Toyota Motors had recently repaired recalled cars that risked flaw of accelerating suddenly. However, the repaired cars have started malfunctioning again, to which Department of Transportation (DoT) has started investigating. DoT officials are generating reports based on consumers’ views and complaints. Finally, Morgan Stanley finds a buyer for its stake of 34.3% in China based China International Capital Corporation. However, buyer’s identity is not disclosed yet. General Growth Properties has been given a five-month extension to develop and present a plan to escape bankruptcy Vikram Pundit of Citibank has returned to Capitol Hill on Thursday. Meanwhile the financial institution still owns $25 billion provided by treasury and 27% stake is still owned by the government. Hundreds of people had invested and lost all the money in Ponzi scheme introduced by UBS, which was followed  [...]

Finance Minister of India, Pranab Mukherjee, outlined various plans for 2010. Let’s have a quick look at the highlights of his speech. According to Pranab, India’s first challenge is to arrive again at 9% GDP growth rate as soon as possible. Internal development of the country highly overlooked, and hence, the finance minister wants to deepen and broaden the agenda. He sees signs of improvement in domestic investment and foreign investors are being active again. However, he thinks it’s too early to say that the worst is gone. Hence, the country’s economy can be depended on the stimulus package, if things seem wavering again. A major concern, however, the country faces is the oil price. Due to its inability to get domestic prices down to world level, India has to import around 75% of its total oil consumption, which is definitely not a good sign. Therefore, as an immediate  [...]

After a bitter debate, the European antitrust administrators and Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) agreed to provide a ballet screen that will give European population an opportunity to download and use any internet browser, all of them Microsoft Internet Explorer’s rivals. The gang of rivals ready to compete includes Safari (AAPL), Google Chrome (GOOG), Opera and Firefox. The page will contain, by next week, links to download any of the available browsers. However, the order of list will change every time the user refreshes the page. According to the antitrust administrators of Europe, this is probably the best way to make people aware about the other available browsers. The static page browserchoice.eu runs Javascript, which keeps of track of jumbled lists and automatically rearranges itself. Microsoft isn’t definitely doing itself any favor. In fact, this ballet page seems to  [...]

The Chinese government seems to be out of control as its trying quite desperately to hold the economy. And frankly, it was expected. The administration pumped in a considerable amount as a stimulus package, which comprised 14% of the recently reported GDP. The base of the economy was already quite wavering, and if you dump in so much in relatively short term, you witness bubbles, in fact, superbubbles. However, it isn’t only the recent actions that’s disturbing Chinese economy. We will have to turn back and explore the last decade to known the factual reasons. To boost the economy, the Chinese government, around a decade ago, kept the value of its currency extremely low. Hence, the cheap goods produced by China seemed to be even cheaper in the international market. They targeted growth, at any cost. Finding the goods quite inexpensive, the demand for Chinese products in the US market  [...]

For Apple (AAPL), last quarter was quite solid. And with the introduction of new iPad this week, the stock seems to be a steadfast yielding source for investors. One cannot deny that businesses all around the world are operated through technology and a diminutive progress affects most of the industries. However, the transformation of personal computer into a tablet is a big revolution. I am quite eager about how this tablet would affect mid-sized, big, new and old companies. I am not referring about the advantages and disadvantages of a product (you will find it abundantly on the web this week). My concern is – will we witness a massive transformation in the way things are done today? Money spent on Marketing Though this device is quite nano, but I am sure it would attract big money. No, I ain’t talking about money through advertising. I am referring to the huge sum spent by companies  [...]

The results of global search statistics have been announced and predictably Google (GOOG) snatched the top position for frequently being used to search websites across the world. Surging from 55.6 billion searches in Dec 2008 to 87.8 billion in Dec 2009, it rose over 58%. Google, as usual, was the top ranker and it wasn’t a difficult guess. Yahoo (YHOO) searches totaled 9.4 billion, whereas Baidu (BIDU) had 8.5 billion. So, Google is far ahead in the competition. In December 2009, over two-third of the total searches (131 billion) were contributed by Google. However, if we gauge the leap in number of searches, Microsoft (MSFT) emerged to be the winner. With 2.4 billion searches in Dec 2008, it rose around 70% to reach the figure of 4.1 billion in Dec 2009. This surge can be mainly due to the introduction of its new search engine, Bing, which seems to holding grip quite rapidly. Another  [...]

The world’s biggest retailer Wal-Mart Stores recently announced that is has cut prices on 100 electronic items including plasma televisions, digital cameras and mobile phones. Price cuts include a $500 reduction on a Panasonic 42-inch plasma television to $1,294. This follows the earlier price cuts announced on a collection of toys and games which had boosted sales volume. The world’s biggest retailer is aggressively cutting prices as it tries to raise weak sales at its U.S. stores. Last month, the retailer had started selling more than 100 toys for $10 each. Walmart.com cut prices on 10 unreleased hardcover books to $10 each, fuelling a price war with its online competitor Amazon.com. Both online retailers then cut their prices on those books to $9 each, after which Walmart.com reduced a penny more off that price and was selling them for $8.99 each amounting to discounts of nearly  [...]