Monday Business Edition

Toyota, the world’s biggest automaker, on Monday said production in Japan plunged 62.7 percent year on year in March, putting it in danger of falling this year from the global top spot it claimed from General Motors in 2008.

Domestic output slumped to 129,491 vehicles, which Kyodo News agency said was the lowest since records began in January 1976.

“We are now expecting production and GDP will decline in the first quarter and the second quarter,” Shirakawa said in an interview with the paper on Friday.

He said stalled production was the “heart of the problem” facing the Japanese economy in the aftermath of the monster March 11 quake and tsunami disaster which has left 26,455 dead or missing.

The video game giant said the new machine would be showcased at E3 Expo in Los Angeles in June. The move comes as Nintendo has struggled to reverse its sliding fortunes in an increasingly crowded market.

Nintendo said Monday that group net profit for the year to March fell 66.1 percent to 77.6 billion yen ($942 million), while operating profit slumped 52.0 percent to 171.1 billion yen. Sales eased 29.3 percent to 1.01 trillion yen.

While the official line from Berlin continues to be that it is too early to speculate on who succeeds France’s Jean-Claude Trichet at the helm of the ECB, recent leaks suggest Germany could live with Mario Draghi, dubbed “Super Mario.”

Respected business daily Handelsblatt reported this week that German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble was lobbying behind the scenes for the current Italian central bank chief to take the job when Trichet steps down in October.

As of Sunday, the national average price of regular unleaded gasoline stood at $3.86 per gallon (3.78 liters), while a handful of states such as California ($4.21 average) and New York ($4.07) broke the $4 barrier, according to the AAA motor club. Overall, prices are up $1 from a year ago.

The last record dates back to July 2008, when the price of gas reached a national average of $4.11 per gallon.

The ruling Congress party has long wanted to make history as the administration which ushered in growth of 10 percent — touted by successive governments as vital to significantly reduce crushing poverty.

But India’s main economic planning body looks set to row back on the goal of double-digit expansion when it fixes the country’s five-year economic, social and other goals to 2017.

Half of the Audi A6s in the world are sold in China, according to research firm Dunne & Co., where black versions with windows tinted darker than welding glass are the car of choice for government officials and company bosses.

“Many Chinese people like the Audi car a lot,” Xu said, after testing the back seat, where the 50-year-old entrepreneur plans to ride most of the time. “It looks very beautiful, magnificent. I am going to buy a black one.”

The year was 1898. A much smaller Greek state had just lost a disastrous war against the Ottoman Empire and was forced to pay reparations when the government had officially declared insolvency five years earlier.

Determined to collect past loans, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary and Italy sent officials to monitor state receipts, taxes and customs duties that would repay Greece’s obligations.

NYSE Chief Executive Duncan Niederauer also sees the biggest NYSE and Deutsche Boerse customers saving at least $3 billion from the combination of their European derivatives platforms, according to spokesman Richard Adamonis.

Adamonis was confirming comments made earlier by Niederauer in an interview with the Financial Times.

A shortage of parts in the wake of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami has savaged the Japan’s auto sector supply chain, while damage to a major nuclear plant has disrupted power supplies.

Investors expecting overseas rivals to benefit from a prolonged slump in Japanese output pushed up shares in South Korea’s Hyundai Motors (005380.KS) and associate Kia Motors (000270.KS) to record highs on Monday.

The maker of the DS handheld games device, which is also facing competition from smartphone makers including Apple Inc, said on Monday it will demonstrate a prototype of the new Wii in Los Angeles on June 7 at the E3 game show.

Nintendo is looking to repeat past successes in the gaming market. The Wii took the industry by storm five years ago by offering family games such as tennis and bowling that appealed to non-traditional gamers.

More than a month after Japan’s devastating earthquake and tsunami on March 11, firms are still struggling with unraveled supply chains and sluggish consumer demand, making predicting future profits difficult if not impossible.

Investors in Japan, used to companies providing guidance for a full year ahead, will be forced to rely increasingly on the number crunching of equity analysts, who themselves are struggling to form a clear picture of future demand.

