Despite the bloody Drugs War, German companies are about to invest more money into Mexico.
German President Christian Wulff wants to increase business relations with Mexico. Already there are 1,200 German operations in Mexico, employing 130,000 people. Wulff also implied that Germany will help the Mexican government in their Drugs War.
Germany has historically been interested in relations with Mexico, this could be a sign of the declining influence of the United States.
“Our expansion plan will continue to support the socioeconomic development of the Brazilian population. The focus in formats aimed at the emerging middle class will be even stronger in 2011.”-Marcos Samaha, president of WalMart Brazil
Recently WalMart officials expressed their concerns for the poor U.S. retail market. They blame inflation and lack of jobs. But, WalMart is spending big money in Brazil, ’cause the economy is boomin’ there.
Brazil is one of the money making members of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China & South Africa).
WalMart is going to open 80 new stores in Brazil, and spend R$ 1.2 billion in the next year (R$ = Real, the Brazilian money). In the past five years, WalMart has already invested R$ 6 billion, constructing 177 stores and creating 25,000 jobs in Brazil.
The price of May reformulated unleaded blendstock gasoline futures prices hit $3.37 per gallon, on April 29. That means the average price of gas at the pump could be $4.50 by the end of May.
For some parts of the country, like California, prices could hit $5.50 or more, per gallon. For a little explainer on gasoline futures see my post “Think gas is high now…”
“We don’t even have minimum wage!”-German protester
“Fair wages, decent work and social security is the minimum that workers in this country expect, need and have to fight for again and again.”-Michael Sommer, head of Confederation of German Trade Unions
Germany is one of the few European countries that has a good economy. It turns out Germany’s good economy is coming at the expense of German workers.
Germans have been protesting, because they are not benefiting from the so called good economy, and now they will be competing against eastern European migrant workers.
For the first time since the creation of the European Union, Germany and Austria will open their borders to eastern European migrant workers. This has German workers upset, especially since they’ve seen a decline in wages while German corporations enjoy increased profits.
At least 8,000 workers protested in Berlin alone. According to the Confederation of German Trade Unions, approximately 423,000 people demonstrated across Germany on May Day.
Tokyo Electric Power Company announced early May 2, that another of their nuclear plants in Japan is in trouble. The Tsuruga nuclear plant is having technical problems, resulting in overheating.
The plant is around 450 km (280 miles) west of Tokyo, in Fukui prefecture. TEPCo says the problem is so bad they are considering shutting down the whole plant. There is a possible leak of iodine from Tsuruga nuclear plant #2 reactor’s nuclear fuel assemblies into its coolant.
“If you hit Houston with a Category 4 or 5 (hurricane), and we’ve only got a couple billion dollars in the rainy day fund, instead of going in and rebuilding and recovering, we’re talking about bankruptcy. That’s the choice that we have here.”- Rick Perry, Governor of Texas
Texas Governor Rick Perry asked President Obama for help, two weeks ago, in fighting the biggest fires in Texas history. Obama has not responded.
FEMA is still trying to reply to the request for help from Texas. The problem? No money! Rachel Racusen, FEMA spokeswoman, says they’ve approved 22 grants to help local firefighting agencies, by there’s no money to fund the grants.
Maybe FEMA would have the money if our government wasn’t so happy with spending it on wars?
Russia has stopped exporting refined fuel, officially to deal with fuel shortages in Russia.
Russian officials hope the export ban will last only through May, but after that Russia will increase to costs of exporting their fuel. In any event, this move by Russia should add to the increasing fuel prices the world is paying.
I can’t help wonder if Russian leaders are taking advantage of a domestic situation to make things worse for the West, in retaliation for what the West is doing in Libya, and what the West is trying to do in Syria.
Chrysler announced that it will pay back the U.S. and Canadian governments (taxpayers), but not because of increased profits.
Chrysler is trying to get money from private lenders, in order to pay back the government loans. This is a sign that Chrysler doesn’t think it can pay back the taxpayers, based on its sales/profits.
Also, Chrysler is hoping the private loans will be at lower interest rates, than what it’s paying to the governments. The interest rate for the U.S. loans are between 7%-14%, and the Canadians up to 20%. Gee looks like they didn’t get a deal, like most corporations. Is it because Chrysler is owned by a foreign company?
WalMart is going to sell guns again. It realized that part of its declining sales is because it stopped selling guns in about 2,000 stores back in 2006. Here in Idaho WalMart never stopped selling guns.
The move back to selling guns comes after seven straight quarterly losses for WalMart.
Selling guns is good for the U.S. economy, WalMart officials say most of the guns they sell are made in the U.S.
Several big corporations who make products from soap to diapers, say they must pass on the higher prices they’ve been paying for raw materials.
“I don’t want to get into shoulda, coulda, woulda; but if you step back, if we didn’t have $1.8 billion in commodity cost increases this year, we would have a fantastic bottom line.”-Jon Moeller, Procter & Gamble
Despite slow sales in the United States, because of the bad economy, the very same corporations complaining of the higher costs they’re paying, are spending money to come up with new products, and of course that’ll be added onto the price you pay at the store.
In the world of soda pop and snacks, Pepsi says their profits are being affected by the increasing price of their ingredients. PepsiCo also owns snack food maker FritoLay, and juice brand Tropicana, as well as other brands. Even though Pepsi says their profits were affected by inflation, they still did well. They also said they’ve adjusted their business forecast to take into account “…high global commodity cost inflation, difficult macroeconomic conditions in developed markets and ongoing strategic investments in emerging markets and in brand-building activities.” In other words, price hikes.