"Great Rotation"- A Wall Street fairy tale?

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street's current jubilant narrative is that a rush into stocks by small investors has sparked a "great rotation" out of bonds and into equities that will power the bull market to new heights.

That sounds good, but there's a snag: The evidence for this is a few weeks of bullish fund flows that are hardly unusual for January.

Late-stage bull markets are typically marked by an influx of small investors coming late to the party - such as when your waiter starts giving you stock tips. For that to happen you need a good story. The "great rotation," with its monumental tone, is the perfect narrative to make you feel like you're missing out.

Even if something approaching a "great rotation" has begun, it is not necessarily bullish for markets. Those who think they are coming early to the party may actually be arriving late.

Investors pumped $20.7 billion into stocks in the first four weeks of the year, the strongest four-week run since April 2000, according to Lipper. But that pales in comparison with the $410 billion yanked from those funds since the start of 2008.

"I'm not sure you want to take a couple of weeks and extrapolate it into whatever trend you want," said Tobias Levkovich, chief U.S. equity strategist at Citigroup. "We have had instances where equity flows have picked up in the last two, three, four years when markets have picked up. They've generally not been signals of a continuation of that trend."

The S&P 500 rose 5 percent in January, its best month since October 2011 and its best January since 1997, driving speculation that retail investors were flooding back into the stock market.

Heading into another busy week of earnings, the equity market is knocking on the door of all-time highs due to positive sentiment in stocks, and that can't be ignored entirely. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> ended the week about 4 percent from an all-time high touched in October 2007.

Next week will bring results from insurers Allstate and The Hartford , as well as from Walt Disney , Coca-Cola Enterprises and Visa .

But a comparison of flows in January, a seasonal strong month for the stock market, shows that this January, while strong, is not that unusual. In January 2011 investors moved $23.9 billion into stock funds and $28.6 billion in 2006, but neither foreshadowed massive inflows the rest of that year. Furthermore, in 2006 the market gained more than 13 percent while in 2011 it was flat.

Strong inflows in January can happen for a number of reasons. There were a lot of special dividends issued in December that need reinvesting, and some of the funds raised in December tax-selling also find their way back into the market.

During the height of the tech bubble in 2000, when retail investors were really embracing stocks, a staggering $42.7 billion flowed into equities in January of that year, double the amount that flowed in this January. That didn't end well, as stocks peaked in March of that year before dropping over the next two-plus years.

MOM AND POP STILL WARY

Arguing against a 'great rotation' is not necessarily a bearish argument against stocks. The stock market has done well since the crisis. Despite the huge outflows, the S&P 500 has risen more than 120 percent since March 2009 on a slowly improving economy and corporate earnings.

This earnings season, a majority of S&P 500 companies are beating earnings forecast. That's also the case for revenue, which is a departure from the previous two reporting periods where less than 50 percent of companies beat revenue expectations, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Meanwhile, those on the front lines say mom and pop investors are still wary of equities after the financial crisis.

"A lot of people I talk to are very reluctant to make an emotional commitment to the stock market and regardless of income activity in January, I think that's still the case," said David Joy, chief market strategist at Columbia Management Advisors in Boston, where he helps oversee $571 billion.

Joy, speaking from a conference in Phoenix, says most of the people asking him about the "great rotation" are fund management industry insiders who are interested in the extra business a flood of stock investors would bring.

He also pointed out that flows into bond funds were positive in the month of January, hardly an indication of a rotation.

Citi's Levkovich also argues that bond investors are unlikely to give up a 30-year rally in bonds so quickly. He said stocks only began to see consistent outflows 26 months after the tech bubble burst in March 2000. By that reading it could be another year before a serious rotation begins.

On top of that, substantial flows continue to make their way into bonds, even if it isn't low-yielding government debt. January 2013 was the second best January on record for the issuance of U.S. high-grade debt, with $111.725 billion issued during the month, according to International Finance Review.

Bill Gross, who runs the $285 billion Pimco Total Return Fund, the world's largest bond fund, commented on Twitter on Thursday that "January flows at Pimco show few signs of bond/stock rotation," adding that cash and money markets may be the source of inflows into stocks.

