General Motors Corp. said Friday its losses widened to $15.5 billion in the second quarter as North American sales plummeted and the company faced expenses due to labor unrest and its massive restructuring plan. The loss of $27.33 per share is the third-worst quarterly loss in the automaker's history. In the same period a year earlier, GM recorded a net profit of $891 million, or $1.56 per share. Revenue for the April-June period was $38.2 billion, down $8.5 billion from a year earlier. The company said its loss included $9.1 billion in one-time charges, including $3.3 billion for the buyouts of 19,000 U.S. hourly workers, most of whom left at the end of June, as well as $2.8 billion in liabilities related to Delphi Corp., its former parts division.

Home Values Fell in 23 of 25 U.S. Metro Areas
Home prices fell in 23 of 25 U.S. metropolitan areas in May from a year earlier as foreclosure sales pushed down values and most areas remained mired in the housing recession. Sacramento had the biggest price drop, falling 31 percent from May 2007. Las Vegas declined 29.5 percent, San Diego 27.2 percent, St. Louis 26.9 percent and Phoenix 25.8 percent, said real estate data company Radar Logic Inc. Sales rose in 22 areas in May from April, driven by ``motivated'' sellers including banks, the company said. "Price declines are occurring in areas where subprime lending was heavily concentrated, and a large percentage of sales are foreclosure sales," Susan Wachter, professor of real estate finance at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, said in an interview. Prices for "those sales are always significantly lower than transactions that are not forced."

Govt loves its cars, all 642,233 of 'em
Americans love their cars, and so apparently does Uncle Sam. He's got 642,233 of them. Operating those vehicles - maintenance, leases and fuel - cost taxpayers a whopping $3.4 billion last year, according to General Services Administration data obtained and analyzed by The Associated Press. While Cabinet and other officials say they need the vehicles to do their jobs, watchdogs say mismanagement of the government fleet is costing millions of dollars a year in wasteful spending.

Fed officials differ on how to tackle inflation
The surges this year in oil and food prices couldn't have come at a worse moment for the typical American worker, who hasn't had a raise to speak of in this decade. Workers' leverage is gone. Companies are not creating jobs. Unions that negotiated big wage increases in the 1970s are shadows of their former selves. Cost-of-living adjustments, once commonplace, have disappeared. And the movement of jobs offshore, or the threat of it, has conditioned workers to not even ask for a raise, fearing they'll join the millions already laid off. Still, the U.S. Federal Reserve's policymakers - its governors and the presidents of its regional banks - are convinced that wage pressures could emerge unexpectedly. That concern, and the idea that wage pressures could lead to yet higher prices and a rising inflation rate, showed up in half-a-dozen interviews with policymakers over the last week.

U.S. Economy: Growth Rate Falls Short of Forecasts
The U.S. economy shrank at the end of 2007 and grew less than forecast in this year's second quarter, signaling that the country is in worse shape than investors had anticipated "We're in a recession," Allen Sinai, chief economist at Decision Economics Inc. in New York, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. "It's going to widen, it's going to deepen." The last time the economy contracted was in 2001. It may weaken further as the temporary boost from tax rebates, which aided a pick-up in gross domestic product last quarter from the previous three months, fades. Stocks dropped, Treasuries rallied and traders reduced bets that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates this year.

More Arrows Seen Pointing to a Recession
The American economy expanded more slowly than expected from April to June, the government reported Thursday, while numbers for the last three months of 2007 were revised downward to show a contraction — the first official slide backward since the last recession in 2001. Economists construed the tepid growth in the second quarter, combined with a surge in claims for unemployment benefits, as a clear indication that the economy remains mired in the weeds of a downturn. Many said the data increased the likelihood that a recession began late last year. The next major piece of data comes Friday, when the government is to release its monthly snapshot of the job market. Analysts expect the report to show a loss of 75,000 jobs, signifying the seventh straight month of declines. “We already knew the economy was weak, and now you have both a negative growth number coupled with job losses,” said Dean Baker, a director of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research. “There’s a lot of real bad times to come.”

Fed Fears Wage Spiral That Is Little in Evidence
The surges this year in oil and food prices could not have come at a worse moment for the typical American worker, who has not had a raise to speak of in this decade. Workers’ leverage is gone. Companies are not creating jobs. Unions that negotiated big wage increases in the 1970s are shadows of their former selves. Cost-of-living adjustments, once commonplace, have disappeared. And the movement of jobs offshore, or the threat of it, has conditioned workers to not even ask for a raise, fearing they will join the millions already laid off. Still, the Federal Reserve’s policy makers — its governors and the presidents of its regional banks — are convinced that wage pressures could emerge unexpectedly. That concern, and the idea that wage pressures could lead to yet higher prices and a rising inflation rate, showed up in half-a-dozen interviews with policy makers over the last week.

Workers' pay and benefits lagging far behind inflation
Inflation surged in the second quarter with soaring energy and food costs, as any consumer can attest. The growth in workers’ compensation, however, remained flat with the first quarter and down from a year earlier, the government’s latest data show. It’s another sign that the pain in your wallet is real -- and maybe worse than you think. The Labor Department today said its employment cost index, which measures what employers shell out for wages and benefits, rose 0.7% in the second quarter, matching the first-quarter increase. Last quarter’s rise was down from a 0.9% increase in the second quarter of 2007, a clear indication that employers have been feeling less pressure to boost compensation as jobs overall are harder to find.

