The crash of a Toyota Prius in New York caught the attention of federal regulators Wednesday after the driver said it accelerated on its own, then lurched down a driveway, across a road and into a stone wall.

The Department of Transportation is looking into the New York crash, spokeswoman Olivia Alair said Wednesday.

Capt. Anthony Marraccini of the police department in Harrison, north of New York City, said a Toyota official asked to collect the Prius involved in the crash but that the police are "not prepared to release it just yet." He said he wanted to see first if a federal agency wants to join or take over the investigation.

When police release the Prius, Toyota will evaluate it to determine the cause of the accident, company spokesman Brian Lyons said.

The 2005 model was taken to a police parking lot. Its front end was severely pushed in, the hood was buckled and the front bumper and one front headlight were broken.

Police believe the vehicle was on Toyota’s recall list for the sticky accelerator problem, but they had no immediate proof that this one had the problem, Marraccini said free credit report and score. The vehicle had been serviced by Toyota for the floor mat problem, he said.

The driver, a 56-year-old housekeeper, was going forward in the car on Tuesday, down a curving driveway several hundred feet long, when the accident happened, he said.

He said police did not yet know how fast the car was going.

The captain said police would consider the possibility that the driver, who was not identified, was at fault. But he added, "There’s nothing at this particular time that would indicate driver error."

The air bags deployed when the car hit the stone wall across the street. Broken glass, plastic headlight pieces and metal that looked like part of a window frame were nearby.

On Monday, California police stopped a runaway 2008 Prius going nearly 95 mph after the driver said the pedal jammed. Toyota and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are investigating.

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After days of speculation, Houston oil service companies Schlumberger Ltd. and Smith International Inc. jointly announced today plans to merger in a stock transaction valued at about $11 billion.

Smith shareholders will receive 0.6966 shares of Schlumberger in exchange for each Smith share. Based on the closing stock prices for both companies on Feb. 18, the agreement places a value of $45.84 per Smith share – 37.5 percent higher than Smith’s Feb. 18 closing price of $33.35.

Upon closing, Smith stockholders collectively will own approximately 12.8 percent of Schlumberger's outstanding shares of common stock.

Andrew Gould, Schlumberger’s chairman and chief executive officer, said that Smith’s drilling technologies, other products and expertise complement those of Schlumberger.

Smith CEO John Yearwood predicts accelerated technology development for the combined company’s customers.

Said Yearwood: “Schlumberger offers Smith's various segments enhanced engineering and design capability to place our products and expertise at the center of the total drilling system of the future.”

The deal, which is subject to regulatory and Smith stockholder approvals, is expected to close in the latter part of the year. It will create an industry giant with revenues double that of rival Halliburton Co. (NYSE: HAL).

For 2009, Schlumberger (NYSE: SLB) and Smith (NYSE: SII) reported revenue of $22.7 billion and $8.2 billion, respectively.

Meanwhile, Halliburton posted 2009 revenue of $14.7 billion.

Schlumberger expects to realize incremental pretax synergies — after integration costs –of approximately $160 million in 2011 and approximately $320 million in 2012. Schlumberger expects the combination to be accretive to earnings per share in 2012.

On Feb. 19, Smith’s stock shot up by more than 14 percent to a new 52-week-high of $38.16 in heavy trading after The Wall Street Journal reported that the company was in advanced talks to be acquired by Schlumberger.

There was no word yet as to how many jobs might be impacted by the transaction.

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Manufacturing expanded in January at the fastest pace since August 2004, indicating production gains that are spearheading the U.S. recovery may soon encourage companies to hire.

The Institute for Supply Management’s factory index rose to 58.4, exceeding the highest estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of economists, from December’s 54.9, figures from the Tempe, Arizona-based group showed. Readings greater than 50 signal expansion. A measure of factory employment rose to the highest level in almost four years.

“Manufacturing is growing, it’s going to continue to expand,” said Hugh Johnson, who manages more than $1.6 billion as chairman of Albany, New York-based Johnson Illington. His forecast of 58 was the highest in the Bloomberg survey. “Whether or not this continues to unfold will depend very heavily on final demand.”

Stocks rose after the report showed increased production may be laying the groundwork for the spending gains necessary for the expansion to be sustained. The strength in U.S. manufacturing is being accompanied by factory expansion from China to Europe, separate data also showed.

Another report today showed personal spending rose 0.2 percent in December, the third straight gain, according to the Commerce Department in Washington.