Indeed, the evidence suggests some of the money that went into stock funds in January came from money markets after a period in December when investors, worried about the budget uncertainty in Washington, started parking money in late 2012.

Data from iMoneyNet shows investors placed $123 billion in money market funds in the last two months of the year. In two weeks in January investors withdrew $31.45 billion of that, the most since March 2012. But later in the month money actually started flowing back.

(Additional reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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Why is Beckham sitting on the bench for nothing?

PARIS (AP) — David Beckham has won league championships in three countries on two continents, earns millions of dollars in endorsements and his name is practically synonymous with celebrity itself. He has his own cologne, for goodness sake. So why is he even bothering to sit on the bench for the Paris Saint-Germain football club?

His royal highness of football doesn't need the money — and he's said he'll donate his PSG salary to charity — but he does need to start thinking about life after the game. At 37, Beckham is practically a dinosaur for the sport, and he acknowledged in his welcoming press conference on Thursday that he probably won't be in the team's starting lineup.

Instead, Beckham may be beginning to put in place a plan for life after the final whistle. Ellis Cashmore, a sociologist who writes about sports and media culture at Staffordshire University, said that prolonged exposure is always useful to celebrities building empires. In that way, the deal with PSG does double work: It keeps his name in lights for longer and also garners extra attention for the charitable contribution.

"When he does stop playing, which is going to be quite soon, his overall brand appeal will inevitably decline because we will inevitably forget about this guy," he said. "I think he's probably thinking, I want to stay in the shop window for a bit longer."

But Cashmore also cautioned against being too cynical in assessing Beckham's motives: "The guy is an athlete. He wants to do what he loves to do."

Bruno Satin, an independent players' agent who was with IMG for a decade, also said that the move to PSG — even if it's to sit on the bench — is a step up for Beckham.

"For him, to be on the PSG team, it's a higher level than being on the Los Angeles Galaxy," he said. "For the world of football, for real football, the Los Angeles Galaxy is nothing on the map of football."

Some wondered if Beckham was trying to avoid the notoriously sticky fingers of the French state with his plans to donate his salary.

But Sandra Hodzic, a tax lawyer with Salans, said the deduction an individual can take on such contributions is limited. Instead, it would be smarter for PSG to directly donate the salary — and take a big tax break in the process.

Doing so would have an added benefit for the club: UEFA, the governing body for European football, mandates that clubs break even. The donation could allow PSG to essentially write off Beckham's entire salary — a huge help for a team notorious for mega-contracts.

Beckham, meanwhile, would be better off trying to avoid becoming a French tax resident at all. So far, Hodzic said, he is making all the right moves: His family is staying in London, he plans to live only part-time in the country for less than six months, and his primary source of income —whether or not he donates his salary — isn't being earned in France.

Beckham's agent did not return calls for comment on specifics of the contract.

Still, the charitable contribution has raised the question about what Beckham is getting out of the deal. For one, he likely is still getting a cut of rights to his image. Jerseys with his name on them were already selling out at the PSG store on the Champs-Elysees on Friday.

Cashmore, who wrote a book called "Beckham," calls him a "marketing phenomenon" and estimates that about 70 percent of Beckham's income comes from endorsement deals — with Adidas, for instance. That makes salary almost irrelevant — especially for a man estimated by the Sunday Times Rich List to be worth 160 million pounds ($253 million).

But the football feeds the endorsements, Cashmore says.

"It makes an awful lot of business sense to perpetuate, to prolong his active competitive football career," he said, especially with a team that's doing fairly well this year. "It makes an awful lot of sense for him to showcase himself because it will generate more income from his various other sponsorship and licensing activities."

But certainly this move, as any at this late-stage in his playing career, is being made with an eye on what will come next. Cashmore said that when Beckham signed with the L.A. Galaxy, there was an understanding that he would eventually become an ambassador for American soccer. That plan clearly fell by the wayside — perhaps because Major League Soccer decided it was just too expensive to keep on the star after his presence on American soil failed to generate more interest in the game.

