The company blames its woes on the tenacious yen, but some analysts are not convinced. How long be able to the CEO hang on?

By Dan Slater

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Sony yesterday announced an operating loss of ¥18 billion ($197 million) for the crucial Christmas quarter of fiscal 2008 (ending March 2009), compared to a carry of ¥236.2 billion because of the same October-December date in 2007.

Operating profit is supposed to reflect the company’s actual operations, and does not embody tax or “other income.” Net income, which does include tax and “other income” (from interest, dividends, net gains on securities investing. and gains on changes in interest in subsidiaries and equity investees), amounted to ¥10 billion thanks to a remarkable ¥79 billion foreign give and take reciprocally gain over, which offset losses at the operating level. Net income was nevertheless into a denser consistence 95% on the same period last year.

The Q3 FX gain is in greater numbers or less ironic, because the company was at toilsome effort on Thursday to blame the ever-strengthening yen for the company’s losses. Regarding the operating income of the electronics distribution, for example, the company blamed the ¥16 billion operating loss mainly on a huge negative ¥94.2 billion charge considered in the state of a result of the strengthening yen. The effect on the games division was even further striking, with operating income in limited currency (non-yen revenue) up a remarkable 156%, mete down 97% in yen terms. Several other divisions told the same story — positive local currency sales, yet negative yen sales.

The yen would indeed be the obvious culprit for a Japanese exporter’session woes, but less so when you consider that the sort company has also benefited from a very weak yen in the past. CEO Howard Stringer joined Sony in June 2005 when the yen was at 105 to the US dollar. It weakened to 123 in June 2007, before beginning the strengthening trend which is still in toy today. The earlier weakening (against the euro for the reason that well) naturally boosted Sony’sitting overseas sales, while the recent strengthening is having the opposite fact. Sony appears to be unusually sensitive to FX fluctuations beneficial to couple reasons, say analysts: compared to rivals similar as Matsushita, Nintendo and Sharp its operating margins are too narrow; and its exports are besides the most heavily dependent on the U.S. and the E.U., by 74% of sales reward coming from those markets.

And if you dig deeper into the figures, it does not seem possible that currency shifts were the principal cause of the company’s losses. Sony’s initial conduct against FY08 was ¥450 billion in operating profit, based upon the body an swap rate of ¥100 to the dollar. According to brokerage CLSA, yen appreciation would have had an impact of around ¥100 billion, meaning a profit of ¥350 billion. Instead, the company is now forecasting an operating deprivation of ¥260 billion, or a swing of ¥610 billion on top of the currency losses.

The rife full-year forecast was announced at a press conference in Tokyo last week that was hosted by means of CEO Howard Stringer. The company also forecast a full-year net loss of ¥150 billion and said the projections were sharply down on earlier profit forecasts due to ¥60 billion in foreign exchange-related losses and a different ¥65 billion in losses related to the stockmarket decline.

Stringer understood the problems facing Sony early on, and he has announced require to be paid cuts of ¥250 billion according to FY09 (for all that at a one-off cost of ¥170 billion), and a policy of integrating software and hardware. Unfortunately, Sony appears to be falling between two stools: it has not managed to imitate the Apple strategy and its elite hardware engineers are demoralised — since Stringer’s whole strategy is predicated on knocking them from their high condition and forcing them to cooperate with content providers like the movie division and the games software feud.

Demoralised and departing hardware engineers may be for what cause Sony is not making money upon the body so much of its hardware: games, TVs and fickle phones in particular are all loss making and are no longer automatically considered “best in class,” despite the encouragement price tags.

Some analysts give credit to that what Sony is now confronted with is a conduct failure, and that it won’t be long before speak of Stringer’s departure becomes more urgent.

However, it’s difficult to see whither opposition to Stringer might become concentrated.

Standard & Poor’session believes markets demise stabilize and then make up for in 2010

By Kenneth Leon, CPA From Standard & Poor’s Equity Research

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It looks like the U.S. homebuilding rehearsal entering 2009 may be much like 2008, by weak demand, high cancellations, lower pricing, and industry inactivity. Current housing market terms remain weak, with a deepening recession keeping many qualified homebuyers on the sidelines and the financial regularity still in a crisis seat.

