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Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, appearing before a Congressional panel Wednesday, defended the performance of safety regulators in dealing with problems involving Toyota cars, including unintended acceleration.
LaHood objected to a suggestion that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a part of his department, has been a "lap dog" to the auto industry.
"On my watch we […]

Greece arranged swap agreements with about 15 securities firms, including some payments from banks that may have helped hide the country’s true deficit, according to a person with direct knowledge of the contracts.
The swaps that allowed Greece to receive payments upfront date from before 2008, when European Union regulators changed rules to limit […]

Crude oil advanced Wednesday, extending the previous session’s 4% gain, as investors continued their bid for riskier assets.
What prices are doing: Crude oil for March delivery rose 33 cents, or 0.4%, to settle at $77.33 a barrel Wednesday.
Oil surged 3.8% Tuesday to settle at $77.01 a barrel. Prices tracked rising stocks and were […]

Stocks rallied Thursday after the European Union’s promise to help debt-ridden Greece eased worries that a default might hurt global markets.
The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) rose 106 points, or 1%. The S&P 500 index (SPX) gained 10 points, or 1.4% and the Nasdaq composite (COMP) added 29 points, or 1.4%.
Stocks slid in the […]

The foreclosure sale of the Denver Ritz-Carlton hotel’s unsold condos and Forza athletic club space has been postponed again, according to City and County of Denver foreclosure records.
The sale has previously been scheduled for Oct. 1 and Nov. 12 of last year and, most recently, for Feb. 11, foreclosure records said. It’s now slated for […]

South African policy makers are looking at whether they should maintain stimulus measures as the economy hasn’t been as affected by the global recession as other countries, central bank Deputy Governor Xolile Guma said.
“Certainly in South Africa, we’ve been taking a look at it, because we were not affected as seriously as other […]

Bank of Japan Deputy Governor Hirohide Yamaguchi defended the central bank’s self-imposed limit on bond purchases after a lawmaker suggested it could buy more debt to fight deflation.
“This isn’t just something we uphold to keep our backyard tidy,” Yamaguchi told parliament in Tokyo today. “Should people mistakenly start to think we are financing […]

The top-grossing movie in the world, Avatar, is on screens now, and it clearly identifies the most evil force in the universe. It’s business.
"There’s only one thing the shareholders hate more than bad publicity," says the smarmy manager of an unnamed company’s mining operations on the planet Pandora in Avatar, "and that’s a […]