Incomes climbed 0.4 percent, exceeding expectations and propelled in part by government payments, the report said. Wages and salaries rose 0.1 percent after a 0.4 percent gain in November, showing job growth is needed to help drive consumer spending in coming months.

Employment Forecast

Employers last month may have added jobs for the second time in the last two years, according to the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. The Labor Department will report the figures on Feb. 5.

President Barack Obama’s $3.8 trillion fiscal 2011 budget, released today, puts an emphasis on job creation with $100 billion in additional stimulus spending, along with higher taxes for the wealthy in an attempt to narrow the deficit.

The factory index exceeded economists’ median forecast of 55.5, according to 67 projections in a Bloomberg survey. Estimates ranged from 53.5 to 58. Manufacturing accounts for about 12 percent of the economy.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index gained 0.9 percent to 1,082.96 at 12:12 p.m. in New York. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose basis points to 3.65 percent, according to BGCantor Market Data. A basis point is 0.01 percentage point.

European Manufacturing

The pace of global manufacturing is picking up in response to faster economic growth.

A manufacturing gauge for China climbed to a record in January as exports jumped, according to figures from HSBC Holdings Plc and Markit Economics. Growth in the 16-nation euro region’s manufacturing industry accelerated more than estimated in January, according to a separate report from London-based Markit Economics.

The U.S. ISM’s production index rose to 66.2 from 59.7 and the new orders index increased to 65.9, the highest since December 2004, from 64.8.

Manufacturers such as General Electric Co. are beginning to hire and factories are stepping up production after a record reduction in inventories in 2009. The employment index rose to 53.3 in January, the highest since April 2006, from 50.2 a month earlier.

“Manufacturers are now willing to hire,” Norbert Ore, chairman of the ISM survey, said in a conference call from Atlanta. “The more I look at the data, the more this looks like a typical recovery, that is, that we see very strong growth in the front end of it.”

Unfilled Orders

The report also showed more manufacturers reported increased exports and more said they were paying higher prices for raw materials. It took longer for customers to receive their goods, a sign of stronger demand, while orders waiting to be filled also increased. Inventories were being drawn down at a slower pace.

Factories benefited from increased orders after companies pared inventories last year by a record $125 billion.

Corporate spending on new equipment is also beginning to pick up. Texas Instruments Inc., the second-largest U.S. chipmaker, said it will spend almost $1 billion this year to expand three factories and open a fourth to fill orders.

Federal Reserve officials, who left the benchmark lending rate unchanged in a range between zero and 0.25 percent on Jan. 27, noted in their policy statement that “business spending on equipment and software appears to be picking up.”

GE Hiring

GE, whose power-plant equipment generates one-third of the world’s electricity, is hiring workers in energy, health care and rail transportation. It’s bidding to supply new passenger locomotives for Amtrak and in November announced a joint venture in China that would make high-speed rail locomotives that may add 200 U.S. jobs.

“We will create jobs in the United States that could not have been created any other way,” John Rice, chief executive officer of GE Technology Infrastructure, said of the rail programs in a Jan. 28 Bloomberg Television interview.

Construction spending declined in December more than anticipated, capping the worst year on record for the industry, separate Commerce Department figures showed. Outlays dropped 1.2 percent last month as homebuilding and commercial construction dropped.

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Four decades ago Stewart Brand opened The Whole Earth Catalog with a rollicking mission statement: "We are as gods, and might as well get good at it."

It was an apt mantra for the eco-friendly, do-it-yourself lifestyle guide, which was so clever it won a National Book Award. Now a futurist, author, and business consultant, Brand opens his latest book, Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto, with an urgent update of his youthful declaration: "We are as gods and HAVE to get good at it."

The cause for urgency is climate change. Until 2003, Brand writes, "I had only the usual concerns" about the seemingly "dire but distant" issue. Then he saw studies of Greenland ice cores revealing that, in the past, the climate has tipped into a radically different state, such as an ice age, in less than a decade.

Runaway positive feedback is the likely cause. Here’s an example: As human greenhouse emissions mount, global warming causes mirror-like polar ice to give way to dark ocean. That makes the Arctic absorb more solar heat, which melts more ice, leading to yet more heat absorption. This and other positive feedbacks are likely driving the ominously fast melting of Arctic ice, which was half gone by the summer of 2007, three to four decades earlier than predicted — the great melt is unfolding with tipping-point-like speed.

