A Manhattan federal judge on Wednesday ruled that the bankrupt and defunct book chain owes nothing to the roughly 17.7 million people who hold $210.5 million in unredeemed gift cards.

U.S. District Judge Andrew Carter says it would be unfair to Borders Group’s other creditors to let gift-card holders pursue recoveries, Reuters reports.

“To do so, Carter explained, could upset liquidation by Borders’ bankruptcy trustee that is already ‘substantially’ completed.

He also said card holders failed to prove they met all the requirements for an exception, including that unsecured creditors whose interests might be harmed had been notified about the litigation and given a chance to object.”

Reuters explains that the decision upholds an earlier, lower court ruling, dating from August of last year.

Borders filed Chapter 11 in February 2011 and closed for good seven months later, the news agency said. [Copyright 2013 NPR]

The key passage from his prepared testimony:

“Recognizing the drawbacks of persistently low rates, the FOMC actively seeks economic conditions consistent with sustainably higher interest rates. Unfortunately, withdrawing policy accommodation at this juncture would be highly unlikely to produce such conditions. A premature tightening of monetary policy could lead interest rates to rise temporarily but would also carry a substantial risk of slowing or ending the economic recovery and causing inflation to fall further. Such outcomes tend to be associated with extended periods of lower, not higher, interest rates, as well as poor returns on other assets. Moreover, renewed economic weakness would pose its own risks to financial stability.”

Translation: The Fed thinks it’s still too soon to take its foot off the accelerator. So it will keep interest rates low, in a bid to spur borrowing and spending.

As the Fed chairman was speaking, the National Association of Realtors was releasing new data that underscore the sense that the economy is on the mend. It reported that sales of existing homes rose 0.6 percent in April form March and were up 9.7 percent from the level of April 2012.

The association’s chief economist, Lawrence Yun, said sales would have been even stronger if not for “tight access to credit and limited inventory” of homes.

There will be more word about how the economy is doing this afternoon when the Fed releases the minutes of its April 30-May 1 meeting of policy makers. [Copyright 2013 NPR]

I’ve been watching some of my own savings dwindle. And that prompted me to take up a challenge: I’m taking $5,000 from personal savings and putting it to work. I’m not a financial whiz, pundit or any kind of guru.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be reporting on the various investments I decide to pursue. Along the way, I hope to provide some useful information about avoiding high fees in mutual funds, bulk buying at discount stores as a hedge against inflation and staking a claim in real estate for just a few hundred dollars. We’ll keep a scorecard of my investments and track how they perform over time.

But back to those paltry returns from savings. Jacob Kirkegaard of the Peterson Institute for International Economics says it’s an “absolutely miserable” time to be a saver and has been ever since the financial crisis began.

It’s a freakish situation last experienced during the Great Depression. “We haven’t seen a sustained period where interest rates have been this negative for this long. This is a truly unprecedented situation,” Kirkegaard says.

When Kirkegaard says “this negative,” here’s what he means: The average yield, or interest rate, on a savings account at a major bank is 0.1 percent, according to Bankrate.com. Inflation is running at 1.7 percent. Do the math there. It’s a lousy deal for savers.

For more than four years, the Federal Reserve has tried to revive the economy by getting credit flowing more energetically. In pursuit of that goal, the Fed has kept interest rates at nearly zero percent.

That’s why yields are so skimpy on savings accounts. “So you can say that savers and the return that savers earn on their money is kind of a collateral damage in the crisis management conducted by the Federal Reserve and other central banks,” Kirkegaard says.

My wife and I have a kid in college and a mortgage, I put money into my retirement plan and anything left over goes into family savings. And, yes, it’s kind of frustrating to see that money chipped away by inflation. It’s far worse for someone on a fixed income who pays for food, rent and medical expenses out of savings.

So how about that $5,000? I stopped in to see Nessa Feddis, a senior vice president at the American Bankers Association. I asked her to make the best case for the savings account. “Bank accounts are FDIC insured,” she says. “That means that no matter what happens to the institution if the bank fails, no matter what happens to the economy, the customer’s money is safe, up to $250,000.”

What else?

