A shopper walks down an aisle in a newly opened Walmart Neighborhood Market in Chicago in this September 21, 2011 file photo.

NEW YORK | Fri Sep 28, 2012 10:23am EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Consumer sentiment rose to its highest level in four months in September as Americans saw better prospects for the job market and economy, a survey released on Friday showed.

The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan's final reading on consumer sentiment rose to 78.3 from 74.3 in August, the highest level since May.

Still, it was shy of economists' forecasts for 79, according to a Reuters poll, and gave up some of the advance seen in September's preliminary reading when the index climbed to 79.2.

Consumer expectations improved strongly, rising to 73.5 from 65.1, also the highest since May. More consumers expected the unemployment rate to fall than to rise, while twice as many survey respondents expected economic growth than those that anticipated a downturn.

Gains in home values and stock prices have also helped boost confidence and sentiment among households with incomes below $75,000 was at its highest level in five years.

But Americans' assessment of current economic conditions weakened to 85.7 from 88.7 amid concerns over their own finances. Twenty-nine percent said their financial situation had improved this month, down from 30 percent in August. In the year ahead, one-in-four households expected their finances to improve.

Consumers' inflation expectations for a year from now fell to 3.3 percent from 3.6 percent, while the five-to-10-year inflation outlook eased to 2.8 percent from 3 percent.

(Reporting by Leah Schnurr; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

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Entertainer Jay-Z performs on stage at the newly built Barclays Center in the Brooklyn borough of New York September 28, 2012. This is the first event at the new stadium.

NEW YORK | Sat Sep 29, 2012 2:45am EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Rap superstar Jay-Z returned to his home borough for a sold-out concert on Friday night to open Brooklyn's new basketball stadium.

The rapper who grew up just two miles away from the new Barclays Center arena - now the home court of the Brooklyn Nets basketball team - talked about how far he had come in a show sprinkled with emotional speeches.

"I've been on many stages all around the world and nothing feels like tonight," Jay-Z told the cheering audience.

"I'm really overwhelmed by the moment," he said as he described his humble beginnings in Marcy Houses, a Brooklyn public housing project he noted was just 15 minutes away from the arena. "I can't believe that this day has come."

Jay-Z, who raps about the time he spent as a drug dealer, released his first album in 1996. He is now one of the most successful rappers in the world, owns a minority stake in the Nets and has businesses including a clothing label.

He encouraged members of the packed crowd to have their own stab at success.

"I believe everybody in the world is born with genius level talent ... Apply yourself to whatever you're genius at and you can do anything in the world," he said.

It was the first of eight Jay-Z concerts planned for the venue in the arena's first week.

Jay-Z sported the team's jersey and hat as he sang recent hits like Empire State of Mind and returned to his highly acclaimed debut album Reasonable Doubt.

The rapper, whose real name is Shawn Carter, has been heavily involved in the promotion of the 18,000-seat arena, which took years to move from concept to reality partly because it met with legal challenges and opposition from people in nearby residential areas such as Fort Greene and Park Slope.

The stadium, which started construction in 2009, will bring a major professional sports team back to Brooklyn for the first time in 55 years when the Dodgers baseball team moved away from Brooklyn to Los Angeles and became the L.A. Dodgers.

Jay-Z showed off a jersey worn by Dodgers player Jackie Robinson - also the first African American Major League Baseball player.

He paid tribute to deceased rap star and fellow Brooklyn native Notorious B.I.G. by projecting an image of him on the stage and covering two of his songs. Brooklyn hip-hop pioneer Big Daddy Kane appeared later in the evening.

Bob Dylan, Barbara Streisand and the Smashing Pumpkins are all due to appear at the Barclays Center during its first two months.

(Editing by Andrew Heavens)

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1 of 9. A worker walks past a complete set of original cinema door panel posters from the film ''Thunderball'', during a media preview of ''50 Years of James Bond - the Auction'', at Christie's in London September 28, 2012. The set is estimated to sell for 5,600 - 7,400 GBP ($9,100-12,000) at an online-only auction from September 28 to October 8.

