Grave business - my financial world

Australia's central bank cut its benchmark interest rate by one percentage point, the biggest reduction since a recession in 1992, to cushion the nation's economy against fallout from a global credit freeze.
Stocks rose after Governor Glenn Stevens and his board lowered the overnight cash rate target to 6 percent from 7 percent in […]

Somber. Sobering. Warnings of an economic "meltdown."
That’s how participants described an emergency meeting held Thursday night between leaders of Congress and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.
The meeting was followed by an announcement from Paulson that he was preparing a far-reaching program - on a scale seen rarely in […]

A published report says Chrysler LLC and Nissan Motor Co. are in talks over an agreement to jointly produce midsize cars.
The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the discussions, that Chrysler is discussing an agreement with Nissan (NSANY) under which the Japanese automaker would produce midsize sedans that Chrysler would sell […]

Several major airlines are planning to soon start offering Wi-Fi access to their passengers.
On Tuesday, Delta Air Lines announced that will provide broadband access to domestic passengers this fall.
Delta (DAL, Fortune 500) has struck an agreement with Aircell to offer Wi-Fi to laptops, smartphones, PDAs and other devices, according to a statement […]

A federal task force set up to examine the sharp run-up in oil prices says in an interim report that fundamental supply-and-demand factors are most likely to blame.
A number of lawmakers and other critics have blamed the historic rise in prices on speculators that they say are manipulating prices.
The Interagency Task Force on Commodity […]

Flypaper Studio Inc. announced this week it has sold the electronic learning portion of its business in preparation to move forward with a new program and concentrate on the development of its core software.
Flypaper sold its e-learning unit to Phoenix-based GMarie Group, a corporate training developer. The amount of the sale, which took […]

Cocoa futures surged to nearly a 30-year high Thursday as investors bet that an overall drop in rainfall will hurt crops in West Africa, the world’s biggest supplier of the beans used to make chocolate.
Rainfall has picked up in recent days in major cocoa producers Ghana and Ivory Coast, but "in the grand scheme […]

It’s being characterized as the worst natural disaster to strike the world’s most populous country in three decades and it has left an estimated 5 million people homeless.
So will the earthquake that devastated China’s Sichuan Province earlier this month — and the massive reconstruction to follow — improve the sales of construction equipment […]

Tyson Foods Inc., the world’s largest meat producer, said Monday it lost $5 million in its second quarter as it faces high feed and fuel costs, and absorbed charges for plant closings.
Springdale-based Tyson (TSN, Fortune 500) lost 2 cents a share in the three months ended March 29 versus a profit of $68 million […]

South Korea's agreement to let in U.S. beef will not be enough to get a pending free-trade agreement approved by Congress, a top Democratic lawmaker said.
“A last minute, unenforceable, untested, agreement on beef is not enough to satisfy Congress,'' Michigan Democrat Sander Levin, the chairman of the House Trade Subcommittee, said in a […]