“There’s a convenience to having a savings account in the same institution where the customer’s checking account is,” Feddis says.

Convenience and FDIC guarantees are fine. But with the Fed expected to keep record low rates for a while longer, there’s not much hope those savings will grow. So I’m setting that cash loose into the world of risk and reward. The investments could lose value. But they could also come out ahead, which is something that can’t be said — for now — for the money I have parked in savings. [Copyright 2013 NPR]

But questions surround the new type of computer at the lab’s core. D-Wave systems, the company that makes the machine, says it is a quantum computer — a machine that runs on the strange laws of quantum mechanics. But although the computer can solve a certain type of problem much faster than conventional computers, critics say that the company’s claims are not supported by scientific evidence.

“It’s not exactly science, what they’re doing,” says Christopher Monroe, a physicist with the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland. “It’s high-level engineering, and I think it’s high-level salesmanship, too.”

The quantum computer is a giant black box, or more precisely, a black cube approximately 10 feet on a side. Inside is a refrigeration system that chills the guts to near absolute zero, and shields the workings to protect them from external radiation.

In this rarefied environment, the laws of quantum mechanics can come into effect. These quantum rules are pretty strange. Particles can be in two opposite states at once, and they can be intrinsically tied together through a process known as “entanglement.” For example, two quantum coins could be in a state of heads and tails simultaneously, as though they were flipping through the air. If the two coins were entangled, reading “heads” on one after the flip would instantly tell you that the other was heads — even if it were on the other side of the galaxy.

The D-Wave Two computer has 512 quantum “bits,” or units of information, in its supercooled central processor that can be entangled together, according to the company. The entanglement allows the computer to do things that a conventional computer can’t. In particular, it’s good at choosing between many different solutions to a problem, according to Geordie Rose, D-Wave’s chief technology officer.

Here’s (roughly) how it works: Just like quantum coins, the quantum bits exist in two states at once, and because they are entangled, that means the entire chip is simultaneously in many different configurations of “heads and tails.” The quantum computer, in a sense, simultaneously tries every answer imaginable before settling on an efficient one. Running the computer just a few times will give a subset of highly efficient solutions. By contrast, a conventional computer would have to individually test millions or billions of solutions to find the right answer.

Rose says that the new machine won’t always be better than a regular computer, but for machine learning and searching — activities both Google and NASA are interested in — the D-wave’s computer could be far more effective.

“The best answer, or the highest or the lowest or the smallest or the meatiest … no matter what,” Rose says. “If it’s got an ‘-iest’ at the end and you can write down a mathematical equation for what you mean about that, then you can attack it with one of our machines.”

But proving exactly what D-Wave’s computer does is tricky. Quantum states are highly sensitive to outside intrusion. The very act of trying to measure entanglement can easily destroy it.

There is solid evidence that the D-Wave machine is unusual. New research by computer scientist Catherine McGeoch at Amherst College suggests it can solve one particular kind of problem thousands of times faster than a regular computer. But McGeoch adds that the D-Wave Two was not measurably faster at solving two other types of problems tested.

And work from the lab of John Martinis, a researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara, also seems to hint at quantum processes at work inside D-Wave’s previous generation of quantum chip, the D-Wave One.

But Monroe remains skeptical. He believes that the D-Wave team has never demonstrated that entanglement is happening on the chips in its machine. He believes that D-Wave’s supposedly quantum bits are actually working instead as tiny electromagnets. Those magnets, Monroe believes, could be interacting in ways to solve a certain problem very quickly without quantum mechanics. “There’s no evidence that what they’re doing has anything to do with quantum mechanics,” he says. If he’s right, then D-Wave’s machine may be far more narrow in its abilities than the company believes.

D-Wave’s Geordie Rose acknowledges the criticism, but says he believes that D-Wave’s machine ultimately will also prove faster than conventional computers at solving the problems facing companies like Google, NASA and aerospace giant Lockheed Martin (which has also purchased a machine).