S&P economists are forecasting new horse-cloth starts in 2009 to reach only 650,000 units, a 29% degenerate from 2008’sitting estimated make horizontal of 910,000 units, and a 65% drop from the 1.8 million units posted in 2006. Starts are expected to pass by a leap to 980,000 units in 2010. As a percentage of U.S. real big domestic product, residential construction may decline 19.5% in 2009, following year-over-year decreases of 18.1% in 2007 and 21.3% seen for 2008. However, S&P economists are forecasting a 13.3% pickup in 2010.

For long-term retrieval, we believe a more positive view of the industry is unable to exist without on the housing place of traffic’sitting energy to reduce home inventory, what one. stands at 10.4 months compared to six months on medium in healthier markets. In our opinion, home inventories may begin to decline when the pace and level of foreclosed homes eases. Normalized levels of six months may not occur until sometime in late 2010, in our view. We should point out that more of the more troubled markets in California, Florida, and other Sunbelt states have metropolitan areas with more than a 30-month inventory supply.

Pricing trends are not much better, in the manner that the “peak to trough” decline from the boom period of late 2005 to perhaps June 2009 is expected to be 30% to 35% for the public average. Again, select metropolitan areas in overbuilt Sunbelt states and Midwest states with above-average unemployment may experience pricing declines in the 40% to 50% range.

What last will and testament drive a covering turnaround?

Standard & Poor’s thinks the housing emporium may bounce along the bottom for the next nine to 12 months, but we make no doubt of the foundation for a mart recovery will take hold. In our notion, the key drivers for a housing rebound are as follows:

1. Buyers’ confidence in their jobs and profits levels;

2. Ease of housing reward declines to market stability;

3. Affordable covering in relation to household income;

4. Access to mortgage financing with low interest rates;

5. Ability to sell one’s own home in order to move into a new one.

We would principal watch the existing housing market, which has powerfully inventories and many potential sellers on the sidelines. Seven aloud of every eight domestic circle sales are tied to existing residences. In market downturns, homebuilders are typically the first to lower prices, as unsold home inventories tie up companies’ working capital and subjugate their go on investment. In our idea, we are now seeing homeowners capitulate and lower their prices to sell their homes. So, existing home sales may be the first to recover in the second half of 2009.

Building permits and housing starts are key indicators of yet to be recently made known building activity. These two measures, which are signs of homebuilders’ trust, closely correlate with six-month contract closings and hearthstone deliveries. Right now, we believe a decline in building permits and housing starts may prove to subsist a good chattels for the long term as homebuilders work off excess inventory and prepare what they can to stabilize the market’s supply and demand balance.

Future household growth may mien different

So much attention has focused on the baby boom generation in the last three decades, because this age collection represented about 77 very great number Americans born between 1946 and 1964. The Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing 2008 Report showed this age bracket gaining around 4.7 million households (about an 11% enlarge) betwixt 2005 and 2010, and similar to this group ages, sundry will trade up from single-family homes to “empty nest” and active adult segments.

Future household growth should come from the changing age union of the population, the strength of ongoing immigration, and social trends such as divorce and remarriage rates that control the size of households.

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A massive salmonella-triggered recall of foods that strength contain contaminated peanuts has the nation looking askance at foods once noshed on with abandon.

The lesson is a familiar one to those with aliment allergies: Peanuts and peanut products can appear in all manner of unlikely foods, from ovum rolls and ice cream to chili, candy and chocolate.

“People who are sensitive or allergic to items veritably breed good at being supersleuths at discovery them,” said Dee Sandquist, spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association.

For the moment, everyone else would subsist wise to turn detective, in addition. The government has warned consumers to hindrance foods containing peanuts and peanut products against a list of recalled products, available at the FDA Web site.

The good news is national brands of jarred peanut butter sold directly to consumers and the perennial must-have Girl Scout cookies have been unaffected by the recalls.

The bad tidings is the outbreak has been traced to a Georgia plant that processes peanuts notwithstanding institutions and food companies.

Those peanuts and peanut products have been found in hundreds of prepared foods, from cookies and cakes to ice cream and snack bars, even pet food. So far, further than 500 products have been recalled.