It's possible, Cashmore said, that Beckham is looking for a similar deal after his stint at PSG, which is Qatari-owned. The tiny, wealthy nation is hosting the World Cup in 2022, and Beckham's contract with PSG will establish a relationship with it; from there, a role as, say, an ambassador for the tournament would seem more natural.

"For his after-career conversion, it's important to have links with major actors in the world of sports," said Satin. And Qatar is certainly one. It has poured money into PSG, drawing major names like striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic. It also funds the satellite network Al Jazeera, which could provide Beckham with a platform. And then there's the World Cup.

In the end, though, Satin said the clue to Beckham's thinking may be as simple as the eternal draw of Paris.

"PSG has become a glamorous club, a pretty nice club in a beautiful city," said Bruno Satin, an agent. "It's just two hours on the Eurostar (train) from London."

____

AP Sports Writer Rob Harris contributed to this report from London.

____

Follow Sarah DiLorenzo at http://www.twitter.com/sdilorenzo

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Climate Change May Shrink Bat Moms’ Range

Each the spring, female Indiana bats leave the cool caves where they spend the winter hibernating and head north, gathering together in trees to form maternity colonies to have their young. A new study shows that climate change could squeeze these bat moms into a much smaller range over the next 50 years.

The endangered bats are currently found over most of the eastern half of the United States, but researchers found that much of Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio will become inhospitable for the species’ maternity colonies under most climates they modeled.

“We found that due to projected changes in temperature, the most suitable summer range for Indiana bats would decline and become concentrated in the northeastern United States and the Appalachian Mountains,” ecologist Susan Loeb, of the U.S. Forest Service’s Southern Research Station, said in a statement.

Previous studies have shown that animals worldwide are shifting their habitats to try to outrun climate change. But species like Indiana bats might be more vulnerable than other mammals in the face of global warming, because their reproductive cycles, hibernation patterns and migration are highly dependent on temperature, the researchers said.

“Our model suggests that once average summer (May through August) maximum temperatures reach 27.4 degrees C (81.3 degrees F), the climatic suitability of the area for Indiana bat maternity colonies declines,” Loeb said. “Once they reach 29.9 degrees C (85.8 degree F), the area is forecast to become completely unsuitable. Initially, Indiana bat maternity colonies may respond to warming temperatures by choosing roosts that have more shade than the roosts that they currently use. Eventually, it is likely that they will have to find more suitable climates.”

The tiny bats, which weigh about the same as three pennies but can have a wingspan up to 11 inches (28 centimeters), were listed as endangered in the United States in 1967. After decades of decline, the bats’ population picked up from 2000 to 2005, largely thanks to conservation efforts, but species’ numbers plunged again with the spread of the devastating white nose syndrome. Nicknamed for the powderlike fungal growth that appeared on the hibernating bats’ snouts, the mysterious bat-killing disease was first documented in New York in 2006 and has since spread to caves across the Northeast. In 2011, the number of Indiana bats reported hibernating in the northeastern United States was down by 72 percent.

According to the new study, maternity colonies in the western portion of the bats’ range likely will begin to decline, and possibly vanish, in the next 10 to 20 years, and by 2060, much of the region will be wholly unsuitable for roosting. The grim forecast has important implications for wildlife managers in the Northeast and the Appalachian Mountains, Loeb said, since these areas will likely become refuges for the bats when regions in the Midwest get too warm.

“Management actions that foster high reproductive success and survival will be critical for the conservation and recovery of the species,” she said.

The findings were detailed online in January in the journal Ecology and Evolution.

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$1 million lottery jackpot waits to be claimed

SPRINGFIELD ——

Last St. Patrick's Day, four $1 million lottery tickets were drawn in Illinois, but so far only three of the buyers have claimed their pots o' gold.

The luck of the Irish will run out March 17, the anniversary of the sale, if nobody turns in the fourth ticket that was bought at a gas station in west suburban Wood Dale.