“What we do is build computers,” Rose says, “and if we can build the fastest computers the world has ever known, you can call them whatever you like, and I’ll be happy.” [Copyright 2013 NPR]

The TV show, which originally ran on Fox from 2003 to 2006 and unveils new episodes on Netflix next weekend, finds itself in splendid company. Radiohead, Louis C.K., Veronica Mars — all found their audiences with promotion and distribution from big studios and networks. Radiohead was signed to a major music label. Louis C.K. enjoyed HBO specials and TV shows. And Veronica Mars ran on two TV networks for three years.

But Radiohead defied industry norms in 2006 by selling its album In Rainbows directly to fans for whatever price they chose — and the band made millions. Louis C.K. took a similarly successful route with a comedy special in 2011, charging viewers five dollars to download the special online. And Veronica Mars fans contributed more than $5.7 million on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter — almost three times the stated goal — to pay for a movie adaptation.

Author Grady Hendrix says these models aren’t exactly replicable. These are mid-list, old-media artists, not blockbuster celebrities. But their fan bases and name recognition furnishes them with a new-media edge that won’t be shared, he says, “[by] some band from Cleveland that has a small following looking for Kickstarter funds for their album.”

Inevitably, some old-media brands still manage to do it wrong. The blandly impersonal Kickstarter page of actress Melissa Joan Hart might as well have been written by a publicist’s intern. The former star of Sabrina The Teenage Witch is soliciting funds for a new romantic comedy, but as Hendrix points out, with the slightest of smirks, “It’s raised $50,000, and it’s doing really badly.”

On the other hand, a Kickstarter campaign from actor Zach Braff simply oozes kinship with fans. And they’ve rallied, giving more than $2.7 million to support a follow-up to his 2004 movie Garden State and surpassing his goal by hundreds of thousands of dollars. “There are shots of him and his brother and all these behind-the-scenes things,” Hendrix notes,” And you feel like, ‘Hey, Zach Braff is going to answer my emails!’”

A sense of ownership and connection leads people to donate money to movies ultimately benefiting the major studios that make them. But it’s important to recognize that Warner Brothers will still invest many millions in producing, distributing and promoting a Veronica Mars movie, even with Kickstarter’s help.

And there could be more to come. Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities points out that rumors have swirled that late show Heroes might be resurrected by Microsoft as an Xbox exclusive. “And the only way you’ll be able to watch,” he says, “is on Xbox.”

Giving still-grieving fans hope for new Xbox or Netflix episodes of their canceled darlings such as Caprica, Chuck or Firefly. [Copyright 2013 NPR]

It’s not unusual for people these days to be responsible for paying thousands of dollars in medical claims before most plan benefits kick in.

Rewards to policyholders for claims that don’t meet the annual deductible can be a boon for healthy people. But the approach might not pass the smell test next year when the Affordable Care Act bans discriminating against people based on their health.

A “deductible credit” program, sponsored by UnitedHealthcare’s Golden Rule Insurance Co., is available in 26 states on most of the company’s renewable plans sold on the individual market, according to Ellen Laden, a spokeswoman.

Here’s how it works: If someone has a plan with, say, a $3,000 deductible and doesn’t have that amount in claims the first year, the deductible is reduced by 20 percent, to $2,400. The following year, the deductible falls by another 20 percent if the deductible isn’t met, to $1,800. The third year, the amount can shrink another 10 percent, to $1,500, half the original deductible and the maximum reduction allowed under the program.

“It’s a way to retain customers,” says Carrie McLean, a senior manager of customer care at eHealthInsurance.com, an online vendor. Policyholders who might otherwise go shopping for a plan when they get their annual rate increase may be persuaded to stick with the same company if they think they’re getting a better deal than they could elsewhere, she says.

Of course, as deductibles have risen in recent years, people are less likely to meet them. According to an analysis by eHealthInsurance.com of one large insurer’s 2012 claims, just under 11 percent of people with a $2,500 deductible met the deductible for that year. For those with a $5,000 deductible plan, the figure dropped to just under 4 percent. Only 3 percent of people with a $7,500 deductible had that much in claims, and at the $10,000 deductible level the figure was just over 2 percent.

That’s not true for the smaller number of people with serious medical conditions. Many of them regularly meet and exceed even high deductible thresholds.

Starting next year, the Affordable Care Act will prohibit insurers on the individual market from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions or charging them more.