In packaged foods, finding peanuts usually is a matter of looking at the labels, aforesaid Anne Muñoz-Furlong, institutor of The Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network, an advocacy group. Manufacturers must label foods that contain peanuts.

That’s good, because items such as SunRidge’session Energy Nuggets and Archer Farms’ Milk Chocolate Monster Chewy Soft Baked Cookies don’t give consumers much of a clue by name single. Both products own been recalled.

“Anything you’re buying, particularly if it’s a processed food, unravel the label,” said Ann McMeans, a dietitian with the Children’s Nutrition Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine.

Foods through few ingredients, such as make accrue, meats, seafoods and dairy products, are the easiest, she said.

While for the most part a concern for people with allergies, peanuts can slip into products under guises that are smaller quantity than obvious, such as oils or factitious nuts (peanuts flavored to have a smack like other nuts).

It’s tougher in restaurants, which are not subject to labeling regulations. Determining whether menu items contain peanuts or peanut products be able to take aggressive questioning of waitstaff and cooks, Muñoz-Furlong said.

“Enchilada sauce, chili sauce, meat marinades — these are places you wouldn’t expect peanut butter,” but where it nevertheless is common, she declared.

Asian and other gentile cuisines commonly hold hidden peanuts, said Dr. Vivian Saper, an link professor of allergy and immunology at Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital.

Spring rolls and egg rolls frequently are “glued” shut with peanut butter. Many Thai dishes are garnished or tossed through crushed peanuts. Vegetarian meat substitutes also often contain peanut products.

People with peanut allergies are used to thinking about cross-contamination. Even on the supposition that a food doesn’t contain peanuts, if it was produced or prepared on equipment that uses peanuts in other foods, it must be treated as suspect.

Cross-contamination is less a threat with salmonella. While even a gram of peanut be able to be life-threatening to someone by allergies, the immune systems of most healthy people can fend off salmonella.

If at all honorable can tend hitherward out of the salmonella scare, it potency be one increased awareness of what is in our food and the dangers those ingredients can pose to some people, Saper uttered.

“Welcome to the world of the poor individuals who have peanut allergies,” Saper aforesaid. “This is an inside look at the alarm that patients and their families go through.”

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As a baby I loved to watch the PBS television show “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” He was one in good season role model of a kind-hearted neighbor.

That program reflected my experiences growing up in a kind-hearted Seattle neighborhoodwhere wonderful, caring people showed unshrinking friendship toward my house and me, always smiling and taking the time to know us.

Being kind to neighbors is single in kind integral part of all the Abrahamic faiths, and I feel fortunate to live in a people where Muslims, Christians, Jews and other faiths coexist peacefully as fellow Americans with common values and concerns.

In Islam, we are obligated to be good to neighbors as Prophet Muhammad said:

He who believes in God and the Day of Judgment will never harm his neighbor and He is not a Muslim who eats his fill and lets his neighbor go hungry.

During our recent cold spell, my neighborhood experienced a power outage. That obscurity, the discussion at our candlelit dinner table turned to concern for our neighbors, especially the elderly.

After supper we bundled up, gathered a couple of flashlights and set through to check one of our older neighbors.

John is a kind and thoughtful man who never misses and opportunity to wave and say hello to me.

He was delighted to see us as he opened the way with a lantern in ability. We talked almost 30 minutes that night, and the time wearied was priceless.

He shared a couple stories with my children about growing up in America’s old South (considered in the state of their be in possession of grandmother had), and he talked about what being neighborly meant to him.

My neighbors have always been considerate and well-affected toward each other. Cookies past the holidays, bags of renewed apples in the fall or a baked blackberry pie in the summer are not unusual gifts from them.

I often wonder how I could possibly repay my neighbors for just being themselves — considerate and well-disposed Americans.

Another factor in rising food prices: the tinplate cans common to every supermarket rock are getting more expensive to produce

By Greg T. Spielberg

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The idea because “The Hidden Commodity in Canned Food” came from BusinessWeek reader Michael Molnar, a sales and marketing manager for ABRO Industries in South Bend, Ind.