Channeling climate scientists, Brand predicts that fresh water and other resources will be in desperately short supply in many areas of a climate-changed world. A global state of constant war over dwindling resources might well ensue, killing billions.

Too dire? Consider: Tibetan Plateau glaciers, which feed shared rivers of China, India, Pakistan, and other Asian countries, are now melting away to expose a drought-prone tinderbox filled with vying nuclear powers, as well as "feral zones" controlled by Al Qaeda and its allies. If increasingly plausible worst-case scenarios play out, Brand tersely observes, "we’re ants on a burning log."

His scary analysis is the setup for a hopeful, though controversial, message: All may still be well if we get really good at using tools many Greens love to hate cash advance payday loans. To wit: urbanization (which enables efficiencies of scale and lower per-capita use of resources), nuclear power (to displace coal’s heavy greenhouse emissions), biotech (to engender, among other things, biofuel-producing microbes and drought-resistant crops), and geoengineering (such as lofting megatons of smoky particulates into the stratosphere to block sunlight and cool the climate).

Brand’s case for parting ways with environmentalism’s old guard rests largely on surprising developments that, he freely acknowledges, have shown some of his former views were wrong. Who knew that the rise of developing-world megacities, with their sprawling slums, would defuse the population bomb? (In rural villages, Brand notes, "every additional child is an asset, but in the slum, every additional child is a liability, so the newly liberated women in town focus on education and opportunity — on fewer, higher-quality children.")

That the expected number of excess cancers from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster would now be less than 1% of initial projections, and that the Chernobyl area would be a uniquely biodiverse wildlife sanctuary teeming with rare species? That the widespread cultivation of bioengineered corn, once thought to kill monarch butterflies, appears to be greatly benefiting them?

Not surprisingly, Brand’s iconoclasm has heated up the blogosphere, and some deep-dyed Greens apparently feel the trailblazer whose whole-earth visions seeded the first Earth Day in 1970 is doing a Lieberman.

Wrong.

Brand has always been an Obama-like, big-picture pragmatist — his famous catalog’s supreme virtue was its usefulness. And while some of his positions cry out for debate — I’m not sure I’d trust a real god to attempt geoengineering, much less us fumbling, self-taught ones — no one has brought more breadth, clarity, and cogency to bear on the biggest issue of our time. At 70, environmentalism’s pithiest polemicist has outdone himself, giving us one of the most important green tracts since Silent Spring. Read it. 

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KaChing Group Inc., which runs an online service that lets individual investors emulate the trading decisions of qualified skilled investors, has received $7.5 million in a financing round led by DAG Ventures.

Palo Alto-based kaChing launched its platform in October. The company charges users an average 1.25 percent annually, as compared to the 3 percent it says is common in mutual funds saving account payday loan.

The company previously raised $3 million from individuals including Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz, Jeff Jordan, CEO of Open Table and former president of PayPal and various other well known venture capitalists.

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Retailers placed a lot of hope on the Thanksgiving weekend gift buying this year, but merchants failed to get the big sales boost they were seeking.

According to monthly same-store tracker Thomson Reuters, overall sales rose just 0.5% last month versus its forecast for a 2.1% increase. The figure does not include leading retailer Wal-Mart Stores (WMT, Fortune 500), which reports sales on a quarterly basis.

The firm tracks same-store sales, or sales at stores open at least a year, for such large national chains as J.C. Penney (JCP, Fortune 500), Macy’s, Target (TGT, Fortune 500) and Gap (GPS, Fortune 500).

Still, the marginal increase is an improvement over last year’s steep 7.8% decline in November.

"The fundamentals for many Americans are still weak," said Scott Hoyt, senior director of consumer economics with Moody’s Economy.com.

"Unemployment is more than 10%, wages are not growing, the effects of the stimulus measure designed to boost spending have worn out and no more are coming," he said.

Among these factors, the biggest overhang on consumer spending is the job market, Hoyt said. "Consumer spending will turn when the job market improves," he said.

Some specialty sellers were hit especially hard. Among them same-store sales at teen clothing chain Hot Topic fell 11.7%. last month. Analysts had expected a decline of 8.1%, according to sales tracker Thomson Reuters.

Children’s Place, a seller of clothing and accessories for young kids, suffered a 13% drop in its same-store sales versus expectations for a 1% increase.

