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A loss for the Christian Democrats and Angela Merkel in Hamburg. Coming regional elections in other states will determine the future of the ruling coalition.

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NAR statistics may have overcounted home sales in the U.S. going back to 2007. NAR statistics showed home sales for 2010 at 4.9 million, down from 5.2 million in 2009. CoreLogic, a real estate analytics firm says it counted only 3.3 million home sales in 2010, down from 3.7 million sales. This is a wide divergence and suggests more severe problems in the housing market in the U.S.

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Wal-Mart is expected to announce the sixth quarter of declining same store sales in the U.S. By raising prices on some items and reducing prices on others Wal-Mart moved away from Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton's pledge to provide the best prices. Walton built Wal-Mart by promising to transfer much of the benefits of Wal-Mart's sourcing of lower priced goods to customers. The "high-low" technique in pricing is just the opposite of the everyday best price of Sam Walton. In recent years Wal-Mart has lost its touch with its core customer base by trying to attract upscale customers with trendy products and organic foods. The core customers have always been the U.S. households making less than $70,000 a year. This made up 68% of its business. Now this business is under assault by discounting chains and dollar stores. To reduce clutter in its stores, Wal-mart reduced the amount of goods carried from different suppliers, alienating some suppliers. Ironically the new pricing strategies and store design to reduce sprawl came from John Fleming, a former Target executive who became Wal-Mart's chief merchandising officer. Management changes led to Mr Fleming's departure....

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Protests in Ohio, Indiana and Wisconsin over efforts by Republican governors to restrict rights of public sector unions.

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Problems Russia faces in gaining entry into the WTO. This includes high import tariffs in Russia, arbitrary interpretation of rules, the customs union with Belarus and Kazakhstan, and corruption. Russia is the only major economy that is not part of the WTO. China was admitted in 2001. The WTO rules limit import tariffs and provides a legal system of dispute resolution for trade disputes. According to Business Europe, Russia increased tariffs for a range of factory products after the 2008 crisis. These tariffs alone cost EU companies $820 million a year. Russia's deputy prime minister Igor Shuvalov, says that without WTO access modernization and innovation for Russia will be very difficult. Companies like Boeing would be big winners with WTO entry for Russia. Tariffs on wide-body aircraft would then drop from 20% to 7.5%, and Russia expects to buy 1,000 new commercial aircraft in the next 20 years.