Paulson says housing remains biggest threat
The $168 billion government stimulus effort has been a timely support for the economy and will continue to boost growth in the second half of this year, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Thursday. Paulson predicted in a speech to a Washington audience that the economy will continue growing at a moderate pace for the rest of this year, despite housing slump-induced problems. "We are making progress although not in a straight line," Paulson said. "Housing continues to be at the heart of our economic challenges and remains our most significant downside risk."

Greenspan Says Housing Prices Not Yet Near Bottom
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said falling U.S. home prices are "nowhere near the bottom" and the resulting market turmoil isn't showing signs of abating While the odds of a recession are 50-50, achieving stable markets will "take a while," Greenspan said today in a CNBC interview. After his comments, benchmark stock indexes declined further. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index slid today by 16.88 points, or 1.3 percent, to 1,267.38. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 205.67, or 1.8 percent, to 11,378.02. The economy grew at a 1.9 percent annualized rate in the second quarter after expanding 0.9 percent in the first quarter, the Commerce Department said in Washington. Gross domestic product was revised to show a contraction in the final three months of 2007.

Oil falls to almost $124 on dour US economic data
Oil prices pulled back Thursday, wiping out some gains from the previous day's $4 a barrel rally, as traders bet that a cooling U.S. economy will continue to eat into U.S. demand for fuel. At the pump, easing prices underscored Americans' waning consumption of gasoline. The average price of a gallon of regular slipped 1.7 cents to $3.909, according auto club AAA, the Oil Price Information Service and Wright Express. Light, sweet crude for September delivery fell $2.69 to settle at $124.08 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, a day after the contract soared more than $4 in the biggest one-day jump in two weeks. Prices have now fallen in four of the last seven sessions and are 14 percent off their all-time trading high above $147, reached July 11.

GMAC hit with $2.5 billion loss as auto and housing sector weakens
GMAC, the auto and mortgage finance company majority owned by Cerberus Capital Management, reported a $2.5 billion loss Thursday as vehicle sales plummeted and the housing slump sent foreclosures higher. The second-quarter loss, GMAC's fourth straight, compares with profit of $293 million a year earlier, the Detroit-based company said today in a PR Newswire statement. Residential Capital's loss jumped to $1.86 billion from $254 million a year earlier as the decline in home prices accelerated.

Orders for New Planes Delayed by Soaring Fuel Costs
When Emirates airline’s gigantic A380 aircraft glides into Kennedy International Airport on Friday, Airbus executives will breathe a sigh of relief at seeing their flagship jet complete its maiden American journey. But their relief could be short-lived. Despite a backlog of airplane orders stretching for years at both Airbus, which is owned by EADS, and its main rival, the Boeing Company, aircraft manufacturers are seeing troubling signs among their customers. High fuel prices helped cause major airlines in the United States to lose more than $6 billion in the second quarter. Companies are grounding older planes, eliminating flights and routes and putting off plans to update and expand their fleets.

Mass. regulators accuse Merrill Lynch of fraud
Massachusetts security regulators accused Merrill Lynch of fraud Thursday for allegedly promoting the sale of auction-rate securities when they knew the investments were becoming increasingly unstable. The administrative complaint filed by Secretary of State William Galvin claims Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith - the main subsidiary of Merrill Lynch & Co. - aggressively sold the securities while downplaying the risks. Auction-rate securities have their interest rates set at periodic auctions, depending on the submitted bids. The investments were once considered safe, but the market collapsed in February amid turmoil in the credit markets. The market's failure left many investors with their cash frozen as buyers dried up New York-based Merrill Lynch denied it defrauded investors.

Moody's Lies In The Bed It Made
Moody's second-quarter earnings were anything but sterling. The ratings service's profit tumbled on plummeting demand for mortgage bonds and collateralized debt obligations. Yet Moody's, the parent of Moody's Investors Service, managed to perform better than expected, sending shares higher in morning trading. Its early gains were reversed, however, when Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal announced at a press conference he was suing Moody's, McGraw-Hill, the parent company of Standard & Poor's, and Fitch Ratings for giving artificially low credit ratings to cities and towns that cost taxpayers millions of dollars in unnecessary insurance and higher interest payments.

A Warning For America From South Africa
By Gemma Meyer (Gemma Meyer is the pseudonym of a South African journalist. She and her husband, a former conservative member of parliament, still reside in South Africa.)
People used to say that South Africa was 20 years behind the rest of the Western world. Television, for example, came late to South Africa (but so did pornography and the gay rights movement).
Today, however, South Africa may be the grim model of the future Western world, for events in America reveal trends chillingly similar to those that destroyed our country.
America's structures are Western. Your Congress, your lobbying groups, your free speech, and the way ordinary Americans either get involved or ignore politics are peculiarly Western, not the way most of the world operates. But the fact that only about a third of Americans deem it important to vote is horrifying in light of how close you are to losing your Western character.
Writing letters to the press, manning stands at county fairs, hosting fund-raising dinners, attending rallies, setting up conferences, writing your Congressman - that is what you know, and what you are comfortable with. Those are the political methods you've created for yourselves to keep your country on track and to ensure political accountability.
But woe to you if - or more likely, when - the rules change. White Americans may soon find themselves unable or unwilling to stand up to challenge the new political methods that will be the inevitable result of the ethnic metamorphosis now taking place in America. Unable to cope with the new rules of the game - violence, mob riots, intimidation through accusations of racism, demands for proportionality based on racial numbers, and all the other social and political weapons used by the have-nots to bludgeon treasure and power from the haves - Americans, like others before them, will no doubt cave in. They will compromise away their independence and ultimately their way of life.