Sales at another youth merchandise chain Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) slumped 17%

Elsewhere, total sales at No. 1 warehouse club operator Costco (COST, Fortune 500) rose 6% compared to a forecast for an increase of 8.1%. Target, the No payday loans with no fax. 2 discounter after Wal-Mart, said its sales declined 1.5%.

"Sales were slightly below our expectations as softer results in the first three weeks of the month were substantially offset by better-than-expected sales during our post-Thanksgiving Two-Day sale," Gregg Steinhafel, CEO of Target Corporation, said in a statement.

"For the month overall, comparable store transactions were positive and inventories remain well-controlled, giving us confidence in our ability to perform well during the holiday season in what continues to be a challenging economic environment," he said.

Sales at department store chain J.C. Penney declined 5.9%, which the company said was in line with its expectations of a decline between 4% to 7% while sales at Macy’s fell 6.1%.

But there were a few bright spots. Limited Brands, parent of Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works chains, increased its same-store sales by 3% in November and high-end seller Nordstrom logged a 2.2% gain in its sales last month.

November is a critical month for retailers since it marks the start of the year-end holiday shopping season, typically on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.

November and December together can account for 50% or more of merchants’ annual sales and profits for the full year.

Although many Americans have had a year to absorb shocks to the economy and to their own household budgets, industry watchers say continued job losses and stagnant income growth are forcing most consumers to keep shopping with extreme caution.

Given that context, the National Retail Federation (NRF) expects holiday sales to decline 1% this year, a improvement from last year’s 3.4% drop in sales for the season. 

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With rising unemployment stymying the president’s economic revival plans, the Obama administration is huddling with business leaders, academics and other experts Thursday to find a way to jumpstart hiring.

Some 130 people will gather for the afternoon jobs summit at the White House on the eve of the government’s November unemployment report. The nation is expected to have lost another 114,000 jobs, with unemployment remaining at 10.2%, the highest in 26 years, according to an economists’ survey.

The employment picture is certainly grim. Nearly 16 million Americans are out of work, one-third of whom have been unemployed for more than six months. There are now six workers competing for every job vacancy.

President Obama and some lawmakers are searching for a way to stem this unrelenting loss of jobs, which is casting doubt on effectiveness of many of his economic programs, from his $787 billion stimulus plan to his $75 billion foreclosure prevention initiative.

"We are going to be bringing together people from all across the country … to explore how we can jumpstart the hiring that typically lags behind economic growth, but we don’t want to wait," Obama said last week.

Invited executives include Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Disney chief Bob Iger, Boeing head James McNerney and AT&T’s Randall Stephenson. Also expected are United Steel Workers president Leo Gerard, San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, former Fed vice chairman Alan Blinder and Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist.

The guests will also include small business owners, academics and non-profit leaders.

On the schedule are discussions on green jobs, small business employment, infrastructure and exports. Also, breakout groups will look at ways to encourage business competitiveness and to better prepare workers for the economy of the future.

The discussions will be led by top administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Council of Economic Advisers Chair Christina Romer, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Energy Secretary Steven Chu. Obama will make opening and closing remarks.

There’s no shortage of job growth proposals being bandied about. Though all sides agree that rising unemployment must be addressed, the solutions run the gamut. Some left-leaning economists and politicians are pushing for another round of stimulus, while their conservative counterparts are calling for tax breaks, such as a hiring credit for companies who add to their payrolls.

Indicative of just how contentious job creation is, House Republicans are holding an alternate roundtable on Thursday to discuss what they call the administration’s "job-threatening" policies.

"From the Obama administration, which produced a trillion-dollar ’stimulus’ that didn’t create jobs "immediately" as promised, comes a "jobs summit" that won’t actually help create jobs," said House Republican Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. "Now more than ever, America needs more jobs, not more debt online payday loans."

Just how much Washington can do to boost hiring remains to be seen.

The administration and Congress are tied up with health care reform and foreign policy issues. And their ability to institute new programs will be hampered by the nation’s record budget deficit.

Though experts say the economy is recovering, they don’t expect jobs to return anytime soon. The National Association for Business Economics pushed recently pushed back their expectations for when companies will start adding positions to mid-2010. They previously had predicted a gain of 12,000 jobs a month in the first quarter.

Some of the proposals

Some of the leading ideas under discussion include:

• offering a payroll tax holiday, which would temporarily suspend the 12.4% tax on workers’ first $106,800 of wages;
• creating a new jobs hiring credit;
• giving more money to states and localities to close budget deficits. These shortfalls could cost 900,000 jobs in 2010 alone, according to one think tank;
• and offering public-service employment.