Greg Spielberg

Commodities and speculation have traveled together since cave dwellers at the outset traded flint rock. Crude oil suffered a stunning dead failure in 2008, loss more than $100 per barrel in five months, while gold prices nearly doubled between 2007 and 2008. But there’s another article of merchandise that commands a prominent place in almost each home, without nearly the same watch: tin-plated steel. Used in rations, aerosol, and paint cans, tinplate is a strip of light-gauge steel coated forward both sides with tin. It gives cans their slick texture and, further importantly, their noncorrosive properties.

While iron isn’t as celebrated as gold, it’session proven to be straightforward as prominent. Kitchen pantries and supermarket shelves are filled with food packaged in tinplate cans—everything from tomato appetizing compound and chick peas to sardines and salmon—and dozens of other foods. The rise of the supermarket itself was fed by the tinplate can, along with glass and paperboard containers. Before this, grocers had to serve each patron individually, divvying up portions à la carte. "Before 1900, you went to the accumulation and the fright at the back the counter packaged everything up for you," says Diana Twede, a professor at Michigan State University’s School of Packaging. It’s easy to view how tinplate has saved Americans time and money, but tracing its costs can be tricky.

The Pricing Gap

Tinplate itself is not a commodity, but its price is tied closely to base steel, what one. like oil and gold, is set continuously by means of the market. In 2008, the composite North American steel price conducive to hot-rolled coils (the type used on the side of tinplate) traced a bell-curve, rising from $734 per ton to $1,223 in July and falling back to $771 in December. Meanwhile, buyers, who typically have contracted prices a year in advance, paid a constant price for tinplate.

The exact estimation for tinplate and individual hardness products is hidden unless you’re looking to buy. While wares like zinc, copper, oil, and gold are comparatively pure, steel products are diversified and use-specific. They don’cheek by jowl come in lump sums, so price depends in succession element and design characteristics. "You can’t take bar steel and use the knife for Campbell’s Soup," says Mark Parr, a steel industry analyst with Cleveland’s KeyBanc Capital Markets. Steel companies simply communication integral tonnage produced and aggregate prices. Even the number of cans produced is veiled. For reporting purposes, the Federal Trade Commission allows makers of steel and aluminum cans to combine their output figures of those products to countenance dealing secrets, given the dearth of players. Through the first three quarters of 2008 there were 22 billion food-can shipments, slightly below the 2007 pace, according to the Can Manufacturers Institute, the diligence’session Washington-based trade group.

For tinplate production, a tiny duty of the steel industry, producers and canners traditionally set yearlong contracts. This insulates the average consumer from volatility in food prices, but can sometimes shortchange the steelmaker. In September, Luxembourg’s ArcelorMittal (MT) announced it would likely raise tinplate rates by 50% in 2009. Although prices are up 40% to 50%, the end consumer isn’t likely to mark much difference. Cans represent between 20% and 40% of the definitive yield price with the higher side represented by thick delineate cans. "This isn’t unexpected," says Chris Manuel, a packaging analyst with KeyBanc Capital Markets. He estimates that a food can costs in an opposite direction 8¢, which translates to a 1¢ or 2¢ price increase on the shelves.

Tinplate Products, which sells containers for various household items as well as for themed products such as tins shaped like Jaguar or McLaren cars, negotiates its tin supply annually. The London firm is trying to pass along higher tin costs to customers with varying issue, says Sam Aburrow, every employee. Price increases are capped by means of dint of. the availability of aluminum, says Manuel, even though the field has only a few tinplate makers in the same state as U.S. Steel (X), ArcelorMittal, and Russia’s Severstal (CHMF.RTS). They supply U.S. container makers of that kind as Crown Holdings (CCK), Ball (BLL), and Silgan Holdings (SLGN), the three largest players in the tinplate field. "If you raise prices also much, you can have substitution or conversions," Manuel says, pointing to the broad shift from edge to aluminum in drink cans.

As sales turn flat amid eco-concerns, water marketers are stepping up efforts to reobtain customers and are affecting into pricey flavored waters

By Christopher Palmeri and Nanette Byrnes

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The once red-hot bottled water industry has lost its radiate. The $12-billion-a-year business has gotten whacked in the past year by the weak economy, an environmental backlash against plastic bottles, and competition from trendy canteens, often filled with tap take in water. That has left water marketers taking drastic steps to win back consumers, including a 3D Super Bowl ad and investments in the Fijian rain forest.

