Finance news. My opinion.

Most Japanese automakers reported lackluster vehicle production and sales for July, underscoring ongoing malaise in the industry as it grapples with a strong yen, precarious global economy and recovery from the March 11 tsunami.

Worldwide production at Toyota Motor Corp. fell 6.1 percent from a year earlier to 594,614 vehicles, the company said Tuesday. Its domestic sales of passenger cars, trucks and buses tumbled more than 35 percent, and exports fell 5 percent due to weaker shipments to North America.

Toyota, however, said its production returned to levels that were near to what it had planned before the March earthquake and tsunami struck Japan’s northeastern coast, wiping out auto parts suppliers.

The automaker is preparing to ramp up production in the coming months to make up for the capacity lost to the disaster. Between October and March 2012, the automaker plans to build an extra 350,000 vehicles.

The numbers were worse at Honda Motor Co., where global production tumbled more than 34 percent to 206,727 vehicles in July. It was the sixth straight month of decline on line pay day loans.

Honda’s domestic sales of vehicles fell 31.5 percent and exports retreated more than 19 percent.

Standing above the crowd was Nissan Motor Co., which continued to gain momentum and set company records in July.

The Yokohama-based automaker recorded an almost 18 percent jump in worldwide output to 388,680 vehicles _ its best-ever July performance. Production in the U.S. benefited from stronger demand for the Altima sedan, Nissan said.

Although Nissan’s Japan sales fell 17 percent in volume terms, global sales overall rose 8 percent. Exports surged more than 23 percent.

Among Japan’s other car makers, Suzuki Motor Corp. posted a 3.6 percent decline in global production to 228,147 vehicles.

Worldwide output at Mazda Motor Corp. fell almost 13 percent to 103,384 vehicles. At Mitsubishi Motors Corp., it declined about 5 percent to 97,862 vehicles.

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Power is returning for hundreds of thousands of people after Hurricane Irene passed through coastal states in the South.

Repair crews rushed out in Virginia, the Carolinas and Maryland Sunday after Irene turned north. An enormous job lies ahead. Irene flooded power stations, toppled trees and tore down electrical wires. More than four million homes and businesses are still without power.

In Manhattan, Consolidated Edison said it was optimistic that it wouldn’t need to cut power to the financial district. So far, sensitive underground power lines haven’t been flooded, the company says.

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Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has a message for Congress: Do more to stimulate hiring and growth _ or risk delaying the economy’s return to full health.

Bernanke held out the prospect Friday that the Fed may take further steps later to help the economy. But he offered no new plans for now.

At a time when Congress has focused on shrinking budget deficits, Bernanke agreed that doing so is important for the long term. But he warned lawmakers not to “disregard the fragility of the current economic recovery.”

Investors had hoped Bernanke would use his much-anticipated speech at an economic conference in Jackson Hole to unveil some aggressive measure to jolt the economy.

He didn’t. But he did say the Fed’s September policy meeting will be extended to two days, instead of the scheduled one, to permit a “fuller discussion” of the central bank’s options.

“He appears to be saying that the Fed has largely played its part and that the politicians need to step up their game,” said Paul Dales, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics.

Investors seemed to take comfort from Bernanke’s view that the job market and the economy will return to full health in the long run and the notion that the Fed might provide more help in the future. After initial losses, the Dow Jones industrial average closed up 134 points. Broader stock indexes also gained.

Bernanke’s speech came shortly after the government said the economy grew at a scant 1 percent annual rate in the April-June quarter _ even slower than previously estimated.

The economy is still hobbled by a depressed housing market, high oil prices and fears that the European debt crisis will deteriorate into a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis. The Dow has lost about 11 percent of its value since late July on fears that the economy might slip back into recession.

On Friday, Bernanke blamed this summer’s political squabbling over raising the federal debt limit for undermining consumer and business confidence. And he warned that further gridlock in Washington would “pose ongoing risks to growth.”

The Fed chief noted that the depressed housing sector has delayed a full recovery in the broader economy. He said the home market should gradually return to health _ a process he said the government should support.

In his speech in Jackson Hole a year ago, Bernanke signaled that the Fed would begin a new round of Treasury bond purchases to try to lower long-term interest rates, spur spending and boost the stock market. His words ignited a 28 percent, eight-month rally in the Dow.

This time, Bernanke merely repeated that the Fed “has a range of tools that could be used to provide additional monetary stimulus fast cash without a hassle.”