One measure that is more likely to be enacted is an extension of unemployment benefits. One million people could lose unemployment benefits in January if Congress doesn’t lengthen the deadline to apply for federal aid beyond Dec. 31, according to the National Employment Law Center.

This week, two groups at opposite ends of the political spectrum offered a bevy of suggestions on how to spur job creation.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Monday sent a letter to the president with seven policies that it said are crucial to job creation. Its suggestion include expanding infrastructure investment by removing regulatory and other requirements, as well as better preparing American students for future jobs and lowering tax rates on entrepreneurs.

"While the government can help support some jobs in the short run, the only way to meet this challenge over the long term is through a vibrant and dynamic free enterprise system," Thomas Donohue, the chamber’s president.

The Economic Policy Institute, on the other hand, supports more government spending on transportation infrastructure and school buildings, as well as the creation of one million public service positions.

The labor-supported group, which released a five-point plan Monday that it says will create 4.6 million jobs in its first year, also supports extending unemployment benefits and health insurance subsidies. And it wants to see the president and lawmakers send more funds to state and local governments and create a hiring credit.

"Some people have questioned whether we can afford to do more to create jobs, but they’ve got it backwards," said Lawrence Mishel, EPI’s president. "We can’t afford not to do more." 

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Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum fired one senior aide and removed three others from the board of Dubai’s main holding company as the debt-laden emirate tries to secure a second $10 billion injection of funds.

On Nov. 20, Sheikh Mohammed removed the governor of the Dubai International Financial Centre, Omar Bin Sulaiman, who had led efforts to transform Dubai into a Middle East finance hub. A day earlier, he dropped Mohammad al-Gergawi, Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem and Mohammed Ali Alabbar from the board of the Investment Corporation of Dubai. The three were at the forefront of a construction drive that began in 2002 and collapsed last year after the global financial crisis engulfed Dubai.

Sheikh Mohammed’s moves were aimed at exerting more control over the web of competing, state-owned companies that he used to accelerate diversification away from oil and which amassed $80 billion of debts. Shares in Dubai fell to a two-month low yesterday following the reshuffle.

“Dubai is trying to get the maximum investor subscription for this $10 billion bond issue,” said Christopher Davidson, a professor at Durham University in the U.K. and author of the 2008 book “Dubai: The Vulnerability of Success.” “Sheikh Mohammed needs to put new people in who are not tainted by the bubble economy of past years.”

The Dubai Financial Market General Index yesterday lost 2.6 percent, falling to 2,073.66. Abu Dhabi’s measure slipped 2 percent to its lowest since Sept. 2.

The sheikh’s sweeping changes introduced “a degree of uncertainty” which unsettled the markets, said Farouk Soussa, an analyst with Standard & Poors in Dubai.

Bond Issue

The Dubai government is in the final stages of preparing the second half of the bond issue, Alabbar said on Nov. 20. Investors will buy a “reasonable chunk” of the bond, he said. The bonds will be issued before the end of the year, Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al-Maktoum, chairman of the emirate’s Supreme Fiscal Committee, said on Nov. 16.

The remainder is likely to be bought by the federal government in Abu Dhabi, which has 90 percent of the oil in the U.A.E. and bailed out Dubai in February with a $10 billion bond issue subscribed entirely by the U.A.E. central bank.

Dubai’s real-estate market was the worst affected by the global financial crisis. Home prices have tumbled about 50 percent from their peak, and may drop another 20 percent this year, Deutsche Bank AG said in June.

Waterfront Development

Bin Sulayem is chairman of Dubai World, a state-run holding company that has about $59 billion of debt and other liabilities paydayloans. It controls property developer Nakheel PJSC, which has had to cancel plans for a new waterfront development the size of Hong Kong Island. Nakheel has to repay a $3.52 billion bond maturing in December.

Al-Gergawi is chairman of Dubai Holding, which owns developers including Dubai Properties LLC, Sama Dubai LLC and Tatweer LLC. Tatweer has put on hold a project to build “Dubailand,” a Disneyland-style leisure park that would be three times the size of Manhattan. Alabbar is chairman of Emaar Properties PJSC, the largest developer in the U.A.E., which is building the world’s tallest tower.