After years in an apartment building, “we were just tired of sharing space with other people,” says Cari Hodgson, 32. “It was time to have space of our own.”

She and her commodities trader husband sold the condo and recently bought a $1.2 million, five-bedroom home in Chicago’s north side, sealing the deal with the kind of big down-payment that is heating up the high-end of the U.S. property market.

Companies like Microsoft (MSFT.O), PepsiCo (PEP.N), and Coca-Cola (KO.N), unloved on Wall Street, could turn out to be good buys if they can show they justify higher valuations than investors are now willing to give them.

“If you see these Cokes and Pepsis and these kinds of multinational consumer names post good results, I think it is going to give the perception that the equity market can overcome a lot of these domestic issues,” said Nick Kalivas, an analyst at MF Global in Chicago.

A combination of rising gasoline prices and bad weather has prompted a number of big banks to cut their forecasts for U.S. economic growth in the first quarter.

The preliminary snapshot of U.S. GDP growth, which a Reuters survey puts at 2.0 percent, will be released on April 28.

The central bank will nudge up its consumer price forecasts in its twice-yearly outlook report to reflect recent rises in commodity costs, but stress that supply-driven inflation alone would not shake its commitment to ultra-easy policy.

The nine-member board is set to hold off on additional monetary easing steps and announce details of a new loan scheme targeting quake-hit banks, which was unveiled at its previous rate review.

To be fair, his job is thankless: He’s the court-appointed bloodhound in charge of hunting down money for the victims of Bernard Madoff, a man who was so skilled at hiding money that he kept the biggest scam in the history of American finance going for at least two decades.

Wall Street hates him. Picard has sued more than a dozen banks, including several whose big link to the Ponzi scheme was one step removed – helping people bet on funds that bet on the fund run by Madoff.

Now the jury must determine whether the conduct caught on tape was criminal. Regardless of its decision, the highly publicized audio evidence alone seems certain to make an impression on high-stakes financiers and how they do business.

The wiretaps should “scare the hell out of anyone thinking about doing insider trading,” said Ed Novak, a veteran white-collar defense attorney in Phoenix.

The sealed cylinders look fairly innocuous, but the contents inside are like gold for emergency responders – detailed computer-generated maps of each farm, specifying precise locations for flammable chemicals and fuels, power turnoff switches, grain bins, water supplies and precious livestock.

In fires, explosions, accidents and other farm emergencies, being able to quickly locate these items could prevent or reduce property damage, injuries and even deaths to farmers and rescuers.

That new wireless router. He’d gotten fed up trying to set a password. Someone must have used his Internet connection, he thought.

“We know who you are! You downloaded thousands of images at 11:30 last night,” the man’s lawyer, Barry Covert, recounted the agents saying. They referred to a screen name, “Doldrum.”

The debate over digital privacy flamed higher this week with news that Apple Inc.’s popular iPhones and iPads store users’ GPS coordinates for a year or more. Phones that run Google Inc.’s Android software also store users’ location data. And not only is the data stored – allowing anyone who can get their hands on the device to piece together a chillingly accurate profile of where you’ve been – but it’s also transmitted back to the companies to use for their own research.

Now, cellphone service providers have had customers’ location data for almost as long as there have been cellphones. That’s how they make sure to route calls and Internet traffic to the right place. Law enforcement analyzes location data on iPhones for criminal evidence – a practice that Alex Levinson, technical lead for firm Katana Forensics, said has helped lead to convictions. And both Apple and Google have said that the location data that they collect from the phones is anonymous and not able to be tied back to specific users.

General Motors Co. unveiled the 630 sedan, the first model from its new Baojun badge developed with Chinese joint venture partners. The four-door is based on an older GM car and will have a sticker price of 70,000 to 100,000 yuan ($10,700 to $15,300).

Honda Motor Co. displayed the plain, compact four-door S1 at the auto show, the first from its new Everus line which went on sale this week. Nissan Motor Co. showed off an unnamed car it plans to sell under the Venucia brand next year.