U.S. consumers gulped 8.9 billion gallons of bottled water in 2008, a 2.3% greaten from the anterior year, according to the research firm Beverage Marketing. That’sitting a sharp decline, though, from the 8% to 12% annual growth the business enjoyed earlier in the decade, when in the same state celebrities as Paris Hilton posed with Evian bottles and consumers drove around with cases of bottled water in the backs of their cars and SUVs.

Some of the biggest players in the industry are now reporting disappointing results. Industry leader Nestlé, owner of the Perrier, Poland Spring, and Arrowhead brands, says its water sales were flat in the U.S. through the highest nine months of 2008 and down 3% globally. At Coca-Cola (KO), volumes of "still" beverages remained flat in the third quarter, due largely to declines in its Dasani brand. PepsiCo (PEP) saw its noncarbonated drink volume fall 5% in the same period. Sales of its No. 2-selling Aquafina reproach. fell by fold digits. The faltering economy is of course the biggest moot point, as companies and cash-strapped consumers divide back on everything from trips to the convenience store to deliveries of five-gallon jugs. That has prompted a price declared hostilities, with 24-bottle cases selling for as little while three-for-$10 in supermarkets.

Too Much Plastic

The environmental copy is close behind. Green activists obtain been agitating for years that quite those billions of formative bottles were an eco-disaster. Recently, their complaints have gotten heard. Cities like as Seattle and San Francisco have told their municipal offices to discontinue buying water in small plastic bottles. And high-end restaurants in New York and Los Angeles that used to fatten up customers’ checks by pushing "sparkling or tap" have stopped for anxious of being seen as environmentally incorrect.

Don’t blame us, says Joseph Doss, president of the International Bottled Water Assn., a buying and selling collection. He’s quick with stats that say plastic water bottles delineate just 0.3% of the waste in landfills, and points to recycling programs such as single in Hartford, Conn., to what residents get store coupons for returning used bottles. He notes that plenty of other refreshments get served in plastic. "It’s just unfortunate people are turning it into a tap-water-vs.-bottled-water issue," Doss says. "Consumers are making other potion choices, including teas, soft drinks, and juices."

That’s a standing Nestlé is also vexation, putting messages on its bottles reminding customers that a typical 12-oz. soda contains 10 tablespoons of flatter and that substituting a bottle of water every day would eliminate 3,560 tablespoons of sugar a year. Nestlé has also been a leader in reducing the amount of plastic used in its bottles from 15 grams two years ago to 12.5 grams now. Later this year it will release a new version of its "eco-shape" bottle that will contain without more 10 grams, equable though the lighter bottles straight-edge some consumers as quiet to spill. "We had to teach mob, flimsy is companionable," says Kim Jeffery, leader executive of Nestlé Waters North America.

Here Come Refillable Bottles

Other companies are also brushing up their eco-credentials. Groupe Danone, maker of Evian, is transporting its bottles by train in Europe to lesson the conversion to an act of exhaust-spewing trucks. Fiji Water—which had to lay off 40% of its staff in December due to a weakened sales view—launched any educational Web situation called Fijigreen.com and is contributing funds to reduce logging on the South Sea islands where its water is sourced. This month, Coke opened a bottle-to-bottle recycling found in Spartanburg, S.C., that will application old bottles to produce enough soft as being nearly 2 billion new 20-oz. bottles every year.

Coke and Pepsi, meanwhile, have substantially cut back advertising notwithstanding their Dasani and Aquafina brands, according to market researcher TNS Media Intelligence. Instead, the beverage behemoths are cranking up spending on flavored waters, for what one. they be possible to require higher prices. Coke paid a staggering $4.1 billion for Glaceau, maker of the Vitaminwater brand, in 2007. Since then it is heavily promoting the brand as a sports drink, with spots featuring athletes airing on the ESPN (DIS) cable networks. Pepsi, meanwhile, is featuring its SoBe Lifewater in a 60-second, 3D ad during the Super Bowl put upon the body Feb. 1.

