Finance and Economic

Plane maker Airbus and diversified manufacturer Honeywell International Inc. on Thursday said they are developing a biofuel that by 2030 could satisfy nearly a third of the worldwide demand from commercial aircraft, without affecting food supplies.

Along with JetBlue Airways Corp (JBLU). and International Aero Engines, they plan to produce fuel from vegetation and algae-based oils that do not compete with existing food production or land and water resources.

Currently, commercial airlines run their planes on kerosene, though some alternative fuels are being tested.

The companies did not say how much they would invest in the project, nor did they give any targets for biofuel production prior to 2030. International Aero Engines is a multinational consortium whose shareholders include United Technologies (UTX, Fortune 500) Corp.’s Pratt & Whitney and Rolls-Royce. (RRYGF)

President Bush in December signed an energy bill that requires refineries to use 36 billion gallons of ethanol a year by 2022 with at least 21 billion gallons of the alternative fuel coming from nonfood raw materials.

The United States currently produces nearly 7 billion gallons of ethanol annually, all from corn. Critics say reliance on that crop has helped inflate food prices, while skeptics note there is no way to know when biofuels from other sources will be commercially available.

Airbus and its partners are undeterred.

"In order to replace a significant portion of that jet fuel with bio-jet, we need to find something that has much greater yield than the current biomass sources available," Sebastien Remy, head of alternative fuels research programs for Airbus, said in a release http://payday-z.com. "Airbus believes that second-generation bio-jet could provide up to 30 percent of all commercial aviation jet fuel by 2030."

A spokesman for Airbus, which is owned by European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co. NV, on Thursday said it’s expected the new biofuel it’s producing with Honeywell (HON, Fortune 500), will be a "drop-in" replacement for today’s kerosene jet fuel and that engine modifications should not be required. Airbus and Chicago-based rival Boeing Co. dominate the global market for commercial airplanes carrying 100 or more people.

On Wednesday, DuPont executives said a new joint venture with a Danish company will enable production of cellulosic ethanol that costs less to manufacture than corn-based ethanol and won’t drive up food prices.

The companies plan to invest $140 million in the U.S.-based venture and hope to have a commercial-scale demonstration facility, making fuel from the leaves and stalks of corn and from the remnants of sugarcane stalks, operating by 2012.

Speaking a Wednesday hearing on the global rise in food prices, Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., applauded DuPont’s plan.

"We must push harder in the search for alternatives, and not just because of the price of food," Biden said. "Our foreign policy is held hostage to our dependence on imported oil." 

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President George W. Bush plans to meet on Monday with top U.S. financial policymakers, the White House said, at a time of increased strains in credit markets and fears of a recession.

The White House said on Saturday Bush will meet members of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, and a spokeswoman said Bush will get a status report on the markets.

The economy has become increasingly important in the U.S. presidential campaign, surpassing the Iraq war as the top concern of voters heading into the November election. A protracted downturn could bode ill for presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, whom Democrats have been trying to taint with allegiance to polices of fellow Republican Bush.

Speaking to reporters on her campaign plane in Pittsburgh as she focused on Pennsylvania ahead of its crucial April 22 primary, Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton repeated her concerns about the economy.

“It’s ironic that President Bush is in New York talking about how he recognizes there are economic problems in the country at the same time that the Fed is moving to try to stem the continuing erosion in the credits market around the world because of a lot of failed policies and lax oversight and neglect of the Bush administration,” Clinton, a New York Democrat, said.

The working group is led by U.S cash advance loan no fax. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and also includes Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke as well as the heads of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

SHARP DOWNTURN

A sharp downturn in the U.S. housing market has led to a full-blown credit crisis that has reverberated throughout the U.S. financial system. 

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The U.S. economy has ground to a halt and probably already is in recession but faces higher inflation this year than thought just a month ago, a Reuters poll showed on Wednesday.

A dismal run of economic data including two months of job market contraction, a declining factory sector and shrinkage in the dominant service sector, has led analysts to downgrade the already grim economic assessment they gave a month ago.

Economists made their forecasts before the Federal Reserve and other central banks teamed up on Tuesday to get hundreds of billions of dollars in fresh funds to cash-starved credit markets, allowing financial firms to use securities backed by home mortgages as collateral for central bank loans.

