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The Toyodas have turned to Ford for lessons in the past. In 1950, the Japanese automaker was recovering from near-bankruptcy when, Eiji Toyoda, first cousin to Akio’s father Shoichiro Toyoda, visited Ford’s Rouge complex, a 2,000-acre warren of factories created by Henry Ford outside Detroit. The trip was to study Ford’s mass-production system and explore a possible alliance that never came to pass.
Bill Ford, 52, and Akio Toyoda have come to know each other through at least six meetings, including some in Ford’s Dearborn office, according to a person familiar with the meetings. The two haven’t met since Toyoda became president, said the person, who asked not to be identified discussing private talks. The two share the same birthday, May 3.
When Akio Toyoda’s grandfather, Kiichiro, branched out into autos in 1937 from the family’s Toyoda Automatic Loom Works, he coined the word “Toyota.” He changed “da,” the character for “field” in Japanese, to “ta” in part to play down the perceived rural sound of the family name.
Now, the family has less control over its namesake company than the Fords, who own a special class of stock that gives them 40 percent of the voting rights. Akio Toyoda owns 4.56 million, or 0.13 percent, of Toyota’s 3.45 billion shares outstanding, based on data compiled by Bloomberg.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p
Feb. 8 (Bloomberg) -- For all the concern over the $1.6 trillion U.S. budget deficit and record debt load, the dollar is as valuable now as 35 years ago.
Measured against a basket of currencies from the Group of 10 nations proportioned by how they trade against each other, the greenback is up about 3 percent since 1975, according to Bloomberg Correlation-Weighted Currency Indexes. That was four years after the Bretton Woods agreement, set up in 1944 to link currencies to the price of gold, collapsed. The U.K. pound has dropped 34 percent and the Canadian dollar has fallen 6 percent.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p
These are the children of China's baby-boomers, a demographic ripple effect of the country's population surge in the 1950s and 1960s.
They would have been even more numerous had Beijing not launched its one-child policy in the late 1970s to cap family size, but they are still a bigger group than those immediately younger and older than them.
As it turns out, the controversial population controls have shaped their consumption habits. Showered with attention and gifts all their lives, this generation of only children keep their purse strings loose, unlike their parents.
"They have all grown up since 1980, during 30 years of fast-paced growth, so they don't feel the same need for precautionary savings as their parents," Xing Ziqiang, an economist with China International Capital Corp, said.
http://blogs.static.mentalfloss.com/blo
U.S. charges Obama fund-raiser in $290 million fraud
http://www.reuters.com/article/news
Tighter capital rules will increase the stability of the financial system and limit the exposure of taxpayers in the event of failure.
In the event that the banks manage to block deeper reform, the Fed and White House need to be able to claim some kind of victory. The public should not be deceived. The attack on bonuses is mere window dressing.
The Fed’s phony war on bonuses
http://blogs.reuters.com/commentaries/2
For Chinese exporters, grass is greener abroad
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2
Magnificent in that, like the dotcom bubble or the railroad boom in the U.S. in the 19th century, a bubble in domestic China is directionally right and will build useful things which will change the world. A bubble, after all, needs a good story and China has one of the best ever.
Dangerous because, like any bubble, it will inevitably go too far and could take down banks and banking systems globally.
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2