The most powerful weapon the Fed has left would be a third round of bond purchases. Critics, from congressional Republicans to some Fed officials, have raised concerns that the Fed’s Treasury purchases could ignite inflation and speculative buying on Wall Street, while doing little to aid the economy.

Bernanke pushed back against that notion in his speech. He said that with oil and other commodity prices easing, he expects long-term inflation to remain low well into 2012.

Others have questioned whether any further lowering of long-term rates is needed. Investors seeking the safety of U.S. debt have forced down the yield on the 10-year Treasury note to 2.19 percent _ a full point lower than it was when the Fed completed its Treasury purchases about two months ago. Yet the economy is still sputtering.

The Fed also could take more modest steps. It could eliminate interest payments on money that banks keep on deposit at the Fed, encouraging them to make loans instead. Or it could reshuffle its portfolio of investments, replacing shorter-term bonds with longer-term ones to help push down long-term interest rates.

Aneta Markowska, senior U.S. economist at Societe Generale, said the extension of the Fed’s September meeting to two days suggests the possibility that it could unveil a new program soon.

Roberto Perli, a former Fed official who is a managing director at International Strategy & Investment, said Bernanke and other Fed policymakers are waiting to see if the economy improves in the current July-September quarter.

John Silvia, chief economist at Wells Fargo, suggested that Bernanke would have to overcome opposition within the Fed to take any further bold steps to lift the economy. Earlier this month, three of the 10 members on the Fed’s policy committee voted against Bernanke’s plan to keep short-term rates near zero through mid-2013.

Because of that rare level of dissent, Silvia doubts that Bernanke could muster support for a third round of Treasury purchases.

“When you’re dealing with three dissents,” he said, “it’s hard to have an aggressive policy.”

Many economists note, however, that the economy’s main problem is not that interest rates are too high. They say the main problem is that consumer spending remains too weak. So businesses feel little incentive to hire, expand and invest.

Until demand for goods and services steps up, the Fed has limited ability to strengthen the economy.

Joshua Shapiro, an economist at MFR Inc., said Bernanke was conceding that the Fed has “basically exhausted its tools.”

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China plans to inspect all of its showcase bullet train lines following a crash last month that killed 40 people, as authorities work to determine who is ultimately responsible for the disaster.

The State Administration of Work Safety will present a report on the July 23 crash to China’s top leaders in September, the agency’s spokesman Huang Yi said in comments Tuesday on its website.

“Of course, a period of analysis is required to determine both the direct and indirect factors behind the crash and to work out who is responsible,” Huang said.

The monthlong inspections of 49 projects and 6,000 kilometers (3,700 miles) of railway lines will run through the middle of next month, and train operations and construction will be suspended if safety problems are found, officials say.

In the crash last month near the city of Wenzhou in eastern China’s Zhejiang province, a lightning strike caused one bullet train to stall and a sensor failure that allowed a second train to keep moving on the same track and slam into it.

Huang said it was clear that there were deficiencies in the safety management of the system.

“This was an accident that was both avoidable and preventable,” he said.

The collision killed 40 people and injured 177, including a toddler orphaned by the crash who was rescued nearly a day later.

The official Xinhua News Agency reported Tuesday that the two-year-old girl, Xiang Weiyi, has been moved to Shanghai to help her recover from severe injuries to one of her legs, after relatives appealed for better help for the girl.

The girl will need a “pretty long time to recover,” it quoted pediatric orthopedist Dr. Zhao Li as saying.

China has 13 high-speed railways in operation, with 26 under construction and 23 more planned, although approvals of new projects were frozen following the Wenzhou crash. Delays on a new Beijing-Shanghai line blamed on equipment and power failures have fanned public anger over the cost and potential risks of the program.

The government has ordered reduced speeds and cut ticket prices for the lines.

Earlier plans called for expanding the network to 10,000 miles (16,000 kilometers) of track by 2020.

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The “grocery store” takes on many forms these days for shoppers like Melisa Dukes.

On a recent night, her grocery was the Target in Bridgeton where she filled her cart with frozen pizzas, grapes, milk, Pop-Tarts, Bud Select and vitamin water.

Other days, her grocery is Schnucks, where she goes for specialty items such as fresh meats cut to order.

And sometimes, it can be a CVS or Walgreens if she see sees a good deal on lunch meat payday loans.