LONDON | Fri Sep 28, 2012 4:34pm EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - Christie's will offer 50 items of James Bond memorabilia over the coming week in a charity sale that culminates in a live auction next Friday, the 50th anniversary of the release of the first 007 movie "Dr. No".

The auction, which will raise funds for a range of charities including UNICEF, is one of a series of events being held around the world to mark the anniversary of one of the world's longest-running and most successful film franchises.

Fifty lots will be up for sale, many of them coming from EON Productions, the company behind the movie series.

Of the total, 40 will be sold online between September 28 and October 8 and 10 of the star items have been reserved for the live auction on October 5, "Global James Bond Day", at Christie's offices in South Kensington in London.

All lots will go on public display there from Saturday until October 4. Admittance is free.

"I think what we wanted to do was to celebrate the 50th anniversary in a meaningful way and let people have the opportunity to buy some of the things in our archive that we could raise money for charity from," said Michael G. Wilson, who along with Barbara Broccoli is guardian of the Bond films.

"There's a lot of things ... from 1,000 pounds ($1,600) on up, really," he told Reuters. "There's plenty of things for a whole range of collectors."

Among the highlights for him was a one-third scale model of an Aston Martin DB5 used in the filming of "Skyfall", the next Bond adventure which hits the screens in October.

The car was used in earlier Bonds and has become closely associated with the fictional double agent.

"In Skyfall we go back to the old Aston Martin, the DB5, we bring that out of mothball," Wilson said.

"We used it in the film but we had to make a model of it. We made an extra model, one third scale ... that was made for the film and I think that's a pretty unique thing to get."

The model is expected to fetch 30-40,000 pounds, while another Aston Martin built in 2008 and used in the opening sequence of the last Bond movie "Quantum of Solace" has a price tag of 100-150,000 pounds.

There is also a special edition of Bollinger champagne on offer for 10-15,000 pounds.

"Can you imagine, a champagne that comes out in an edition of 12 only?" Wilson said.

He added that Bond producers had been working with a number of charities for some time, although their ties to UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, were particularly close through the involvement of former Bond actor Roger Moore.

Among the smaller items being sold are 10 tarot cards used by Jane Seymour playing the character Solitaire in "Live and Let Die" and a belt with a golden bullet buckle worn by Christopher Lee as Scaramanga in "The Man With the Golden Gun".

"With memorabilia offered from every official Bond film ever made, the auction is sure to appeal to new and established fans of the famous British spy," said Nicolette Tomkinson, a director at Christie's.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

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HONG KONG | Fri Sep 28, 2012 11:06pm EDT

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Aluminum Corp of China (Chalco) (2600.HK) has ended an agreement to buy a 29.9 percent stake in Winsway Coking Coal (1733.HK) as it would not be able to win approvals from Chinese and overseas authorities by the September 30 deadline, it said in a stock exchange filing late on Friday.

The move comes weeks after Chalco abandoned plans to buy a majority stake in Canada's Mongolia-focused coal miner South Gobi Resources (SGQ.TO) due to political hurdles.

Chalco had said in April that it would buy a stake in Winsway, which supplies Mongolian coking coal imported into China, for $308 million.

(Reporting by Vikram Subhedar; Editing by Daniel Magnowski)

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Author Salman Rushdie gestures during an interview with Reuters in central London, September 28, 2012.

LONDON | Fri Sep 28, 2012 2:43pm EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - Salman Rushdie believes literature has lost much of its influence in the West, and movie stars like George Clooney and Angelina Jolie have taken the place of Susan Sontag and Norman Mailer when it comes to addressing the big issues.

The British author, who has just released his account of 10 years in hiding after an Iranian fatwa was declared against him in 1989, believes the "Arab Spring" uprisings have failed but that there is hope for freer Muslim societies in the future.

He has warm words for his elder son Zafar who was nine when the famous edict which amounted to a death sentence was announced, but the tone turns harsh when dealing with famous figures like Rupert Murdoch, the Prince of Wales and John Le Carre who he said failed to back him during the dark years.