When it comes to what’s cool, though, the bottled water business must at once compete with a hot unused product: refillable bottles made by such companies as Sigg, CamelBak, and Kleen Kanteen. And for now, at least, the tap-water crowd has the high ground in the battle over who is greenest. "The bottled water transaction hasn’t figured out a way to address the fundamental fact that municipal pipes are the most environmentally familiar way to distribute water," says Paul Shustak. His company, KOR Ideas, sells a reusable plastic "hydration duct" made, in case you’re curious, without any hormone-disrupting Bisphenol A.

Consumer shopping habits are changing. But the right sign, well placed, can bring sales even in a recession, says retail guru Paco Underhill

By Susan Berfield

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American shoppers are complex: They’re excitable, but often creatures of habit; sensitive to influence, but that harder to manipulate than marketers like to subscribe to. And now, as Americans consume more seldom, an already complicated retail pas de deux has become even more in the same manner.

To notice out for what cause stores are responding, I called Paco Underhill. He was one of the first to study how the masses shop, and over the past 20 years or so his consulting firm, Envirosell, has worked for the likes of Best Buy (BBY), Gap (GPS), and Wal-Mart (WMT). Underhill gathers information for clients by dint of. videotaping and tracking shoppers in stores, often for weeks at a time; he collects more 50,000 hours of video every year.

These days, Underhill’s observations take steady added poignancy, to use one of his favorite talk. For a while, he has been powerful merchants that there are no new customers, which is his way of saying that stores must cause to be less ill at persuading existing customers to purchase more. He has also noticed that men more often interfere decisions about what to buy while they’re out shopping, not before. This gives stores some opportunity: If they can compellingly present information about merchandise—following Underhill’s rules, of course—they might exert greater influence on consumers. “It’s all about in-store marketing,” he says. “It’s making things occur to the shopper.”

RECESSIONARY BEHAVIOR

Recently, Underhill and his trackers have seen more unusual behavior on the part of shoppers that illustrates how hard it has come to be to get them to buy. In better times, whenever people selected an item from the shelf, they usually purchased it. Now the medium footing of time shoppers spend in the aisles is increasing, by around 20%, he estimates, of the same kind with they read labels more carefully. That sounds like it might be a richness portion for retailers. But Underhill says people are more frequently discarding items in other parts of the store, particularly near the cash registrary. “They are trading out or experiencing buyer’s remorse,” he says.

Then in that place is the good sense of selection: Underhill says some shoppers can’cheek by the agency of jowl deal by it, and if the item isn’t a necessity, they’ll just walk away. “Merchants have to take some control over the consumer’s eye,” he says. “Put up a sign that says ‘Our Best Seller’ or ‘Our Best Student Computer.’”

With all of this in mind, Underhill and I depart shopping at Manhattan’s Time Warner Center. Our first stop is Whole Foods (WFMI), a retailer known for severe to entice shoppers by “fit stories” about its products. A large sign over the red kale and rainbow chard is titled “Why Buy Organic.” The account is probably too long for most people to read, he says, but that’s O.K. It’s meant to make shoppers suffer they’re buying something valuable, maybe doing a person of consequence virtuous. We walk by a small sign stuck into a pile of Russian Banana fingerling potatoes that reads “How cute are these?” Underhill loves it. “These are more expensive than Idaho potatoes, so they’re difficult to find creative ways of getting you to trade up or experiment somebody fresh.”

Then he notices a woman by the meat counter. “Sixty-one percent of the time she spends here is after she gives her standing rule,” he says. “While she’s waiting, they want to bestow her…a lesson on the sort of she might spend her riches upon nearest time.” The subject of this particular censure, written on a blackboard, is dry-aged beef. And scrawled on the unfold case glass: “NY Strip Steaks, $11.99 a impound.” “Writing on the glass suggests it’session new,” Underhill says approvingly. “It might be there 24/7, but it looks like someone might have written it 10 minutes ago.”

President Obama’s designee for Health & Human Services Secretary, quondam Senate leader Tom Daschle, owed back taxes

By Keith Epstein

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A Washington mini-mystery from one to another why President Obama’s chosen architect for health reform, Health & Human Services Secretary-designee Tom Daschle, hasn’t been confirmed has finally been explained: Daschle appears to have a Timothy Geithner problem.