The latest poll, taken March 7-12, also reaffirmed the disturbing trend set in motion last year of higher median inflation expectations for 2008 even as growth forecasts take another hit.

Economists dropped growth expectations to none at all for the first three months of this year from the anemic 0.2 percent they forecast last month.

The poll also showed a median 60 percent chance of an outright recession, which likely started in the current quarter if not late last year no teletrak payday loans. That was up sharply from 45 percent last month and in January.

“The evidence has built to the point that it is now beyond a reasonable doubt that the U.S. economy has entered recession,” said Scott Anderson, a senior economist at Wells Fargo & Co. in Minneapolis.

A report on Friday that showed the U.S. economy shed 63,000 jobs in February, the biggest drop in non-farm payrolls since July 2003 was a key bit of evidence to back that conviction. It was the second consecutive month that payrolls fell, which also hasn’t happened since mid-2003. 

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When the world’s greatest sporting and marketing event crosses paths with one of the best economic growth stories ever, the result could be the opportunity of a lifetime for corporate sponsors of the Beijing Olympics.

Companies are stepping up, with an eye on China’s increasingly prosperous consumers, some of whom are snapping up BMWs and sipping French wines just 30 years after the communist depths of the Cultural Revolution.

U.S. healthcare company Johnson & Johnson, sponsoring an Olympic Games for the first time as a global partner, ran a contest to reward acts of caring and community service with free trips to the Olympics in August.

Owen Rankin, the company’s vice president of Olympic sponsorship, said it was drawn by the size of China’s market.

“This is the right time to do it,” said Rankin.

The Beijing Olympics and the Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, in 2006 have already brought in about $4.4 billion in broadcasting rights and sponsorship deals alone faxless payday advances. This figure is greater than the total revenues generated by the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and the 2004 Summer Games in Athens.

“This will be the most successful marketing program ever in the Games,” said Christopher Renner, president of sporting consultant Helios Partners in China. “No question about it.”

German sports shoe maker Adidas, one of 11 so-called “China partners” of the Beijing Games, will pay $100 million to use the Olympics logo in China. 

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Chrysler LLC unveiled plans Friday to reduce the number of dealerships in its network, a move that will enable the company to more easily drop unprofitable products.

The goal of the plan, which the company calls Project Genesis, is to have a smaller number of dealers, with each selling all three of the company’s brands: Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep.

Company executives recently completed an eight city tour during which they explained the strategy to local Chrysler brand dealers, the automaker said.

"In the end, we will have a more viable dealer body focused on the customer," Press said in a company statement.

"When that happens, the customer, dealer and company wins. That builds commitment, drives profitability and builds franchise value," he said.

Until last fall, Press led the U.S. operations of Toyota Motor Co. (TM) He is now co-president at Chrysler along with former Chrysler CEO Tom LaSorda.

Chrysler and its parent company, private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, have already begun sending teams of lawyers and accountants to various major metro areas to negotiate with dealers, according to industry newspaper Automotive News.

Combining the brands into single dealerships would make it easier for Chrysler to cut models from its line up, since it would reduce pressure on the company to produce essentially the same vehicle with modest design changes - something automakers do to ensure that each brand gets a good mix of vehicles for dealers to sell.

Chrysler currently has several car and SUV models that are, in effect, the same vehicle sold under different brands no teletrak payday loans. These include the Chrysler Sebring and Dodge Avenger sedans, the Dodge Caliber and Jeep Compass small cars and the Chrysler Town & Country and Dodge Caravan minivans.

The company wants to reduce the number of different models it makes by as much as half and the number of dealers by up to a third, Alan Helfman, vice president of River Oaks Chrysler Jeep in Houston, told the Associated Press.

The company plans to add some new models to cover areas of the market in which it does not currently compete, Press and Steven Landry, executive vice president of North American sales, told Automotive News.

Chrysler said the company had not set a timeline for the strategy. Because most car dealerships are independent businesses, not directly owned or controlled by the car company, dealership closures must be negotiated one at a time - a process that can take years.

General Motors (GM, Fortune 500) instituted a similar strategy with its Pontiac, GMC and Buick brands starting more than 10 years ago. Today about 80% of Pontiac, GMC and Buick sales go through combined dealerships but there are still many independent dealerships remaining, GM spokesman Dee Allen said. 

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