Business Channel 2006-11-17&19

The CEOs of General Motors, Ford 1 and Chrysler met with President Bush today, and brought to him concerns ranging from health care cost and the alternative fuel to unfair trade. Overall, the executives said they were pleased by the talks.

"I would say it was a very good dialogue, very open, back and forth 2. I think it's fair to say on a number of areas, we sensed ah, I mean, there was agreement in things we can continue to work on, we talked about the energy, we talked about some health care areas. But some areas where, frankly 3, we might see it differently. Exchange rate policy in particular, and our strong conviction the Japanese Yen 4 is systematically 5 undervalued, which helps them to maintain significant trade balance surpluses in our industry. "

But, but still the President didn't make any promises, although the executives took comfort in the fact that the president said he would work with Democrats 6, soon to be in control of Congress, on issues important to the auto 7 industry. Richard?

Emm. . . Okay, so that story continues to develop. Ah, also retail 8 industry news today, what are you hearing?

Well, shoppers were reluctant buyers last month. A government report shows retail sales fell 0. 2% in October, largely due to a big drop in gas sales. Without that, sales rose 0.4%, but economists 9 were expecting cheaper gas to put consumers in, in even more of a buying mood. Separately, Wal-Mart is trying to get people to spend too, promising 10 shoppers "relentless 11 holiday discounts". But that can spell trouble for other retailers 12 who in many cases are forced to match Wal-Mart's prices to stay competitive. Target says Wal-Mart's vow 13 is nothing out of the ordinary and plans to respond with price cuts of its own. By the way, Wal-Mart and Target posted better-than-expected quarterly earnings 14 today. Richard, I don't mind when they discount their prices, it doesn't bother me.

I love the language too, "relentless holiday markets(根据Richard的口型判断是markets,而且可以听到有个r的音,应该不是pockets)." It's like, oh, you can't have enough. " All right, you know, and it looks like, and this is sort of translated into the market. Hoo, what a day!

Yeah, it did, with Wal-Mart, Target and Home Depot 15 leading the way, the Dow Industrial is to another record high. Stocks staged the late-day rally after spending much of the session around the breakeven point. Those profit reports may have boosted optimism about holiday spending, plus, ahead of the open, a report came out showing core wholesale 16 inflation in October, took a sharpest tumble in more than 13 years. And that reinforce(d) a feeling that the Fed will keep interest rates steady at its next meeting. Checking the final numbers, the Dow industrials jumped 85 points to 12,217. That’s a new all-time high. The NASDAQ Composite added one percent.


breakeven (n.)
the level of business activity at which a company is making neither a profit nor a loss