It's far from unusual that somebody buys a winning ticket and fails to collect. Illinois amasses tens of millions of dollars in unclaimed lottery prizes each year. But winners usually cash in early rather than risk misplacing the ticket before the anniversary — and losing their windfall along with it.

Jim Batson, owner of the Marathon station on Irving Park Road where the unclaimed ticket was sold, hopes the buyer will claim the Millionaire Raffle prize before it's too late.

"We tell everybody who comes in to check between their couches and anywhere else," Batson said. "Sure feels like someone lost it."

Lottery agents have even put up a flier alerting customers to the prize and deadline.

The Millionaire Raffle is exactly what it sounds like, with 500,000 individually numbered tickets sold at $20 a pop. A computerized drawing spits out four winning tickets, each worth $1 million. The odds of capturing the top prize are 1 in 125,000.

After the drawing last year, winning tickets were turned in from convenience stores in Pocahontas, near St. Louis, and Robinson, in southern Illinois near the Indiana border. In an odd coincidence, the other winning ticket was bought less than four miles from Batson's store, at another Marathon station on Busse Road in Elk Grove Village.

The Millionaire Raffle prize is not even the largest one unclaimed and still valid. Someone bought a $6.5 million Lotto ticket at a Road Ranger truck stop in Roscoe, near the Wisconsin border, in August, but no one has turned in the winning ticket. The largest unclaimed prize in Illinois history was a $14 million Lotto ticket sold in Frankfort in January 2004. No one ever collected.

The state sold nearly $2.7 billion worth of tickets in the budget year that ended June 30, but unclaimed totals for that period are still being tallied. The previous year, the unclaimed prize winnings hit $32.4 million. The vast majority of that unclaimed cash goes into the common school fund, according to the lottery.

Most states have a similar approach with unclaimed prizes, said David Gale, executive director of the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries. But some states throw unclaimed winnings back into future jackpots, and others use the money for different funds, such as helping to support programs to battle gambling addictions.

There's still a chance someone will turn in that outstanding ticket from Wood Dale as time ticks down to the expiration date. In 2011, for example, a South Side man claimed a $9 million Lotto prize just days before the winning ticket expired.

"Most people don't typically wait the full year," said Mike Lang, lottery spokesman. "But once in a while, we do get one."

Batson holds out hope for his patrons. "It would be nice if one of my regulars had won it," he said.

Whether or not the prize is claimed, Batson already has collected a lucky reward. He received the standard 1 percent commission for selling a winning ticket — a payday worth $10,000.

raguerrero2@tribune.com

Twitter @ChiTribCloutSt

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Turkey says tests confirm leftist bombed U.S. embassy

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - A member of a Turkish leftist group that accuses Washington of using Turkey as its "slave" carried out a suicide bomb attack on the U.S. embassy, the Ankara governor's office cited DNA tests as showing on Saturday.

Ecevit Sanli, a member of the leftist Revolutionary People's Liberation Army-Front (DHKP-C), blew himself up in a perimeter gatehouse on Friday as he tried to enter the embassy, also killing a Turkish security guard.

The DHKP-C, virulently anti-American and listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and Turkey, claimed responsibility in a statement on the internet in which it said Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan was a U.S. "puppet".

"Murderer America! You will not run away from people's rage," the statement on "The People's Cry" website said, next to a picture of Sanli wearing a black beret and military-style clothes and with an explosives belt around his waist.

It warned Erdogan that he too was a target.

Turkey is an important U.S. ally in the Middle East with common interests ranging from energy security to counter-terrorism. Leftist groups including the DHKP-C strongly oppose what they see as imperialist U.S. influence over their nation.

DNA tests confirmed that Sanli was the bomber, the Ankara governor's office said. It said he had fled Turkey a decade ago and was wanted by the authorities.

Born in 1973 in the Black Sea port city of Ordu, Sanli was jailed in 1997 for attacks on a police station and a military staff college in Istanbul, but his sentence was deferred after he fell sick during a hunger strike. He was never re-jailed.

Condemned to life in prison in 2002, he fled the country a year later, officials said. Interior Minister Muammer Guler said he had re-entered Turkey using false documents.