And with the publication of "Joseph Anton", a 633-page autobiography, the 65-year-old is finally determined to put the fatwa behind him.

"I have a sense of people thinking it (literature) is less important," he told Reuters on Friday in a wide-ranging interview at Waterstone's book store in central London.

"If you look at America, for instance, there is a generation older than mine in which writers like Susan Sontag and Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal would have a significant public voice on issues of the day. Now there's virtually no writers.

"Instead you have movie stars, so if you are George Clooney or Angelina Jolie then you do have the ability to speak about public issues ... and people will listen in a way they would once listen to Mailer and Sontag. That's a change."

He added that in authoritarian countries the situation was different, and literature had held on to some of its power.

"In those places literature continues to be important as you can see by the steps taken against writers," he said, counting China among them.

FATWA AND FREE SPEECH

More than almost anyone, Rushdie sums up one of the most pressing problems facing leaders today - the tension between free speech and the desire to avoid offending people's faith.

He argues in his book that he does not feel his novel "The Satanic Verses", which prompted the fatwa, should have been particularly offensive to Muslims in the first place.

But Rushdie said he would continue to defend even the most provocative individual's right to express an opinion.

Joseph Anton (Rushdie's pseudonym while he was in hiding) hit the shelves at the same time as a film, made in the United States mocking the Prophet Mohammad, sparked riots across the Muslim world leading to many deaths.

"It's clear that you have to defend things you don't agree with," he said, when asked if he thought the film should have been censored in any way.

"What is free speech if it's only for people that you agree with? Often in the free speech argument you find yourself defending stuff you really dislike. I've seen this film and it's as bad as it can be. It's so incompetent that you wonder how anyone can get upset about it."

He described what he called the "outrage industry" in which people deliberately "inflamed the faithful".

Part of that "industry" pointed the finger at him again in recent weeks, with a semi-official Iranian foundation upping the bounty on his head to $3.3 million.

Asked if he feared for his life, Rushdie replied: "The world is a dangerous place and there's never a 100 percent guarantee, but in general for the last decade it's been really okay."

The author who won a Booker Prize in 1981 for "Midnight's Children" said he saw hope for a better understanding between Muslim and non-Muslim countries, but only in the long-term.

"I'm less optimistic in the short-term because I think right now the temperature is very high, but in the medium- to long-term I think it will change," he said.

"In those countries in which Islamic radicalism has been most powerful it's also most disliked. So the people of Iran are not enamored of the Ayatollah's regime, the people of Afghanistan were not enamored of the Taliban."

He believed the "Arab Spring" uprisings had failed, but that the fight for a free society would not go away.

"I think in the long-term you have to believe that this very young population in the Arab world demanding a better life for itself will somehow make its views known and I don't think we've heard the last of that."

PRAISE FOR SON

Elements of Joseph Anton are intensely intimate. It speaks of the death of close friends and family members including Rushdie's first wife Clarissa, while his second wife Marianne Wiggins is portrayed as delusional.

He points fingers at those he thought betrayed him, although in the interview he denied setting out to settle scores.

His elder son Zafar, who was nine when the fatwa was declared and who saw his father only occasionally in the first few years, features prominently.

"In a way he had a harder job than me because he had to grow up too," he said of his son.

"He was nine when this began, he was 21 when it ended so that's an extraordinary atmosphere in which to grow up having to conceal your father's home address from your friends.

"He could easily have been messed up by it, but instead he comes out of it serene, good-natured mature, much calmer than me. I'm the arm-waver in the family. He's the sort of unflappable voice of serenity and reason."

He said he was worried when his second son Milan was born.

"I thought, 'here I am bringing another child into this nightmare and what are we going to do? How is he going to go to school? Does he have to start lying at the age of two?

"In the end I just thought that it was a kind of act of optimism to have a child. It was a way of saying there's going to be a life after this."

Rushdie said the fatwa was not something he would choose to live through, even though it made him one of the world's best-known writers and opened doors to the great and good from President Bill Clinton to U2's Bono and downwards.

"I would have much rather it hadn't (happened)," he said. "But given that it did I am prepared to try and use that experience in order to say what I think about what's happening.