The cost of protecting Dubai bonds from default rose 3 percent to 313 basis points on Nov. 20, five-year credit-default swap prices show. The contracts, which get more expensive as perceptions of credit quality worsen, traded at 287 basis points on Oct. 20, the lowest in 12 months, Bloomberg data show.

‘More Carefully’

The emirate will study the viability of projects more closely in the future, Sheikh Mohammed said Sept. 9. “We’ll be more careful now,” he said.

In June, Emaar said it was in talks to combine with Dubai Properties, Sama Dubai and Tatweer as it aims to control the supply of new buildings amid a glut of homes.

The replacement of the DIFC governor is part of efforts to improve the efficiency of government institutions and companies, and “consolidate the emirate’s growing importance as an international center for finance, business, trade, tourism and all services,” Mohammed Ibrahim Al Shaibani, director-general of the ruler’s court, said in an e-mailed statement on Nov. 20.

Ahmed Humaid al-Tayer, the new governor of the DIFC, which is home to regional offices of banks including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Deutsche Bank AG, said Nov. 21 he would pursue the same strategy as his predecessor. Al-Tayer is also chairman of Emirates NBD PJSC, the U.A.E.’s biggest bank by assets, and remains a member of the ICD board along with Al Shaibani, the head of the ruler’s court.

The other four board members are Sheikh Mohammed, two of his sons and his uncle.

The four sidelined Dubai powerbrokers have to some extent been made scapegoats, said Simon Henderson, an expert on the Gulf monarchies at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“They were given authority and access to capital and told to go out there and expand Dubai, they were given a license and latitude, and to that extent, they were obeying orders,” he said.

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The U.S. trade deficit widened in September by an unexpectedly large 18.2 percent, the most in more than 10 years, as oil prices rose for the seventh straight month and imports from China bounded higher, a U.S. government report showed on Friday.

The monthly trade gap grew to $36.5 billion, from a slightly revised estimate of $30.8 billion in August. Wall Street analyst had expected the shortfall to grow modestly in September to around $31.65 billion.

Both U.S. exports and imports had their best month since December 2008. But in a sign of renewed U.S. economic growth, imports grew 5.8 percent in September, the biggest monthly gain since March 1993, while exports rose 2.9 percent.

Imports of industrial supplies and materials showed the biggest gain, suggesting that U.S. manufacturers are ramping up for production.

The average price for imported oil leapt to $68.17 per barrel and imports from the Organization of Petroleum Export Countries increased to $11.9 billion in September, both the highest since November 2008.

The closely watched U.S. trade deficit with China widened 9.2 percent to $22.1 billion as imports grew 8.3 percent to $27.9 billion, both also the highest since November 2008.

The overall U.S. trade deficit, including with China, has fallen significantly this year in response to the worst economic downturn in decade faxless payday loans.

But the gap with China narrowed just 15.9 percent in the first nine months of the year, compared with much bigger declines for Canada (79.6 percent), the European Union (42.0 percent) and OPEC (71.8 percent).

That has reinforced ideas that China’s currency remains overvalued against the dollar, giving Chinese companies an unfair trade advantage.

President Barack Obama is expected to raise concerns about China’s exchange rate regime when he meets with Chinese leaders next week in Beijing. On Friday he was in Japan for talks before heading to Singapore for this weekend’s annual summit meeting with leaders of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.

With U.S. unemployment the highest in 26 years, Obama has said he would press for a rebalancing of world economic growth where countries in Asia would open their markets to more American goods and rely less on exports to the United States and more on their own domestic demand.

(Reporting by Doug Palmer, Editing by Neil Stempleman)

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Procter & Gamble Co posted a quarterly profit well ahead of analysts’ forecasts and said it has modestly higher expectations for growth in the industry even as consumers continue to remain cautious.

P&G’s pantry of products have been pressured for months, as shoppers try cheaper brands than Pampers and Tide, and eschew indulgences such as Hugo Boss cologne and SK-II face cream.

The world’s largest household products maker earned $3.31 billion, or $1.06 per share, in the fiscal first quarter that ended on September 30, compared with a profit of $3.35 billion, or $1.03 per share, a year earlier best payday advance.

Analysts, on average, expected P&G to earn 99 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Net sales fell 6 percent to $19.8 billion, with declines in every category ranging from beauty to snacks and pet care.

Organic sales, which exclude the impact of currency fluctuations, acquisitions and divestitures, rose 2 percent. P&G had predicted such sales would be flat to down 3 percent.

(Reporting by Jessica Wohl, editing by Maureen Bavdek)

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