Erdogan, who said hours after the attack that the DHKP-C were responsible, met his interior and foreign ministers as well as the head of the army and state security service in Istanbul on Saturday to discuss the bombing.

Three people were detained in Istanbul and Ankara in connection with the attack, state broadcaster TRT said.

The White House condemned the bombing as an "act of terror", while the U.N. Security Council described it as a heinous act. U.S. officials said on Friday the DHKP-C were the main suspects but did not exclude other possibilities.

Islamist radicals, extreme left-wing groups, ultra-nationalists and Kurdish militants have all carried out attacks in Turkey in the past.

SYRIA

The DHKP-C statement called on Washington to remove Patriot missiles, due to go operational on Monday as part of a NATO defense system, from Turkish soil.

The missiles are being deployed alongside systems from Germany and the Netherlands to guard Turkey, a NATO member, against a spillover of the war in neighboring Syria.

"Our action is for the independence of our country, which has become a new slave of America," the statement said.

Turkey has been one of the leading advocates of foreign intervention to end the civil war in Syria and has become one of President Bashar al-Assad's harshest critics, a stance groups such as the DHKP-C view as submission to an imperialist agenda.

"Organizations of the sectarian sort like the DHKP-C have been gaining ground as a result of circumstances surrounding the Syrian civil war," security analyst Nihat Ali Ozcan wrote in a column in Turkey's Daily News.

The Ankara attack was the second on a U.S. mission in four months. On September 11, 2012, U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three American personnel were killed in an Islamist militant attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

The DHKP-C was responsible for the assassination of two U.S. military contractors in the early 1990s in protest against the first Gulf War, and it fired rockets at the U.S. consulate in Istanbul in 1992, according to the U.S. State Department.

It has been blamed for previous suicide attacks, including one in 2001 that killed two police officers and a tourist in Istanbul's central Taksim Square. It has carried out a series of deadly attacks on police stations in the last six months.

Friday's attack may have come in retaliation for an operation against the DHKP-C last month in which Turkish police detained 85 people. A court subsequently remanded 38 of them in custody over links to the group.

(Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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Wall Street surges to five-year highs on data

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks climbed to five-year highs on Friday in the wake of jobs and manufacturing data that showed the economy's sluggish recovery is still on track.

The Dow industrials rose to 14,000 for the first time since mid-October 2007 and the S&P hit its highest since December that year. The S&P advanced 5 percent in January, its best start to a year since 1997.

Analysts attributed the market's robust showing so far this year partly to a deluge of cash flowing into equities.

Data on Thursday showed investors poured $12.7 billion into U.S.-based stock mutual funds and exchange-traded funds in the latest week, concluding the strongest four-week flows into stock funds since 1996.

"There's a lot of money looking for a home and people are finally deciding the bond market is done and moving money into equities," said Edward Simmons, managing director and partner at HighTower in Portland, Maine.

"I see the rotation (of assets) pushing the market up in the face of not-massive amounts of good news," he said. "People are overlooking the higher risk in equities."

Employment grew modestly in January, with 157,000 jobs added in the month, slightly below expectations for 160,000. Still, figures for both November and December were revised upwards.

Other reports released Friday showed the pace of growth in the U.S. manufacturing sector picked up in January to its highest level in nine months, U.S. consumer sentiment rose more than expected last month, while December construction spending also beat forecasts.

"All the data seems to keep pointing to a slowly, steadily improving economy," said Eric Kuby, chief investment officer at North Star Investment Management Corp in Chicago.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> rose 137.21 points or 0.99 percent, to 13,997.79, the S&P 500 <.spx> gained 14.81 points or 0.99 percent, to 1,512.92 and the Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> added 34.76 points, or 1.11 percent, to 3,176.89.

With the day's gains, major equity indexes were on track for a fifth straight week of gains. The S&P 500 is also coming off its best monthly performance since October 2011.

Investors were also attuned to corporate earnings, with a trio of Dow components reporting profits that beat expectations.

Exxon Mobil was little changed at $89.95 after its results while Chevron added 0.8 percent to $116.10.

