5 days to go. With the fiscal cliff hanging in the distance, how the focus of the discussion is starting to shift. In todays cover story, the Housing Market is gaining momentum. What firsttime buyers need to know about getting in the game. Plus, the grinch who stole sales. Why Holiday Shopping took a hit this year. And, movie madness. Ticket sales are on track for a record year. Our critic tells us whats worth your watch. Thats all ahead on todays First Business. Youre watching First Business financial news, analysis, and todays investment ideas. Good morning everyone. Its thursday, december 27th. Im chuck coppola. Angela miles has the day off. In todays first look a massive storm hits the northeast again. This time with an icy slap of snow, freezing rain and strong winds. It already took its toll on the Southern Plains and deep south. Creative acccounting at the federal level. With the u. S. Expected to reach its 16. 4 trillion debt ceiling before the end of the year, the Treasury Department will undertake acccounting manuvers to create 200 billion in what treasury secretary Timothy Giethner calls headroom. Call it, in your facebook. An Instagram User has filed what could become a classaction lawsuit over a policy change that would allow instagram to sell ads using a persons name or photo published on the website. Instagram announced it would backtrack on the idea, but eventually wants to come back to users and explain its intentions. The u. S. Government may expand its mortgage Refinancing Program to include borrowers not backed by fannie mae and freddie mac and also include borrowers who owe more than their homes are worth about 22 of all homes with a mortgage. From Department Stores to bookshops to jewelry sellers, a lot of Retail Stocks are dragging around their empty boxes and gift wrap post christmas. Mark sebastian of option pit joins us. Mark, welcome, and what happened to these Retail Stocks . It is just kind of a cacophony of bad things. We have got this fiscal cliff looming, which is scaring retail purchasers, and we have just terrible weather out east, both before and after christmas. This storm is going to be terrible, and Superstorm Sandy had to have depressed sales if you consider what kind of damage was done to new york and new jersey. I was reading about that. The midatlantic and northeast account for 24 of all retail sales in the u. S. That is a huge chunk of sales. Absolutely huge, and that is going to put a big impact on sales. If you are spending your money getting your house fixed up and waiting for the Insurance Company to pay you back, that is absolutely going to affect retail sales. I was looking at some of the companies out there urban outfitters, tiffanys, macys, walmart, target, all down. Did they not see this coming . Were they too optimistic . I think the fiscal cliff made a much bigger difference than people realize. If the average consumer is looking at somewhere between a 500 and 2500 increase in taxes next year, it is going to change their behavior, just like it changed company behaviors when you saw them accelerate their dividends. So, when the government goes and changes behavior, it is going to affect things like retail sales. Quickly mark, the oil market. How is it being affected . We saw a kind of terrorist thing go on in the united arab emirates, and that is what drove up oil today. However, i think thats a shortlived rally. With oil above 90, i think it is a short here. You have fewer people driving, fewer people spending. That is bad for oil. Very good. Mark sebastian of option pit. Thanks very much. Thank you. Paul eggers joins us in the studio today. Paul . Thanks chuck. Good to be here. Meantime in washington, though tax rates on the really rich may be getting all the attention, if there is no fix to an obscure corner of the tax code, millions of middle class americans will pay thousands more to uncle sam. The alternative minimum tax, or amt, is typically paid by just 4 million americans, but no action in washington would mean an additional 30 million americans would fall under the provision. Affected households would then have to pay 3700 more in taxes this year. Cutting this deadline close has practically become an annual holiday tradition for congress the past few years. back in 2010, they passed the amt patch on christmas eve. In 2008 2009, they actually passed it in january and set it retroactively. Uncertainty surrounding the amt has the Internal Revenue service on its toes. The tax agency has warned congress that if no new policy is passed, the irs will need to reprogram its computers, forcing a delay in filings and tax refunds until march of 2013. President obama and members of congress are set to return for one day more of talks to avert spending cuts at the same time tax cuts expire. One alternative being floated congress may let income taxes go up on everyone one tick past the stroke of midnight, then quickly vote to decrease tax rates for most americans back to 2012 levels. Meanwhile, starbucks Ceo Howard Schultz wants his employees to send a message and scrall, come together, on cups for drink orders in the d. C. Area. Its the first time employees have been asked to write anything other than customers names on cups. Former members of a Regulatory Agency are walking the well worn path from washington to wall street. Since june, 9 members of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have taken jobs at Financial Firms including Jpmorgan Chase and Japanese Investment bank nomura, according to the wall street journal. Members of the cftc have been making the transition to help firms intepret changes under the dodd frank reforms passed in 2010. Critics of this revolving door contend exstaffers can use personal connections to pressure regulators into developing more favorable rules for their new employers. The Housing Market continues to show signs of stabilization. Thats according to the latest caseshiller home price index, which reports housing prices slid in october but are up from the same time last year. October home prices slid 0. 