"If you had offered me, on February 13, 1989 for this not to happen on February 14 I would have taken you on, because I was perfectly content with my life as it was. I had a good life as a writer, I had written some books that were well-liked.

"I would much rather have my 40s back. I was 41 when it started and that decade, which is supposed to be the prime of life, for me turned into a kind of nightmare."

WIG DISGUISE

Joseph Anton is a highly personal account of Rushdie's life on the run, of relationships which flowered and died, of swanky parties where he rubbed shoulders with the rich and famous and of years of despair and frustration.

It is tragic, funny and at times both.

Rushdie recalls scurrying to the bathroom to avoid being discovered by the cleaning lady in one of many safe houses. His guards suggest a wig as a disguise, but when he goes out wearing it a man calls out: "There's that bastard Rushdie in a wig."

He said he hoped Joseph Anton would help him move on from his past, and in particular the fatwa: "I think it's a way of drawing a line under it, you know?"

With a broad smile, he concluded: "I do think that in future, if I do publish future books and somebody wants to go back into this story I can just hit them over the head with a 600-page book."

* Joseph Anton is published in Britain by Jonathan Cape, an imprint of Random House.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White)

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DUBAI | Sat Sep 29, 2012 3:23am EDT

DUBAI (Reuters) - Dubai's Emaar Properties EMAR.DU, the builder of the world's tallest tower, has sold one of its hotel assets to an Abu Dhabi-based real estate firm for an undisclosed amount.

Eshraq Properties ESHR.AD said in a statement on Saturday that it has acquired Nuran Marina, a serviced hotel apartment owned by Emaar and located in the up-market Dubai Marina area.

Emaar was not immediately available for comment.

Dubai's largest developer has looked to shift away from its home market where real estate prices have slumped by more than 60 percent in the aftermath of the debt crisis in 2009.

Emaar's chairman, Mohammed Alabbar, had denied reports in October last year that it was looking to offload its Al Manzil and Qamaradeen hotels.

The developer announced plans this month to build a new hotel in the Dubai's high-end Downtown area, its first major hotel project since the property crisis.

Eshraq, which has assets of about 1.5 billion dirhams, listed on the Abu Dhabi Securities Market .ADI in September last year. It raised 825 million dirhams ($225 million) in an over-subscribed initial public offering (IPO).

Eshraq said it would carry on with its strategy to acquire other real estate projects in the country.

(Reporting by Stanley Carvalho; Writing by Praveen Menon; Editing by Angus McDowall and Robert Birsel)

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Greek Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras leaves after a meeting with Prime Minister Antonis Samaras at the Prime Minister's office in Athens September 20, 2012.

ATHENS | Fri Sep 28, 2012 10:22am EDT

ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece will unveil a draft budget for 2013 on Monday which will cut deeper into public spending to impress international lenders but also prolong the economic pain of the Greek people.

Athens is keen to see its bailout funding resume as its next 31.5 billion euro tranche has been pushed back while inspectors from the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund decide if its current program of cuts is on track.

Greeks are bracing for more pain to bring the country's public finances closer to a primary surplus - where all spending other than debt interest is covered by taxes - a milestone on the road to coming to grips with its debt mountain.

Greek police clashed with hooded rioters as tens of thousands took to the streets of Athens on this week in the country's biggest anti-austerity protest in more than a year.

Greece becomes the latest euro zone member to tighten their budget further, with Spain and France this week also seeking to prove they can make the cuts needed to keep lenders and markets onside.

Next year's budget will include more cuts in public sector pay, pensions and welfare benefits as part of an 11.5 billion euro austerity package of savings that will be spread out over the next two years.

"It's going to be a tough budget, projecting a sixth year of recession," a senior government official told Reuters. "It will focus on further savings, incorporating measures agreed by the political leaders."

"This budget will be another step to get the country closer to financial independence, reducing the state's operating costs," the official said.

After weeks of haggling over budget cuts, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras's allies in the coalition government have struck a deal on the composition of the package of savings and are ironing out the final details.

