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GM is making efforts to increase sales of its Cadillac luxury car division. Cadillac marketing has not produced results. $354 million was spent on marketing in 2009 for the Cadillac division, according to industry estimates. Yet only 109,092 Cadillacs were sold. Cadillac needs a younger look and feel- currently the average age of buyers is 62. As a comparison the average age for BMW owners is an estimated 49 years. Cadillac executives see a lot of work to be done on the product side, and the marketing and customer service side. Analysts see the need for more style and zip for younger buyers. A smaller entry level Cadillac is planned for 2012. Some of the comments made about the current models suggest that the larger models and styles that may appeal to an older customer base, may not be what a younger customer base is looking for. GM is addressing the problem of customer service at dealerships by having Marriott Intenational's Ritz Carlton division give training sessions to its Cadillac dealers. A Ritz Carlton customer service expert has given 9 training sessions in New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles and other cities to more than 2100 dealers and their salespersons. But this does not address the major problems of appealing to a younger demographic, which requires a major shift in thinking, and taking some risks with the product....

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Senator Lamar Alexander is a kind of misssionary for electric cars and for a major push with government assistance in this area. A bill sponsored by Alexander and Senator Byron Dorgan plans to designate 5 to15 urban areas as model locations for electric car use. These areas would get money for infrastructure such as recharging stations, and people in the areas would get an additional tax credit to take the tax credit from $7,500 to $10,000. The bill has important provisions for promoting research at companies and universities to improve electric car batteries. $1.5 billion would be allocated for research in electric car batteries, and a $10 million prize for the person or company able to build a battery with a 500 mile range. The total cost- $10 billion.

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The China Banking Regulatory Commission points to dangers of the Non Performing Loans ratio rebounding and serious risks in the financial sector from bad loans. CBRC chairman, Liu Mingkang, points to the risks associated with local-government financing platforms, and the real estate sector and industries with excess capacity, in the 128 page report for 2009 shown on its website. And he points out that fundamental cracks and flaws internationally, that were exposed by the global financial criis of 2008, have still to be resolved. He cites the regulatory issues, "too-big-to-fail" issue for large financial institutions, cross-sector and cross-country risk contagion toxic assets, and the budget deficits facing European countries, as major issues posing systemic risk.

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Japan's Prime Minister, Kan, announced that his government is planning to increase the country's broad sales tax from 5% today over several years. He said he plans a major sales tax increase to avoid a Greece type situation in Japan.

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German drug company Boehringer has applied for FDA approval for a drug that treats low female sexual drive for premenopausal women. A staff report by the FDA recommends not approving the drug. An FDA advisory panel meets this week to vote on whether the FDA should approve it. Meanwhile Boehringer is setting up a marketing campaign for the drug, including a website, Twitter feed, Discovery Channel documentary and a publicity tour by Lis Rinna, a soap opera actress. Boehringer's R&D designed the drug to treat depression but it did not work. Along the way Boehringer discovered that this drug, flibanserin, taken for weeks restores female sexual drive. It works by reducing the brain chemical serotonin and increasing dopamine. Results for this drug in a medical conference report show that the increased self-reported "sexually satisfing events" to 4.5 a month on average, and this compares to 3.7 a month on a placebo, and 2.7 for women not taking any pill. Critics at Georgetown University say this shows how drug companies are medicalizing normal conditions, and working on the insecurities and psychology of people. ...

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The revolving door at the U.S. financial markets regulator, the S.E.C., and lax enforcement, as S.E.C. officals take up jobs at law firms and financial institutions. Here Inspector General Kotz and Senator Grassley provide many examples of revolving door practices at the S.E.C., with officials taking up positions and bringing their expertise to private firms being regulated in the same fields and specialized areas.

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The Chinese market for mobile phones has seen Chinese companies use their advantages of knowing local requirements and better distribution systems, especially in the rural areas and second tier cities, to establish a presence. By 2004 companies such as Bird and TCL made significant gains. Bird planned to take on overseas markets and take 8% of the global market. Ningbo Bird and TCL then had half the Chinese market. According to analysts this effort fizzled out and these two companies had sales decreasing as larger companies like Nokia started going into the smaller cities and rural areas. Now another company is using its knowledge of the special features desired by Chinese buyers and its distribution system in rural areas and smaller cities to establish a presence. Tianyu, better known by its K-Touch product introduced in 2005, started as a handset contract manufacturing company. Tianyu offers locally desired features not offered by makers like Nokia and Samsung- dual SIM card option popular because it allows keeping second generation phone numbers and accounts while keeping open the option for a 3-G line, bigger text for older users, text messages read aloud, touch screens, receiving phone calls for two numbers, and so on. And Tianyu does this for less than $200, a price that Nokia and Samsung can't match for features like touch screen. Comparison of the K-Touch E62 with a Taiwanese handset called HTC Magic using Android, both touch screen, showed a price for HTC Magic three times the K-Touch E62. The K-Touch E62 cost 798 yuan or $117. Does Tianyu rely too much on the cultural aspect of today's China which is described as "shanzai"? The meaning of this term "mountain stronghold" and has a defiant tone of local culture and tendencies fighting centralized control. It is often used to refer to the cheap knockoffs of imported products that are readily available in China. In the long run analysts believe that the larger Chinese players in telecom, Huawei and ZTE, which have smartphones appealing to Chinese consumers and 3-G technology, are more likely to have a sustained presence. ...

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Best Buy's efforts in marketing to women customers to bridge the gap with stores such as Target that do a good job of targeting female customers.

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Doctors face a 21% cut in the amount of Medicare payments for treating seniors having Medicare, though this cut will be delayed till 2011 under legislation in Congress. This issue goes back to 1997, when a budget law set spending targets, and stated that if they were exceeded formulas to reduce doctors payments would go into effect. The formulas seriously cut into doctor payments by Medicare in 2002, so the formula was put off. The result of this is that the cuts based on the formula now amount to 21%. The cuts are not expected to go through, but at the same time Congress has an headache on its hands with the growing deficit. In the Senate there is opposition to a $120 billion bill to extend long term unemployment benefits which lapsed in June 2010, for tax breaks, and other expenses. Senators want to pare down the bill's price tag, as $80 billon of this is unfunded and will be added to the budget deficit. For a primary care doctor in Washington state, Medicare pays about $95 compared to private insurers payment of $129, and a plan for state workers that pays $140....

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Fitch Ratings Agency says that 65-75% of homeowners getting home loan modifications under the Obama administration's Home Affordable Loan Modification Program (HAMP) will default in 12 months. This is because the median ratio of total debt payments to pretax income is about 64% according to a Treasury Department estimate. Many of these homeowners have large credit card and other debt, and little is left for food, clothing and other expenses. By April 2010, 295,000 homeowners had taken loan modifications under HAMP, which provides interest rates of as low as 2%. And another 637,000 homeowners are in trial modifications, which require that homeowners show they can make the lower payments consistently and provide documets to show eligibility. The Obama administration has provided $50 billion for the HAMP program, with financial incentives to loan servicers and mortgage investors to modify loans. Critics say the program would have worked better if the government and HAMP dealt directly with homeowners- as homeowners complain about the long time, upto a year, it takes for loan servicers and mortgage companies to get the loan modified on a long-term basis....