1 in the 10 biggest metro areas. However, prices were up 4. 3 from the same time last year. New york and chicago were the only cities where prices took a drop from last year. However, markets that had been struggling to regain strength are now showing signs of life, including phoenix, where prices are up for the 13th straight month. That relative strength in home prices and continued low Interest Rates may bring more home buyers back into real estate in 2013. But even with sales of new and existing homes showing a spike, dont expect a big housing boom like the one we saw just a few years ago. Maurizio fiori is hoping to buy a home in 2013. Hes looking to move his growing family out of their chicago apartment and into their very own home. ive been scouring the internet, and talking to agents and mls and all the sites almost daily. a former trader, fiori holds stakes in a diversified portfolio of successful small businesses, including a wine importing company and a craft brewer. In 2006, before the worst of the financial crisis hit, many banks would have been bending over backwards to lend him lots of money at exotic terms. Today, even though hes willing to put up 3040 of his cash on a down payment, bankers arent exactly lining up to lend to him or to anyone else for that matter. basically, the only good candidates for a loan are people who do not need a loan to begin with. well, unfortunately things have gotten a little tighter in mortgage lending. in his work helping homebuyers find financing, Michael Mcauliffe has seen the mortgage process change dramatically the past few years. Gone are the loose lending requirements and lax regulations of 2006. Today, it is all about tougher standards and more serious oversight of every loan. banks made a big mistake giving out all those loans, and regulators probably werent looking as closely as they should have been. So, now theyre both making sure that the finger doesnt get pointed at them again. to get that loan in the new year, mcauliffe says be honest about what you can afford, save for a large down payment, and dont count on that loan until all the papers are signed. the big thing is, dont do anything to negatively affect that credit score. Theyre going to check your job that day, theyre going to put your credit that day. In fact, theyre going to look at the appraisal to make sure it all makes sense to them. Fiori remains hopeful that even in this tightmoney environment, financing will ultimately come his way in the new year. Mcauliffe adds that while Mortgage Rates have remained below 4 for some time, he sees them climbing higher throughout 2013. Retailers had hoped the extra weekend before christmas would help them recoup from the nearly threeweek trough in sales that followed black friday weekend. In the end, it wasnt enough, and it resulted in the worst yeartoyear drop in sales since 2008. Fiscal cliff talk and unwillingness to empty wallets completely in this uncertainty was what happened. Retailers could learn from this by putting more items on sale during the lull to keep shoppers in stores. The late october superstorm had lingering effects. Sales across the Midatlantic States dropped 3. 9 from a year ago and 1. 4 in the northeast. Those two regions alone account for nearly a quarter of all retail sales in the u. S. Seveneleven, which has embraced hot dogs on rollers and breakfast sandwhiches under heat lamps, is trying to going healthy. Tired of customers buying beer and cigarettes, the conventience store chain has become calorieconscious and offers an under400calorie snack pack of flatbread, cheese, grapes, baby carrots and hummus. By 2015, the chain wants 20 of its sales come from fresh foods. Tech giants are pouncing on the chance to buy patents from eastmankodak. Apple, google, and research in motion are some of the big names that will buy patents from the bankrupt camera and photo company. The deal, worth 525 million, will give those Companies Access to kodaks Digital Imaging patents. After the sale, kodak says it expects to emerge from bankruptcy protection within the first half of next year. Critics are blaming ceos for some of the biggest business blunders of this year. Forbes is out with its list of worst ceos in 2012. Best buy, zynga, and jc penney are just a few Companies Whose corporate chiefs were blamed for falling stock prices and lower sales. Big banks also had a fair share of embarassing moments throughout the course of the year. Barclays and hsbc both lost ceos after an investigation revealed the banks had manipulated libor, a benchmark interest rate, for the benefit of their firms. Still to come, how counterfeit wine may be sneaking its way into your glass. Thats later. But first, will the Box Office Hit the billiondollar record . What movies could stand in the way, after these in the know messages. Wn this just could be a record breaking year at the box office. With just a handful of days left, the 2009 record of more than 10. 5 billion spent at the movies is within reach. With us is Erik Childress of the chicago film critics assoc. Hi erik. Hello. So, what did everyone see last weekend . Last weekend you had a bunch of new openings come up. You had tom cruises latest film, jack reacher, did only about 15. 6 million. One of his lesser openings for the better part of his career. Judd apatows this is 40 made it 12 million. But everyone was still seeing the hobbit, which, even though the number was down, was still very handily at number one. And the guilt trip. How did that do . Not very well at all. Only about 7. 