Athens needs to seal the deal soon so it can push the austerity package through parliament before an October meeting of euro zone finance ministers.

Another government official who declined to be named told Reuters next year's draft budget will embody a substantial chunk of some 7.5 billion euros of spending cuts that are part of the austerity package.

Struggling to shrink its budget hole to 7.3 percent of national output this year from 9.1 percent in 2011, Greece will likely miss the target as a percentage of GDP as its economy slumped by a deeper-than-projected 7 percent.

The EU Commission had forecast an economic contraction of 4.7 percent in 2012 but belt-tightening took a bigger toll on economic activity, suppressing domestic demand and driving the jobless rate to a record 24.4 percent.

As a result, this year's primary deficit - which excludes debt servicing costs - will also exceed a targeted 1.0 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). The finance ministry expects the primary deficit at 1.5 percent of national output.

"The new budget will be challenging. The government will need to generate a primary surplus for the first time in many years," said Eurobank economist Platon Monokroussos.

"Based on my estimates, Greece needs a primary surplus of at least 1.5 percent of GDP to stabilise and start a gradual reduction of its public debt-to-GDP ratio," he said.

(Writing by George Georgiopoulos; Editing by Toby Chopra)

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A restoration expert arranges the ruffles on a blouse that belonged to iconic Mexican painter Frida Kahlo at the ''Blue House'' in the neighborhood of Coyoacan in Mexico City September 27, 2012.

MEXICO CITY | Fri Sep 28, 2012 4:33pm EDT

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The colorful dresses of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo will go on display for the first time in November after being kept hidden from public view for 50 years at the request of her husband, acclaimed muralist Diego Rivera.

Curators of the Kahlo's "Blue House" in Mexico City discovered a trove of 300 dresses, bathing suits, accessories and photographs in 2004 and are now ready to show the public 22 items from the unique wardrobe that turned her into a fashion muse.

The exhibit explores Kahlo's fascination with Mexico's indigenous women and her penchant for richly embroidered ethnic frocks, flowery headpieces and ornate silver jewelry that earned her a photo shoot with Vogue magazine in 1937.

It also reveals how she chose clothes to hide her disfigurement after a bout of childhood polio that left one leg thinner than the other and a devastating bus accident that broke her spine in three places and left her in constant pain and scarred from subsequent surgeries.

"We must remember that Frida - like Diego - wanted the colors, the dress, the culture of Mexican women to be public and known," said Carlos Phillips, head of the museums that exhibit Kahlo and Rivera's work.

"They were attempting to rescue a people which had been abandoned. Mexican society dressed like Europeans. Those types of clothes weren't appreciated as much anymore," he said.

Kahlo and Rivera are two of Mexico's most celebrated figures, and their on-off stormy marriage was among the most prominent of the 20th century art world.

Kahlo, who died from pneumonia in 1954 at age 47, led a troubled life fraught with illness and tumultuous love affairs. A member of the Mexican Communist Party, she was a fierce supporter of the country's traditional culture.

"Frida Kahlo without a doubt is a very important icon in the fashion scene," said Kelly Talamas, editor of Vogue magazine for Mexico and Latin America.

"She had more of a dark side, and also had her side in which she was inspired by the colors and the textures and the people and the culture here in Mexico," she said. "I think that's what's most inspiring to designers, that the pieces that she wore create a story."

Vogue has commissioned contemporary Frida-inspired pieces from several designers to display alongside the originals.

PAIN AND DISFIGUREMENT

Kahlo began painting as a teenager while convalescing from the crash in 1925 and her work and the numerous self-portraits for which she is best known reflect the searing pain she lived with until her death.

The museum had respected Rivera's request to keep Frida's clothing under lock and key for half a century after she died in 1954. Rivera had wanted to preserve the items and protect them from people who might not take care of them properly.

When they did start examining the items, they were thrilled to find the exact outfit worn in the 1937 Vogue shoot.

Seen by Reuters, it features a European-inspired green, ruffled blouse with high neck and long sleeves, with small buttons down the back, and a voluminous, ivory-colored silk taffeta skirt with a floral print and lace hem. A magenta shawl wrapped around the shoulders completed the look. The blouse now has some stains from Kahlo's oil paints.

