Posted by Katharine Crnko
For Marketplace Morning Report, Friday April 8, 2011
Here are today’s top headlines from the Marketplace Morning Report and from around the web.
Corporate earnings season kicks off today with a quarterly report from the aluminum company Alcoa. The word “global” is likely to be pretty common this season because a lot of U.S. corporate profits are still coming from overseas.
Oil is hovering around $112 a barrel today. Prices have jumped more than 30 percent since mid-February because tensions in places like Libya.
Ford reported strong car sales in China last month — up 20 percent for March. GM sales were up about a percent.
It’s the month anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeastern Japan. The earth seemed to mark the moment today with a magnitude 6.6 aftershock.
Well here in this country we can report that the federal government is open for business this morning thanks to a deal on Friday night to cut $38 billion from this year’s federal budget.
U.S. Airways had a nice gift for its customers last week — 1,000 frequent flier miles automatically deposited into their accounts, for no reason. Generous, aren’t they? Well until this morning when those same people got an email titled “Oops.” U.S. Airways made a mistake and won’t be giving anyone any miles.
A lot of people shop online for clothing or shoes. Trouble is, they can’t try the stuff on. So apparently — and I just can’t believe this — some shoppers will go to the physical store and try the outfits on in the dressing room and then buy the same thing online. Not to be outdone, some stores in Australia are now charging fitting room fees of as much as $50. Fully refundable of course, if you buy the clothing from the store.
The board of the New York Stock Exchange has rejected an $11.3 billion takeover offer from NASDAQ and Intercontinental Exchange. The NYSE says it prefers the $9.7 billion offer the the German Stock Exchange. The fight now heads to NYSE shareholders.
You can read the rest of today’s headlines from the Marketplace Morning Report here.
Here are the songs we played:
- They Want Real — D-TensionBuy
- The Only One — The Black KeysBuy
- Universal Mind Control — CommonBuy
- Pinch — Marc Ribot’s Ceramic DogBuy
- Latin Simone (Que Pasa Contigo) Remix — GorillazBuy
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