Drugmaker Merck & Co fell 2.9 percent to $42 after a cautious 2013 outlook.

Generic drugmaker Perrigo reported a better-than-expected second-quarter profit and its shares jumped 6.3 percent to $106.92, the largest advancer on the S&P 500.

Of the 252 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings so far, 69 percent have exceeded expectations, according to Thomson Reuters data. That is a higher proportion than over the past four quarters and above average since 1994.

Overall, S&P 500 fourth-quarter earnings are estimated to have grown 4.4 percent, according to the data, up from a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season but well below a 9.9 percent profit growth forecast on October 1.

Dell Inc gained 4.2 percent to $13.80 after sources said the company was nearing an agreement to sell itself to a buyout consortium led by its founder Michael Dell and private equity firm Silver Lake Partners.

Shares of General Motors and Ford Motor rose after the two largest American automakers posted better-than-expected U.S. auto sales for January.

GM gained 1.2 percent to $28.42 and Ford added 0.9 percent to $13.07.

Shares of Zoetis surged on its trading debut on the New York Stock Exchange after its shares were priced at $26, above the expected range. Zoetis was trading at $30.67 at midday, after earlier climbing as high as $31.74.

(Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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Goodell wants to end use of head in tackling

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell says the No. 1 issue in the game is taking the head out of tackles.

Goodell said players are using their heads more than in the past, something he said may be because better helmets and face masks lead them to take more risks with their heads.

In his state of the NFL address Friday before Sunday's Super Bowl, Goodell said progress has been made in the last couple of years in eliminating helmet-to-helmet hits, but that players need to get back to using shoulders and arms properly in tackles.

In his words, there is a strike zone in football and coaches and players need to recognize it.

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Energy Secretary Chu to step down

WASHINGTON (AP) — Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who won a Nobel Prize in physics but came under questioning for his handling of a solar energy loan, is stepping down.

Chu offered his resignation to President Barack Obama in a letter Friday. He said he will stay on at least until the end of February and may stay until a successor is confirmed.

Chu’s departure had been widely expected and follows announcements by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa Jackson and Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, that they are leaving.

The White House said no decisions have been made on replacements for any of the environment and energy jobs but said Obama’s priorities will remain unchanged. Potential replacements for Chu include former North Dakota Sen. Byron Dorgan, former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm and former Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire.

Obama said in a statement Friday that Chu brought a “unique understanding of both the urgent challenge presented by climate change and the tremendous opportunity that clean energy represents for our economy.”

During his tenure, Chu helped move the country toward energy independence, Obama said, citing Energy Department programs to boost renewable energy such as wind and solar power.

“Thanks to Steve, we also expanded support for our brightest engineers and entrepreneurs as they pursue groundbreaking innovations that could transform our energy future,” Obama said.

Chu, a former director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, had little political experience before taking the energy post in 2009.

He drew fire from congressional Republicans who criticized his handling of a $ 528 million federal loan to solar panel maker Solyndra, which later went bankrupt, laying off its 1,100 workers. Republicans said Chu and other Energy Department officials missed many warning signs about problems at Solyndra and compounded them by approving a restructuring of the loan even after problems were discovered.

Solyndra was the first renewable-energy company to receive a loan guarantee under the 2009 stimulus law, and the Obama administration frequently promoted the company as a model for its clean energy program. Chu attended a 2009 groundbreaking when the loan was announced, and Obama visited the company’s Fremont, Calif., headquarters the next year.

The company’s implosion in 2011 and revelations that the administration hurried a review of the loan in time for the groundbreaking become an embarrassment for Chu and Obama and a rallying cry for GOP critics of the administration’s green energy program.

Lawmakers also criticized Chu for approving the plan to restructure Solyndra’s debt so that two private investors moved ahead of taxpayers for repayment in case of default.

Chu defended the Solyndra loan during a sometimes testy hearing in late 2011. While calling the ultimate outcome “regrettable,” Chu said the loan was subject to “proper, rigorous scrutiny and healthy debate” before it was approved in 2009.