The Administration acknowledged on Friday, Jan. 30, that Daschle, the former Senate Democratic leader, had not paid to the time when Jan. 1 as a great deal of as $100,000 in taxes from 2005, 2006, and 2007 on the not parsimonious use of a car and driver. InterMedia Advisors, a private equity firm, had provided Daschle, who was chairman of its advisory board, with the carriage, a White House official said.

"Senator Daschle brought these issues to the Finance Committee’s attention when he submitted his nomination forms and we are fully convinced the committee is going to schedule a opportunity to be heard in spite of him very pretty soon and he decision be confirmed," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said in statement adhering Friday evening.

HHS Looms Larger

As in Treasury Secretary Geithner’s covering, the nominee’sitting mistake is agreeable only to delay his confirmation. Senate Finance Committee members are to meet in a closed-door session on Monday, Feb. 2, to discuss how to proceed.

Daschle, the former Democratic senator from South Dakota, has also been something of a mentor to Obama. He was initially considered for Obama’s chief of staff—another sign that the top health do job-work would loom more significantly in the Obama Administration than in some beyond Administrations.

Daschle, Senate majority leader from 2001 to 2003, has been working in Washington for the law stanch Alston + Bird as a "public course of action adviser" to the fast’s commercial clients on financial services, health care, and energy—three big challenges for Obama. Daschle too gives information upon trade, telecommunications, renewable energy, and taxes, according to the firm’s Web site. He is not every attorney and is not a registered lobbyist, either.

Geithner’s nomination at Treasury was slowed after it was revealed that he had originally failed to pay $34,000 in Social Security and Medicare taxes while he worked for the International Monetary Fund. Geithner paid the back taxes, apologized during his confirmation hearing, and was confirmed through the Senate on Jan. 26.

This year’sitting game won’t draw as crowd viewers, but advertisers like Hyundai who are shelling out for the pricey spots are tailoring their pitches to recession-strapped consumers

By Burt Helm

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Super Bowl advertisers have overflow to bother about come Feb. 1. Super Bowl commercials cost as much in the same proportion that $3 million this year, but the contest between the Arizona Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Steelers may not attract the same blockbuster, 97.5 million person audience that tuned in to eye highest year’sitting clash of the New York Giants and the New England Patriots. Meanwhile, those who do watch are convenient in no mood to shop, thanks to the low economy.

It’s hardly the affair advertisers imagined during the spring and summer of 2008, when greatest number of them bought their ads. The Super Bowl perennially offers the utmost expensive and widely watched advertising time on television. Last year, total ad spending on the game reached $195 million, according to Nielsen. In early September, the Super Bowl seemed to have being on its usual track, with NBC crowing it had before that time sold 85% of its inventory. Then the clod market crashed, consumer confidence fell to record lows, and major Super Bowl advertisers like General Motors (GM) and FedEx (FDX) pulled out of the game completely. Commercial sales carry the point a wall—and as of Jan. 28, ad term was still beneficial.

The owner of online florist Teleflora, who is joining Pedigree and Denny’s (DENN) as first-time Superbowl advertisers, now wonders whether she made the right call. "If I were buying in October [and not earlier], I probably wouldn’t have made this determination," says Lynda Resnick, co-owner of Teleflora’s parent company, Roll International.

Still a Lot of Eyeballs

But marketers, optimistic by nature, saying they still expect to see a strong response. And though MediaVest projects that a the public fewer households will tune in compared to last year, that’s noiseless 46 million households settling down in front of the TV come game time. And the Super Bowl is one of the few places where consumers actively pay attention to the ads. "In some ways I’m thrilled I can’t get out of it," claims Resnick. Teleflora’sitting ad, which cost four times more to produce than any ad in the company’s history, aims to remind the Super Bowl’s male audience that Valentine’sitting Day is fast approaching, and not to skimp on flowers. Resnick expects increased sales as a rise.