5 million over five days it opened last wednesday. So that is a very disappointing number. So why are we so close to this record . We are very close to the record because we had a lot of event films this year. We had beginnings with the avengers, we had endings with the dark knight rises, and twilight. Skyfall, the new james bond film, was kind of a little bit of both, actually. So we had a lot of big titles come out, and most of them turned out to be very good. So people were going back and back in record numbers. The avengers, dark knight, two of the 10 most successful films of all time. Interesting. All right, what about christmas . That is always a big time for movies to come out. What opened . We had les mis, the adaptation of the broadway musical. It opened to about 18 million. The secondhighest Christmas Day opening of all time behind sherlock holmes, which actually opened on a friday christmas a few years back, so, that actually makes the numbers even more impressive. And Quentin Tarantinos django unchained did about 15 million, which is the third highest Christmas Day opening ever. So people clearly went out and were very interested in these two movies. Very cool. Les mis is one of the most beloved musicals out there. How are fans of the musical going to like this film adaptation . I think they are going to be very pleased with the adaptation. It is a very good film. People who are just general fans of the play i think are going to be very happy with the presentation of it, the actors, and the singing. Anne hathaway is going to win the oscar for best supporting actress, i think that train has already left the station. Very cool. One other thing i should note, i saw it, and i appreciated being able to follow the story a lot better in the film version, and also the lyrics, i could understand the lyrics a little bit better than in a theater. Tom hooper kind of plays the film almost more like an opera more than sort of a musical, there are not a lot of big dance numbers and camera movements. The Anne Hathaway number that everyone is talking about, its just a camera right on her face, and just letting her do the numbers, and that i think is very successful. Thats the beauty of film. You get those closeups. You dont get that on the stage. Absolutely not. What about django unchained . Django unchained is a very entertaining Quentin Tarantino film, sort of a spaghetti western meets blaxploitation film. A western that i think adult males are really going to have a lot of fun with, probably up until when zero dark thirty comes out next month, Kathryn Bigelows film about osama bin laden. So the ladies can go see les mis, and the guys can go see django guys love Quentin Tarantino movies. Its just one of those guilty pleasures. Its more than a guilty pleasure. The guy makes great movies. He really does. Very good. Erik childress of the chicago film critics assoc. Thanks so much. Thank you. Still ahead, counterfeit wine is seeping into the market. What to know before you uncork. Thats next. Wine and holidays seem to go together very, very naturally. But there is a grinch this year, and it has been in the form of a counterfeit ring that has been preying upon investors. With us to explain and go into this subject is craig perman. He runs perman wine selections here in chicago. Greg, welcome. Thank you. So, tell us about this counterfeit ring that is going on and the threat it is for someone who wants to collect and invest in wine. What happened was on some of these smallproduction, high end cult wines, there was one, in particular, ring that you mentioned that was selling wine to collectors that was fake wine, counterfeit wine. And so, there has been a huge reaction in our market, and certainly there are a lot of collectors that have taken a step back and wondered, who am i dealing with, and how do i brought this from happening in the future . And i think the one way to really do that is to first always make sure you are buying from a trusted source. The first thing you should do is go to an auction, look at what is being sold. Those are kind of the focus wines. So first growth bordeaux, some california cults, some of the big names from certain regions like burgundy or barolo, those are the things that you should focus on. Returns of about 12 to 14 from what ive been reading. Is that accurate . It can be. It is really a guessing its annual, too. It is really a guessing game. Because if you told me in 2000, with first growth bordeaux, we saw them coming out at 300, 400 a bottle, and we were like, oh, thats crazy. Then we get to 2005 and now were at 500, 600 a bottle upon release, and were like, oh, thats nuts, its never going to go more than that. And now here we are in 2009, and we are seeing prices come out at 1,000 a bottle. So, it is hard to predict, because each time you see that, the reaction is, theres no way it can go any higher, but the reality is, it probably will. How little can you get into it . Realistically. Realistically, you really have to if you are really going to look at it as a true investment, you really have to go in and start being very careful and buying some more highend things. We are talking wines that are 500 a bottle upon release, 1,000 a bottle upon release, and youre going to want to buy full cases, whether that be a sixpack case or a 12pack case. So, you are looking a lot of times at a minimum investment of 6,000 to 12,000 for a case. It is not an easy thing to get into unless you really kind of have the capital to do so. Terrific. Very good advice. Thank you so much craig perman from perman wine selections. Stay tuned, chart talk is next. Volatility was a big deal in 2011. In 2012, not so much until now. Dan deming of stutland equities joins us this morning for chart talk. Hi dan. Whats happening with the vix . Hey chuck. You are certainly seeing some strength there, some concerns as we roll toward the end of the year with no deal out of washington. You are seeing some vol buyers enter the market on a daily basis now. Even though we have seen the market down the las