“While we are disappointed in the outcome of this particular loan, we support Congress’ mandate to finance the deployment of innovative technologies and believe that our portfolio of loans does so responsibly,” Chu said.

The White House said Chu retained Obama’s confidence, but Chu was widely expected to leave following Obama’s re-election last fall.

In a letter to Energy Department employees, Chu said he was proud of his tenure and cited dozens of accomplishments, including doubling the production of renewable energy from wind and solar power. Installations of small solar electric, or photovoltaic, systems have nearly doubled in each of the last three years, he said, while fully 42 percent of new energy capacity in the U.S. last year was from wind —more than any other energy source, Chu said.

“I came with dreams and am leaving with a set of accomplishments that we should all be proud of,” he said.

One of his accomplishments was something that Chu rarely talked about: Obama repeatedly credits Chu with helping to plug the massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Chu and a team of engineers helped devised an interim solution before a replacement well permanently plugged the leak, which spewed more than 200 million gallons of oil in the worst offshore oil disaster in the country’s history.

___

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Hillary: Secretary of empowerment

Girls hug U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during a 2010 tour of a shelter run for sex trafficking victims in Cambodia.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Donna Brazile: Clinton stepping down as Secretary of State. Maybe she'll run for president


• She says as secretary she expanded foreign policy to include effect on regular people


• She says she was first secretary of state to focus on empowering women and girls


• Brazile: Clinton has fought for education and inclusion in politics for women and girls

Editor's note: Donna Brazile, a CNN contributor and a Democratic strategist, is vice chairwoman for voter registration and participation at the Democratic National Committee. She is a nationally syndicated columnist, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and author of "Cooking with Grease." She was manager for the Gore-Lieberman presidential campaign in 2000.

(CNN) -- As Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton steps down from her job Friday, many are assuming she will run for president. And she may. In fact, five of the first eight presidents first served their predecessors as secretary of state.

It hasn't happened in more than a century, though that may change should Clinton decide to run. After all, she has been a game changer her entire life.

But before we look ahead, I think we should appreciate what she's done as secretary of state; it's a high profile, high pressure job. You have to deal with the routine as if it is critical and with crisis as if it's routine. You have to manage egos, protocols, customs and Congress. You have to be rhetorical and blunt, diplomatic and direct.

CNN Contributor Donna Brazile

As secretary of state you are dealing with heads of state and with we the people. And the president of the United States has to trust you -- implicitly.

On the road with Hillary Clinton

Of all Clinton's accomplishments -- and I will mention just a few -- this may be the most underappreciated. During the election, pundits were puzzled and amazed not only at how much energy former President Bill Clinton poured into Obama's campaign, but even more at how genuine and close the friendship was.

Obama was given a lot of well-deserved credit for reaching out to the Clintons by appointing then-Sen. Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state in the first place. But trust is a two-way street and has to be earned. We should not underestimate or forget how much Clinton did and how hard she worked. She deserved that trust, as she deserved to be in the war room when Osama bin Laden was killed.

By the way, is there any other leader in the last 50 years whom we routinely refer to by a first name, and do so more out of respect than familiarity? The last person I can think of was Ike -- the elder family member who we revere with affection. Hillary is Hillary.

It's not surprising that we feel we know her. She has been part of our public life for more than 20 years. She's been a model of dignity, diplomacy, empathy and toughness. She also has done something no other secretary of state has done -- including the two women who preceded her in the Cabinet post.

Rothkopf: President Hillary Clinton? If she wants it

Hillary has transformed our understanding -- no, our definition -- of foreign affairs. Diplomacy is no longer just the skill of managing relations with other countries. The big issues -- war and peace, terror, economic stability, etc. -- remain, and she has handled them with firmness and authority, with poise and confidence, and with good will, when appropriate.

But it is not the praise of diplomats or dictators that will be her legacy. She dealt with plenipotentiaries, but her focus was on people. Foreign affairs isn't just about treaties, she taught us, it's about the suffering and aspirations of those affected by the treaties, made or unmade.

Most of all, diplomacy should refocus attention on the powerless.