The proposal would settle a class-action antitrust lawsuit filed in 2009 by five Northeastern dairy farms, who accused Dallas-based Dean Foods Co., Kansas City, Mo.-based cooperative Dairy Farmers of America and its marketing affiliate Dairy Marketing Services of working together to dominate the milk-buying market and hold down prices paid to farmers.

Among the critics of the proposed $30 million deal: Howard Howrigan, a dairyman from Fairfield, who fears the move could lower prices paid to farmers if Dean starts shopping elsewhere.

Prime Minister George Papandreou chose the remote island of Kastelorizo, and its tranquil seaside backdrop, to announce the “urgent national need to formally ask our partners to mobilize the support mechanism.”

International solidarity, he said in a televised address, would “send a strong signal to markets that the European Union is not to be toyed with, and it will protect our common interests and our common currency.”

When the FAA proposed new limits on airline pilots’ work schedules to prevent fatigue last year, it rejected its own research recommending that pilots be allowed to take naps during the cruise phase of flight – typically most of a flight when the plane is neither climbing nor descending – so that they are refreshed and alert during landings.

And an FAA committee that has been working for several years on new work rules to prevent fatigue among night-shift airline mechanics has made little progress, said one committee member. Allowing naps during breaks on overnight shifts was dismissed as a nonstarter.

The government now borrows about 42 cents of every dollar it spends. Imagine that one day soon, the borrowing slams up against the current debt limit ceiling of $14.3 trillion and Congress fails to raise it. The damage would ripple across the entire economy, eventually affecting nearly every American, and rocking global markets in the process.

A default would come if the government actually failed to fulfill a financial obligation, including repaying a loan or interest on that loan. The government borrows mostly by selling bonds to individuals and governments, with a promise to pay back the amount of the bond in a certain time period and agreeing to pay regular interest on that bond in the meantime.

Like the deepest waters of the Gulf, the shallow but frigid seas off Alaska are a new frontier for oil and gas exploration. The reserves are large but come with risks.

With no roads connecting remote coastal towns, storms and fog that can ground aircraft, no deep-water ports for ships and the nearest Coast Guard station about 1,000 miles away – it would be nearly impossible to respond on the scale that was needed last year to stop a runaway oil well and clean up the mess. That means the burden to respond would rest to an even greater degree on the company doing the drilling.

The report centered on Transocean’s role in the disaster because it owned the rig and was primarily responsible for ensuring its safety, the Coast Guard said. BP PLC owned the well that blew out.

The Coast Guard report also concluded that decisions made by workers aboard the rig “may have affected the explosions or their impact,” such as failing to follow procedures for notifying other crew members about the emergency after the blast.

The spring nesting and spawning season is a crucial time to get out and sample the reproduction rates, behavior and abundance of species, all factors that could be altered by last year’s massive spill. Yet no money has been made available for this year, and it could take months to determine which projects will be funded.

“It’s like a murder scene,” said Dana Wetzel, an ecotoxicologist at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Florida. “You have to pick up the evidence now.”

After years of urging residents to buy fuel-efficient cars and giving them tax breaks to do it, Washington state lawmakers are considering a measure to charge them a $100 annual fee – what would be the nation’s first electric car fee.

State lawmakers grappling with a $5 billion deficit are facing declining gas tax revenue, which means less money to maintain or improve roads.

The No. 1 title, a morale booster for the winner’s employees and managers, would cap GM’s remarkable comeback from bankruptcy.

GM’s sales are up, mainly in China and the U.S, the world’s top two markets. Its cars are better than in the past, especially small ones.

President Akio Toyoda apologized to customers for the delays due to the March 11 disasters that damaged suppliers in northeastern Japan, affecting automakers around the world.

“To all the customers who made the decision to buy a vehicle made by us, I sincerely apologize for the enormous delay in delivery,” Toyoda said at a news conference in Tokyo.

No one seems more aware of the electoral peril than Obama himself.

“My poll numbers go up and down depending on the latest crisis, and right now gas prices are weighing heavily on people,” he told Democratic donors in Los Angeles this past week.

But a block down, an old house has collapsed. Its roof sits in the middle of the road like an odd little pagoda.

Someone should be doing something about that.