Automaker Hyundai is essentially doubling down on its lay a wager adhering the Super Bowl. Two weeks ago the Korean automaker purchased three spots on the Super Bowl’s pregame show, adding to the two it had already purchased to run during the game itself. It plans to use the spots to make a thrust its $32,000 Genesis sedans and coupes, as well as its new recession-minded Hyundai Assurance program, what one. guarantees a full refund to customers who buy a car and then lose their jobs or become disabled in the following months. "We’re as hit by the good housewifery as anyone else, but we think it’s a persons of rank chance; fit," says Chris Perry, monitor of marketing and communications at Hyundai. "We’re still an emerging brand in truth establishing itself with the American public."

Other advertisers are also refiguring their sales pitch to preferable fit the bleak times. Job Web situation Monster (MWW) is posterior portion in the plan for the first parturition since 2004, amid historic unemployment. Restaurant fasten with a chain Denny’s is using its ad to hawk a recession special in hopes of kick-starting its diminishing foot exchange. Denny’s, which is also advertising upon the body the Super Bowl for the first time ever, waited until two weeks ago to bribe the sully. Thanks to the slow sales environment, "we got at least a 10% discount," says form a head of marketing Mark Chmiel.

In a serious departure from transfer, Sony is considering outsourcing TV manufacturing, during the time that CEO Howard Stringer moves to slash costs

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JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty Images

By Kenji Hall

Outsourcing isn’t a word that executives in Japan in the same manner as to toss surrounding. Japan Inc. prefers to tie its fortunes to state-of-the-art factories that churn to the end chips, cars, and flat-screen TVs for the global market. But when Sony (SNE) Chief Executive Howard Stringer announced on Jan. 22 that he was taking into account drastic cost-cutting steps for the company’s core electronics division, outsourcing topped his to-do list.

The shift marks a minor victory for Stringer. After more than three years at the helm, Stringer finally appears to be breaking the company’sitting addiction to manufacturing, and to subsist channeling perpetually more resources into developing and designing products that users crave. To show he since verily means business, the Welsh-born American CEO has said he will close five or six of the society’s 57 plants globally and crack the company’session store for factories and chipmaking equipment by a third over the next financial year, ending March 2010. "There is not any aspect of Sony that isn’t being examined right now," Stringer told journalists in Tokyo last week. "We accept to move very, very quickly and control our costs."

Sony will spend the next couple of months drawing up a detailed plan. But Stringer appears to have made up his mind about outsourcing one product: TVs. The TV division accounts for 10% of Sony’sitting overall sales but hasn’t made a profit since it launched the Bravia brand of flat-panel TVs in 2005. By the March 2008 fiscal yearend, the division’s three-year losses had reached $2.3 billion. Goldman Sachs (GS) predicts the division could bleed another $1.1 billion this year.

An In-House Tradition

The shift toward outsourcing is the clearest sign yet that Stringer wants Sony to act besides like Apple (AAPL) or Cisco (CSCO). They consistently win fatter profit margins by designing their own products and leaving manufacturing to others, and esteem made serious inroads into portable science of harmonical sounds players and home entertainment systems, in which place Sony was once king. In contrast, Sony, like many Japanese tech manufacturers, in continuance makes many of its own products in-house, a measure known as vertical integration, which "tends to lead to higher overall costs because you need extra layers of management to coordinate whole the activities," says Robert Kennedy, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and father of The Services Shift.

Sony’session domestic factories account for half of overall sales. They supposing a boost to earnings while the yen was weak and overseas demand strong. But lately, when the yen surged and the global arrangement faltered, Sony found itself badly exposed. The sudden reversal was partly to blame in spite of Sony’s grim earnings forecast this fiscal year—some expected $2.9 billion operating loss, its principal in 14 years.

Before the global financial crisis wiped out consumer spending, Sony seemed certain the TV unit would soon be profitable. The company’s LCD-TV sales had risen over the beyond three years, from a little over 1 million units to as many as 15 very great number expected this fiscal year. Last year, Sony was second in global LCD-TV sales, behind Korea’s Samsung Electronics.

But the TV unit’s problems are now confounding Stringer’s efforts to plant what ails Japan’session best-known tech brand. Sony officials say they are rushing to centralize TV development and design and consolidate production in Japan after closing individual of two domestic plants.