PhillyDeals: What, where he loves: Jingles in Philly

Center City native Dan Mufson, 28, spends his days composing slinky, pounding, syncopated advertising rhythms and melodies for big corporate clients such as Sony, IBM, Mercedes-Benz, eBay, Hershey, and Comcast.

He made the Super Bowl on Sunday with his soundtrack for the Skechers women's shoes ad.

Mufson didn't work directly with the commercial's lead actress, underdressed TV personality Kim Kardashian, who spends the 30-second spot caressing, and then firing, her personal trainer, and replacing him with a pair of pink training shoes.

"I did it from my studio" in Old City, Mufson told me.

Mufson got a call for the job from Massive Music, a Los Angeles music-production company that knew his rep from his years hustling ad gigs in New York's Flatiron district.

Mufson says he "fell into the business" after

quitting college and taking an unpaid internship at a recording studio called New York Noise in 2005.

"They did commercials and records. One day, I asked to take a stab at a commercial. I ended up winning the job," Mufson said.

A graduate of South Philly's Creative and Performing Arts High School, where "it was great to be around other creative kids," Mufson was "never tempted" to follow his father into the investment-banking business. Michael Mufson is a partner at Philadelphia's Mufson, Howe, Hunter & Co. L.L.C. The younger Mufson said his parents were "supportive ... but we're really different."

But since he's made a name for himself, Mufson's been happy to make Philly his high-tech, low-cost operating base. As a freelance composer for music producers and ad agencies, "you can do what you love, and make a living," Mufson said of Philadelphia. "The best of both worlds."

There has been a lot of happy talk about strong retail sales last Christmas - and some products, notably electronics, did fly off shelves. But a closer look at prices and manufacturers' results raises troubling signs, writes analyst David Strasser in a report for clients at Janney Capital Markets

.

"The consumer environment [in the fourth quarter] was weaker than anticipated," as vendors cut prices but still struggled to move soap, underwear, and other basics, according to Strasser.

Home Depot cut prices for heavy kitchen appliance prices, forcing Lowe's and Best Buy to "fire back" with cuts of their own, he noted.

But appliance-manufacturer Whirlpool says North American sales fell 1 percent for the fourth quarter, despite holiday price cuts "almost the entire quarter" and a hopeful 5 percent boost in shipments. Now, after appliances have piled up unsold, Whirlpool and other makers are having to boost prices, as steel and other costs rose in response to foreign demand.

"The trends are hard to ignore," Strasser concluded. "The combination of inflationary pressure hurting vendor margins, upcoming price increases in a fragile consumer environment, and high levels of inventory" is squeezing manufacturers and sellers.

President Obama's Treasury Department will propose "a significant reduction in the government's role in the housing market" this week, analysts at FBR Capital Markets in the suburbs of Washington told clients in a report Monday.

In the last two years, the Federal Housing Administration, the  Department of Veterans Affairs, and troubled government-run home-finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have funded or backed nine out of 10 U.S. mortgage loans, say FBR analysts Edward Mills, Steve Stelmach, and Paul J. Miller Jr., a former Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia examiner.

They expect that the Obama administration, facing "hot-seat" hearings in the GOP-run House, will call for cutting government support from 90 percent down to about 50 percent of all home loans, plus stricter lending policies and lower loan limits.

Should all Americans be homeowners, as Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush suggested? "There has been a shift among policymakers to call for increased support of affordable rental housing," Mills and Miller say. Treasury "will offer options on how to better support the development of multifamily housing and affordable rental units."

Low-rent landlords and builders will get the breaks first-time home buyers used to get.