Indeed, these days shoppers can buy soy milk from Dollar Tree, rice at Walgreens and premade salads at the local convenience store. From drug stores to gas stations, all kinds of stores have been expanding food offerings in an effort to drive more foot traffic and sales.

After testing the waters with a handful of stores, Target is now converting the rest of its local stores to the retailer’s “PFresh” format

Residents with stranded solar projects caught a small break Friday.

Those waiting

VIA Rail commuters to Toronto are uniting to fight proposed ticketing changes that they say will make the system less flexible and convenient to them.

It also prevents them from gaining the same HST exemption and federal income-tax break granted to GO Train and TTC pass users.

In reply, the company says that holding seats empty for commuters who might not show up is no way to run a railroad.

Typically, commuters buy open-ended tickets in packets of 20

Emerson to sell heating products division

The nation’s two largest hot dog makers are taking their legal beefs Monday to federal court in Chicago, where a judge will determine whether Oscar Mayer or Ball Park franks broke false-advertising laws in their efforts to become top dog.

Legal arguments in the long-ranging wiener war between Chicago companies pit Sara Lee Corp, which makes Ball Park franks, against Kraft Foods Inc., which makes Oscar Mayer. The case could clarify how far companies nationwide can go when boasting that their product is better than a competitor’s.

Thousands of pages of filings in three years of pretrial litigation by both food-industry giants demonstrate that the stakes are high.

Sara Lee fired the first volley in a 2009 lawsuit singling out Oscar Mayer ads that brag its dogs beat out Ball Park franks in a national taste test. Those tests, Sara Lee argued, stacked the deck against Ball Park in part by altering the way the hot dogs were cooked and served.

The lawsuit also contends that Oscar Mayer touts its Jumbo Beef Franks as “100 percent pure beef,” arguing that the claim is untrue, cast aspersions on Ball Park franks and damaged their sales.

Kraft defends the “100 percent pure beef” tag, saying its intent was to state that the only meat used is beef no fax payday loan. Some industry hot dogs include a mix of turkey, pork, chicken or other meats. Kraft further argues that the “pure beef” label is justified because surveys show a perception among some consumers that hot dogs contain “mystery meats.”

Kraft filed its own lawsuit in 2009, alleging Sara Lee ran false and deceptive ads including a campaign where Ball Parks are heralded as “America’s Best Franks.” The ad further asserts that other hot dogs “aren’t even in the same league.”

While implications of the case are serious, even litigants have injected humor into the debate.

In a ruling this spring denying a Sara Lee motion for Kraft to disclose its consumer surveys, Judge Morton Denlow noted the issue arose “on opening day of baseball season in Chicago” and that Sara Lee “strikes out” in justifying its motion.

And in first announcing the lawsuit, Ball Park brand director Chuck Hemmingway said in a press statement: “Simply put, we believe that these untrue statements are all a bunch of bologna.”

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Telecom policies, particularly Internet and wireless issues, have generated enormous public interest over the past year. Politicians have evidently taken note with all political parties expressing concern over Internet data caps, net neutrality, and the competitiveness of Canadian wireless services.

The political shift toward consumer-focused telecom concerns has unsurprisingly attracted the attention of the large incumbent telecom providers such as Bell and Telus, who have found their regulatory plans stymied by political intervention and the admission by some Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission commissioners that the current policy environment has failed to foster sufficient competition.

The incumbent telecom providers recently served notice that they are gearing up to fight back, with Bell adding former industry minister Jim Prentice to its board of directors, and Telus doing the same with former public safety minister and Treasury Board president Stockwell Day. The addition of two prominent, recently departed Conservative cabinet ministers makes it clear that Bell and Telus recognize the increasing politicization of telecom policy.

The addition of former politicians to telecom boards is nothing new. As Carleton professor Dwayne Winseck recently chronicled, the path between politics and telecom boardrooms is well trodden, with the likes of Brian Mulroney (Quebecor), former Liberal cabinet minister Ed Lumley (Bell), former B.C. finance minister Carole Taylor (Bell), and former Ontario premier David Peterson (Rogers) all making the jump. Moreover, former New Brunswick premier Bernard Lord heads the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association.

The mix between politics and telecom policy is nothing new either. Since telecom’s beginnings as an industry, competition regulators have played a crucial role in establishing the limits of companies that have frequently enjoyed near-monopolistic market power.

However, this round of appointments signals an important shift no faxing 1 hour payday loans. The companies were at pains to emphasize that the addition of Prentice and Day is not about lobbying per se, since both face five-year