And Timothy Jost, a health law professor at Washington and Lee University, said the deductible credit program could be considered discriminatory under the federal health law next year.

“It’s designed to permit continued cherry picking of patients,” he says.

Golden Rule’s Laden says the company is still finalizing its strategy for next year.

“We’re currently reviewing the Affordable Care Act and its impact on the deductible credit feature to ensure that our products and practices remain in compliance with it and all other applicable laws,” she said in a statement. [Copyright 2013 Kaiser Health News]

One of the new device’s most striking features is the ability to run multiple apps at once — and to split a TV screen into different tasks. That means Xbox One owners will be able to watch live TV, while taking part in a Skype video chat, or surfing the web. And many of those tasks can be accomplished by using either hand gestures or voice commands.

Many details emerged in a rush about the new console, which has 8 gigabytes of RAM and a 500 GB hard drive, after Microsoft executive Don Mattrick unveiled the Xbox One in Redmond, Wash., Tuesday.

But Microsoft has not provided two other tidbits of information: when the Xbox One will launch, and how much it will cost. More information is expected next month. For now, here’s a selection of features noted around the web:

“The Xbox One simultaneously runs three separate operating systems,” reports Wired. “First comes the tiny Host OS, which boots the machine and then launches two other hard-partitioned systems: the Shared partition, an environment that runs any apps (Skype, Live TV, Netflix, etc.) and helps provide processing power for the Kinect sensor and its gesture and voice controls; and the Exclusive partition, which is where games run.”

“Microsoft also has new Kinect to share, and it includes a 1080p wide-angle camera that’s designed to read your heartbeat while you exercise,” The Verge reports.

“With the launch of the Xbox One, Microsoft is adding a partnership with the NFL to provide live broadcasts paired with fantasy league statistics,” writes David Yanofsky over at Quartz, who calls the new system “an Apple killer, in the living room.”

“The next game in the Forza series, Forza 5, was briefly shown …. If there was a game to steal the show, award that to Quantum Break, the next game from developer Remedy (Max Payne, Alan Wake),” reports CNET. Its rundown of the new console’s games includes sports games from EA Sports, such as Madden NFL 25, FIFA 14, and NBA Live 14.

“It has unfortunately now been confirmed that the Xbox One will not be backwards compatible, either with the Xbox 360 or the original Xbox,” IGN reports.

Photos of the new Xbox show that while the system has a clean design and restrained graphics, it also has straight edges and a bulkiness that, as several Twitter users joked, “puts the ‘box’ in ‘Xbox.’” [Copyright 2013 NPR]

The AP reports:

“At the bank’s annual meeting, 32 percent of shareholders voted for a measure that would have required the bank to split the roles. Had the measure succeeded, Dimon would have had to relinquish the role of chairman.

“Shareholder groups lobbying for the split gained momentum from last year’s surprise $6 billion trading loss, which tarnished the reputation of both JPMorgan Chase & Co. and CEO Dimon. The bank and Dimon had argued that letting Dimon keep both jobs was the most effective form of leadership.”

The Wall Street Journal, which is live blogging the meeting, reports that several other board members were facing ousters. But all of them survived.

Forbes reports that some shareholders argued that splitting the roles would lead to better governance. Ultimately, reports Forbes, a decision likely came down to money and fear that Dimon may have left the company if he was stripped of his chairmanship.

“JPM has seen record profits for the last three years and not one quarterly loss during Dimon’s tenure,” Forbes reports. “The bank’s board and management has been quick to point out that performance. Bank analyst Mike Mayo has said the bank’s stock would drop 10% if Dimon left.” [Copyright 2013 NPR]

The subcommittee’s report says Apple avoids the tax payments mainly by shifting profits to three subsidiary companies in Ireland. The investigation found Apple is taking advantage of technicalities in U.S. and Irish tax laws to avoid paying any tax on a huge portion of its profits.

“They’ve created corporations that don’t exist anywhere for tax purposes,” says Sen. Carl Levin, a Democrat from Michigan who is chairman of the subcommittee. “That is right at the epitome of creative tax gimmickry.”