"She didn't just choose any dress. This particular dress ... symbolizes a strong woman," said Circe Henestrosa, the exhibit's curator.

"It's also a dress that projected her political beliefs and her desire to promote her Mexican identity. As far as her disability, it's a dress that allowed her to hide her physical imperfections," she said.

(Writing by Bernd Debusmann Junior and Louise Egan; Editing by Simon Gardner)

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Former head of 20th Century Fox Tom Rothman (L) and Director Lee Ang attend the opening night gala presentation of film ''Life Of Pi'' at the 50th New York Film Festival at Alice Tully Hall in New York September 28, 2012.

NEW YORK | Fri Sep 28, 2012 10:20pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Once considered impossible to make, the big-screen 3D adaptation of the bestselling novel "Life of Pi" opened the 50th New York Film Festival on Friday, marking another advance in digital filmmaking.

The movie's director, Ang Lee, hit the red carpet at the big-budget movie's world premiere, with the black-tie audience getting the first glimpse of the spiritual story of a boy stranded on a boat with a tiger. It kicked off the screenings of more than 160 films over 17 days at the New York festival.

One of the world's most respected movie showcases, the festival typically emphasizes the art of cinema by focusing on the best films from the year's European festivals rather than Hollywood-style premieres. But the event is still seen as an important step in gathering buzz as Hollywood's awards season gets going.

More splashy world premieres than usual are on this year's schedule, including "Sopranos" maker David Chase's film feature debut, "Not Fade Away" and Robert Zemeckis' first live-action film "Flight," starring Denzel Washington, which will close the festival.

"Life of Pi" uses computer-generated imagery to bring a cinematic feel to the tale of a Hindu boy who survives a shipwreck and gets stranded on a lifeboat for 227 days with a spotted hyena, an injured zebra, an orangutan and a Bengal tiger called Richard Parker.

It is director Lee's riskiest film to date, even after 2005's "Brokeback Mountain," for which he won the best director Oscar. That film generated controversy for breaking barriers about gay portrayals on screen.

The 57-year-old Taiwanese born-director told the premiere on Friday night the film took four years to make and he joked about learning the hard way the difficulties of making a film in 3D predominantly set in the middle of the ocean portraying a host of zoo animals.

"'Life of Pi' was such an incredible story I just couldn't help myself, I had to tell this story," he said to audience applause. "This was an incredible journey for me."

DIRECTOR FOUND NOVEL 'MIND-BOGGLING'

With a budget of nearly $100 million, the film that opens in November in the United States is considered one of the riskier holiday season films.

Early reviews posted on Friday were mixed. The Hollywood reporter called it "exceptionally beautiful" and appealing to diverse audiences. Variety called it visually stunning but lacking in dramatic tension and grit.

Lee told reporters earlier on Friday that he read the novel soon after its release in 2001, and found it "mind-boggling." But he added, "I remember thinking to myself, nobody in their right mind" would transfer it to film due to the technical difficulties of filming the story.

Spurred on by its spiritual message, Lee agreed to make the movie and saw 3D as the only way to realize it, even before "Avatar" in 2009 broke through as a box-office bonanza for 3D movies.

"Life of Pi" stars novice Indian actor Suraj Sharma, who was plucked from more than 3,000 hopefuls. The book's author, Canadian writer Yann Martel, said he never imagined the film adaptation. "It was cinematic in my mind but I never thought I would actually see it on the screen, that it would be too complicated to do," he said.

Other films looking to gain favor with critics and audiences coming off showings at earlier festivals include Michael Haneke's "Amour," Romanian director Cristian Mungiu's "Beyond the Hills," Noah Baumbach's black-and-white ode to New York, "Frances Ha," starring Greta Gerwig, and Chile director Pablo Larrain's "No."

(Editing by Richard Chang and Peter Cooney)

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Homes that are valued at over $1 million, sit along Bersano Lane in Los Gatos, California September 6, 2012.

