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Once domestic vehicle sales began to decrease 30% per month, as they did beginning last fall, and then the rate increased to 40% or more the last three months, there was no way that Ford could finance its losses over the next year. The news that Toyota (TM) and Honda (HMC) might seek assistance from the Japanese government meant that not a single car company in the world would get by on its own. (Read about the CEOs behind Detroit's Big Three...
...left unsaid in the news from Ford is that it is academic whether aid for the car companies comes from their private debt holders or the government. The UAW will bend to another round of concessions. At the rate at which The Big Three probably lost money last month, the industry could need $50 billion or more in financial support between now and the end of this year. That assumes that car sales drop at a rate of only...
...health care, pensions, unemployment benefits and other social services. (U.S. social-welfare spending as a percentage of GDP is about 20%.) That is a depressingly low figure, even for a relatively poor developing country. I recently interviewed a migrant worker from Sichuan province who several months ago broke his arm in an industrial accident. He's back home now, without a job, without unemployment benefits, and has no access to health care to treat his arm, which still pains him "to the point that I can't work," he told me. He now lives with his parents - peasants who work...
...study published in this month's issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, researchers recruited 42 adults: half were between the ages of 50 and 74, and half were aged 25 to 35. The participants were given either alcoholic drinks - roughly equivalent to a couple of glasses of wine - or placebo beverages, then asked to perform tasks designed to test their motor skills. They were also asked to rate their level of intoxication on a scale of 1 to 10. While the older people were more impaired by the alcohol, they also consistently underestimated their drunkenness. That...
...China's economy is slowing, officials see the global recession as a prime opportunity to cheaply acquire holdings of strategically important natural resources such as iron ore, copper, oil and gas - commodities China's leadership knows it will need much more of in the long run. In the past month, Chinese companies have bought assets abroad at an unprecedented pace. Aluminum Corp. of China (Chinalco), a major holding company focused on resources, has announced plans to invest $19.5 billion in Rio Tinto, one of the world's largest mining companies. If completed the deal would be the biggest foreign purchase...