But even with the Fed's doing nothing, home-loan rates are still going up.

That's because, on Monday, Fannie Mae, the government-backed company that buys most U.S. home mortgages, said it was slapping an extra 0.25 percent "Adverse Market" charge on loans it buys, starting this fall.

"We can look at this as a rate increase, or we can say that, in the past, they were undervaluing these mortgages. The effect is the same," said Joel Naroff, chief economist for Commerce Bank in Cherry Hill.

Except that Fannie's boosting its prices, instead of waiting for the Fed to raise the floor, has got to make Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke more comfortable with his own tough choices.

Fannie also said it would charge more to people with bad credit, and less to some with good credit. It sounds unfair to charge the highest rates to the people least likely to pay. But how else do you ration money to risky borrowers?

Higher Fannie pricing won't help the beaten-down home-construction business. It won't ease stressed-out borrowers, or turn renters into owners.

But it should help Fannie Mae pay its bills. Said Naroff: "With the taxpayers' bailing them out, Fannie's loan pricing needs to reflect reality."

Victory's reward

Yesterday, the prepaid mobile-phone company, based in Warren, N.J., committed to paying at least $100,000 to sponsor Soul events over the next year.

"It was amazing being down in New Orleans and seeing all the Philadelphia fans, and the amazing outfits they wore," said Stohrer, a Long Beach Island native. "And were you at the parade? That was wild. This is a hard-core group of fans. And these owners really connect with their fans."

Did our Philly fans in New Orleans behave just as they do at home? "Sure. They even brought their own judge," he said. "I'm kidding about the judge."

Soul people are Virgin's kind of customer. "Their appeal is immense to people who can't afford a season ticket to the Eagles," or who won't commit to a long-term Verizon or AT&T plan, Stohrer said.

Stohrer and Soul general manager Rich Lisk said they were still working on details of their promotions, including Bon Jovi's planned Soul concert in February.

But the phone promoter says his company is now part of the Soul lineup. "We have a vested interest in the team's success," Stohrer said.

Build this

Tower fans love it, but everyone I've talked to in the real estate business says the building is a very long shot, like the abortive Girard Square superblock, the decade-old Philadelphia World Trade Center proposal, and the even older plan to obliterate riverfront chunks of East Camden and turn the place into Disneyland, or something.

You need a tenant before you build a billion-dollar building.

"I hear it's going to be the National Football League," the owner of another Philadelphia high-rise told me.

That's nuts, I thought. Then I remembered that pro football was based here, in the 1950s. And isn't the NFL pretty much a media-entertainment company - like Comcast, whose actual tower is down the block from the proposed American Commerce Center? Oh, and we're cheaper than Manhattan, where the NFL now lives.

"We don't have any plans to go anywhere," NFL spokesman Greg Aiello assured me. "Yes, Bert Bell used to have his office in Bala Cynwyd. But Pete Roselle moved it to New York in 1960, and we've been here since." Major League Baseball said it wasn't leaving New York either.