CHICAGO | Fri Sep 28, 2012 8:55am EDT

CHICAGO (Reuters) - While there's some comfort in a slowly improving U.S. economic climate, the majority of Americans are still trying to close a prosperity gap that has widened in the last ten years.

There is the painful realization that a combination of stagnating wages, job loss, recessions and depletion of wealth is morphing the middle class into a "muddled class" unable to keep up with the cost of living. This decline has been most pronounced over the past decade.

The most recent Census Bureau study showed that real median household income fell eight percent from 2007 through last year, and is almost nine percent lower than the 1999 level. Can families climb back? It's possible, but not without some financial rigor.

As many analysts have noted, the early part of this century has been a lost decade for most of the middle class. Some income experts cite a "Gini Index," which measures the disparity between higher and lower income groups. A zero means perfect equality between groups, and one is perfect inequality; meaning a huge gap between the lower and middle class and upper-tier earners.

Between 2010 and 2011, the Gini index increased 1.6 percent, to 0.477, the first time the measure showed an annual increase since 1993, the Census Bureau noted. Higher inequality translates into more losers than winners based on the sheer size of the middle class, echoing dozens of other reports showing that the top one percent of the population is reaping most of the benefits of economic growth and tax advantages.

The multiple roundhouse punches of the dot-com meltdown, two recessions and the 2008 housing meltdown wiped out much of the 43-percent gain in net worth that middle-income families experienced from 1992 to 2001. That's when the bulk of white-collar wage earners were involuntarily moved into 401(k) plans and stock mutual funds as the housing market kept rising.

According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, median net worth of middle-income families dropped 28 percent from 2001 to 2010, which "erased two decades of gains". Net worth is basically what you own, minus liabilities such as debt. With paltry 401(k) savings and loss in home equity, many households now have a negative net worth.

The lost decade hurt unmarried, non-college educated Americans from ages 30 to 44 the hardest. Least impacted were those over 65, who were largely enjoying the protection of Medicare, Social Security and guaranteed defined-benefit pensions.

Given that the economy is not going to show a robust rebound soon, and some jobs may be lost for good due to automation, downsizing and off-shoring, is there any way to reclaim prosperity if you're slipping into the muddled class? Here are some strategies to move forward:

* Cost out and compare your lifestyle - When Pew did its study, it asked middle-income Americans to estimate their lifestyle costs. The median amounts were $85,000 per year in the East, $60,000 in the Midwest and $70,000 in the South and West. Those living in rural areas said $55,000 was the right amount. If you're living above your means in any area -- and you can relocate or lower your cost of living -- you could save money.

* Refinance - You can still take advantage of generational lows in mortgage rates as the housing market rebounds. Want to re-build your net worth? Take your mortgage payment savings and direct it into your retirement accounts. Buy funds that invest in high-quality, dividend-paying stocks such as the SPDR S&P International Dividend ETF (DWX), which gives you global diversification and decent dividend payments.

* Stay married - Those who stayed married from 2001 to 2011, according to Pew, saw their incomes rise almost 4 percent, compared to a more than 3 percent decline for those who separated or divorced. If your marital relationship is on an even keel, it tends to translate into more economic stability.

* Invest in your human capital - More education, especially courses that update your vocational skills, is always a good idea, particularly if a spouse can support you while you're learning. Those who had more education, i.e. graduate degrees, fared much better in income growth than those without college degrees.

* Reduce your investment expenses - This is the low-hanging fruit of rebuilding your net worth. Are you paying more than one percent annually in expenses on your 401(k) or other mutual funds? That's too much. You can easily pay half as much and invest the difference. Look to iShares, Vanguard, Fidelity, Schwab and SPDR groups for savings. (I invest in Vanguard, Fidelity and iShares funds because their costs are low and their fund offerings are numerous).

How do you reclaim a lost decade of economic destruction? You can't make up the difference overnight. But if you can refocus on lifestyle, savings and investments that make sense for you, it will be easier to find a more prosperous path.

(The author is a Reuters columnist and the opinions expressed are his own. For more from John Wasik see link.reuters.com/syk97s)

(Editing by Heather Struck and Andrew Hay)

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