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Akio Toyoda, the President of the world’s largest automaker Toyota Motor Corp. has finally accepted to testify at the US congressional hearing related to the recalls of Toyota cars. Toyota has recalled more than 8 million cars (including top selling vehicles Corolla and Prius) across the globe, due to some serious safety issues concerning its vehicles.

The Japan based auto goliath has seen significant erosion in its net worth due to the recalls. The company has lost over $31 billion in its market after it announced the recall on January 2010, almost a month ago.

The recent data related to consumer prices and inflation, released by the US authorities has brought some good news for the countrymen. The consumer prices in the US have risen but not as high as expected. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) shot up by 2.6% in the last one year.

The CPI for January 2010 rose by a mere 0.2% which was lesser than what was forecasted by analysts (0.3%). The prices of energy shot up 2.8% while the food prices increased by 0.2%.  

Given the fact that bank liquidity has returned and that banks can now borrow from each other, the Federal Reserve has come up to the decision that the discounts rate can be raised by 25 basis points. This will be the first rate increase ever since the Federal Reserve lowered its main policy lever (the overnight interbank lending rates)  to near zero in Dec 2008 in order to battle the recession war.

First Solar Inc. posted a better than expected profit in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009. The profit both quarterly and annually beat the expectations of analysts but the shares of the company failed to attract investors as the stock fell 8% today afternoon.

Europe’s largest and the world’s second largest retailer Carrefour reported a massive fall of 74% in its profits for the fiscal 2010.  The company accrued profits of 327 million euros this fiscal as against 1.27 billion euros, in the previous financial year.

The sales dropped to 86 billion euros, a slump of 1.2% compared to last year sales. The company executives attributed this huge dip in profits to its restructuring costs and impairment charges imposed on it, mainly in Italy. Carrefour paid total charges of 1.1 billion Euros in 2009, which included 766 million Euros of impairment charges.

Department store operator J.C. Penney Co Inc. reported a decreased profit in the fourth quarter but still the figures beat the expectations of the analysts.

J.C. Penney posted a net income of $200 million or 84 cents a share in the fourth quarter ended January, reporting a decrease by 5.2% while in the same period last year the company posted net income of $211 million or 94 cents a share.