Of course, Hillary wasn't the first secretary of state to advocate for human rights or use the post to raise awareness of abuses or negotiate humanitarian relief or pressure oppressors. But she was the first to focus on empowerment, particularly of women and girls.

She created the first Office of Global Women's Issues. That office fought to highlight the plight of women around the world. Rape of women has been a weapon of war for centuries. Though civilized countries condemn it, the fight against it has in a sense only really begun.

Ghitis: Hillary Clinton's global legacy on gay rights

The office has worked to hold governments accountable for the systematic oppression of girls and women and fought for their education in emerging countries. As Hillary said when the office was established: "When the Security Council passed Resolution 1325, we tried to make a very clear statement, that women are still largely shut out of the negotiations that seek to end conflicts, even though women and children are the primary victims of 21st century conflict."

Hillary also included the United States in the Trafficking in Person report. Human Trafficking, a form of modern, mainly sexual, slavery, victimizes mostly women and girls. The annual report reviews the state of global efforts to eliminate the practice. "We believe it is important to keep the spotlight on ourselves," she said. "Human trafficking is not someone else's problem. Involuntary servitude is not something we can ignore or hope doesn't exist in our own communities."

She also created the office of Global Partnerships. And there is much more.

She has held her own in palaces and held the hands of hungry children in mud-hut villages, pursuing an agenda that empowers women, children, the poor and helpless.

We shouldn't have been surprised. Her book "It Takes a Village" focused on the impact that those outside the family have, for better or worse, on a child's well-being.

As secretary of state, she did all she could to make sure our impact as a nation would be for the better.

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Donna Brazile.

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March planned for Hadiya Pendleton; reward increased to $30K

As community members made ready to march in memory of Hadiya Pendleton today, officials announced the reward for information in the slaying of the King College Prep sophomore has been increased to $30,000.

Late this morning, Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy and other police officials were expected to join several pastors at her high school, King College Prep, to announce the increased reward. Soon after, an anti-violence march in Hadiya's honor was scheduled to start at King, 4445 S. Drexel Blvd.

Hadiya had just finished her final exams at King College Prep, and was hanging out with friends from the school's volleyball team when she was gunned down Tuesday in Harsh Park, in the 4400 block of South Oakenwald Avenue. Thursday afternoon, police announced the reward for information leading to an arrest in the shooting had increased to $24,000, up from $11,000 announced Wednesday.

Hadiya and the others had sought shelter from a rainstorm under a canopy at the park around 2:20 p.m. Tuesday when a gunman jumped a fence, ran toward them and opened fire, police said.

As the teens scattered, Hadiya and two teenage boys were shot. Hadiya was hit in the back and pronounced dead at Comer Children's Hospital less than an hour after the shooting. The wounds suffered by the boys were not life-threatening.

Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy stressed that neither Hadiya nor anyone in the group she was with were involved with gangs. But it appears the gunman mistook the students for members of a rival gang, he said. The shooter was last seen fleeing in a white Nissan.

“These were good kids by everything that I learned," McCarthy said at a Wednesday news conference. "Wrong place at the wrong time.”

Pastor Courtney Maxwell, the family’s pastor, has offered $6,000, increasing the reward to $30,000, according to the statement, which said Maxwell has called a press conference at Harsh Park at 11:45 a.m. 

Hadiya was shot a little more than a week after performing with the King College Prep band in the Washington, D.C. area during President Barack Obama's inauguration festivities. The shooting occurred in a park about a mile north of Obama's Kenwood home.

The shooting has drawn the attention of both the White House, which is pushing for national gun control, and City Hall as Chicago closes on a violent January. Hadiya was the 42nd homicide victim this year in the city, where killings last year climbed above 500.

Hadiya's father, Nathaniel Pendleton, pleaded for someone to step forward and bring the 15-year-old's killer to justice.

"She was destined for great things," he said.

Hadiya was a majorette with the band at King, one of the city's elite selective-enrollment schools. She dreamed of going to Northwestern University and talked about becoming a pharmacist or a journalist, maybe a lawyer.

Police have reported no arrests.

chicagobreaking@tribune.com

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