast, around the two-reactor Saint Lucie complex near Fort Pierce, where the 10-mile population of 43,332 in 1980 grew 366 percent to 202,010 in 2010.

Retired clock maker Phil Hollis, of Jensen Beach, Fla., lives six miles from St. Lucie and says he feels little worry.

He thinks he received — but didn't read — emergency instructions mailed by the plant operator.

He's uncertain what route to take in an emergency. "I'd just head west" away from the ocean, he guessed.

Many residents were at a loss to explain why they pay so little attention to planning for a nuclear emergency, including some who should perhaps know better.

Barb Tummel, 48, of Monticello, Minn., drives a school bus and lives within two miles of the Monticello plant, where the 10-mile population rose 314 percent to 58,538 over the past three decades.

Her parents both retired from the plant, and she trusts in its safety. As a driver, she said she knows the city plan for evacuating children from schools in a nuclear accident.

But she wasn't sure how she'd handle an accident when school isn't in session. "I think in the calendar they give out every year, I'm sure there's a page on evacuations. I don't necessarily read all those pages."

And she admitted she has no family plan: "I don't. I should, though."

At Crystal River on Florida's west coast, the population has more than doubled since 1980. Nancy Little Lewis, 53, a real estate broker and advocate of nuclear power, has lived 12 miles away for 17 years and believes it is quite safe.

However, she says there should be some standard for how long evacuation can take and can't imagine following official instructions to stay at home in a major nuclear accident. "I wouldn't do that. We're not talking about a hurricane. We're talking about something much worse," she said.

Others asked, what would be the point of a standard for evacuation times?

"It wouldn't work anyway," said Judith Freed, a psychotherapist in Guilford, Vt., who has lived seven miles from the Vermont Yankee plant for 40 years. She said country roads in that area could not handle an evacuation.

Many residents said they had come up with their own evacuation strategies. Lynn Baldwin, 42, of Soddy-Daisy, Tenn., and her husband live within three miles of the two-unit Sequoyah plant.

She said their family plan is based on typical wind patterns. If it's blowing one way, they meet in Dayton; the other way, at her husband's job in town. "He said, `Go this way if it's blowing that way'" she explained, laughing.

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Donn reported from Boston. Associated Press writers Raquel Maria Dillon in Los Angeles; Matt Sedensky in Miami; Josh Funk in Fort Calhoun, Neb.; Jeannie Nuss in London, Ark.; Amy Forliti in Monticello, Minn.; Bill Kaczor in Tallahassee, Fla.; Eric Tucker in Washington; and Bill Poovey in Soddy-Daisy, Tenn., contributed to this report.

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The AP National Investigative Team can be reached at investigate(at)ap.org

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Toronto, London Stock Exchange abort merger plans (Reuters)

TORONTO (Reuters) – The London and Toronto stock exchanges abandoned plans for a C$3.6 billion merger on Wednesday, as it became clear they would not win enough shareholder support for their transatlantic alliance.

"It is clear that the two-thirds threshold required to approve the merger would not have been achieved," Toronto Stock Exchange operator TMX Group said in a statement.

The London Stock Exchange would have owned 55 percent of the new venture, designed as a powerhouse in resource and energy equity.

(Reporting by Pav Jordan; editing by Janet Guttsman)

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