U.S. law says because the companies are incorporated in Ireland, they aren’t required to pay U.S. tax. But Irish law says the companies are controlled by Apple in the U.S., so that’s where they should be taxed. The bottom line is the Apple subsidiaries pay very little tax at all despite billions in earnings.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Levin says. “We don’t know of anybody who has seen anything like this; where corporations don’t exist anywhere for tax purposes.”

Levin’s committee has also investigated and criticized tax avoidance methods used by Microsoft and Hewlett Packard.

In testimony Apple released in advance of the hearing, CEO Tim Cook defends Apple’s practices. He says the company does not use tax gimmicks, and the reason it pays taxes overseas is because it sells overseas. But the Senate investigation found the main subsidiary in Ireland, a company that includes Apple’s retail stores throughout Europe, has not paid any corporate tax in five years.

In its defense, Apple says it paid $6 billion in U.S. corporate taxes last year. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the ranking Republican on the investigations subcommittee, says that may be true.

“Apple executives like to boast that their company is the highest corporate taxpayer in the U.S.,” McCain says. “But what they often leave out of the story is the second part of the story, and that is that Apple is one of the largest corporate tax avoiders.”

While Apples estimated tax payment for 2012 is $6 billion, the Senate investigators estimate Apple avoided paying another $9 billion in taxes last year.

McCain called Apple’s tax practices egregious and outrageous: “Apple has $145 billion cash on hand. Guess where $102 billion, or two-thirds of that total, sit — offshore.”

During his testimony, Cook is expected to say the U.S. should lower its corporate tax rate on foreign earnings to encourage companies to bring profits back to the U.S.

The top U.S. corporate tax rate is among the highest in the world at 35 percent. Republicans want to lower it and so does President Obama. Both Senators Levin and McCain, however, said Congress shouldn’t wait for tax overhaul to close loopholes like the ones Apple is exploiting. [Copyright 2013 NPR]

Its new Windows 8 operating system was held responsible for the drop in PC sales last quarter. Sales of its Windows Phones lag far behind both the iPhone and Google’s Android phones.

The light in the darkness for Microsoft has been the Xbox 360, which has been the top-selling game console for over two years — beating out both the Nintendo Wii and Sony’s PlayStation. On Tuesday, Microsoft is expected to announce a new version of the Xbox.

The new Xbox will certainly have plenty to entice hard-core gamers. Analysts say it will be faster, have amazingly realistic graphics and as much as two terabytes of storage. Fans of Call of Duty have already been getting tantalizing peeks at the new version and undoubtedly they will learn more about the updated game at Tuesday’s event.

But, the new Xbox is going to be about more than hard-core games. Microsoft wants to be the center of your living room.

It’s a strategy that’s been working well for the company. According Microsoft, last year people spent more time on Xbox Live (the company’s online service) watching TV and movies than they did playing games. Analysts say the new Xbox is going to move the console further down that road.

Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities who follows the game industry, believes that a deal is in the works that will turn the Xbox into a cable connection. That means you could switch from playing Call of Duty to watching Game of Thrones without changing boxes. However, Pachter says he isn’t certain if Microsoft will announce that at Tuesday’s press conference.

Pachter says most likely Tuesday will be a preview. Microsoft purchased Skype, so we are likely to learn about how you’ll be able to see and chat with your friends while you’re watching Game of Thrones or playing Call of Duty. The Kinect, Microsoft’s gesture computing device, may be integrated into the Xbox rather than being a separate device.

Microsoft is the last entrant into the next-generation console wars.

Nintendo launched the Wii U last year. So far, the company that brought us Super Mario Brothers and Donkey Kong has seen disappointing sales. Nintendo does not appear to be making a big play for the living room. Sony has already previewed the PS4 but hasn’t said much about whether it will go full force into turning the PlayStation into an entertainment center. Pachter believes Sony will follow Microsoft’s lead and gear its new console toward more than games.

As technology marches forward, the big growth in gaming is going to be on mobile devices — the smartphone, the tablet — not on consoles. If Microsoft and Sony want to grow, they will have to turn the console into a device that has entertainment features that appeal to non-gamers. It needs to be a device that even grandma might want to buy. [Copyright 2013 NPR]