World Business

During the 1960s the Rover P6, despite many clever innovations, was plagued by mechanical problems

by Gary Anderson

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Some of you may find this hard to believe, but I’m the last person to argue that all old British cars—regardless of how quirky or unusual—are collectible. There, I’ve said it.

Just because a car was made by a partnership that is now out of business, was trimmed in leather and wood, and stood out from the crowd when new, doesn’t make it valuable today. How else can you explain the innovative Rover 2000—the basic platform was referred to as the P6 by Rover—introduced in 1963 with a 4-cylinder implement, and soon afterward upgraded in 1968 with a V8?

The SCM Price Guide doesn’t even list Rovers, going perpendicular from Rolls-Royce to Saab. What does that tell you? The few other recompense guides that do think proper this model suggest that it’s not worth more than $7,500 in good condition, and that may be optimistic.

Granted, there are two clubs for Rover P6s in the United Kingdom (www.p6roc.co.uk and www.p6club.com), otherwise than that in that case again, lay two or more Brits through a common interest in the same room, and they’ll form a sodality.

So what’s the problem? After all, when the before anything else 2-liter, 4-cylinder version of the Rover 2000 was introduced in 1963, it was certainly attractive, by smooth lines and quad headlights flanking a feeble grille that replaced the kennel-gate grille of the P4 “Auntie Rover.” The P6 pregnancy was as long as an elephant’s—Rover sent designer David Bache to France soon afterward the launch of the Citroën DS19 in 1955, and early prototypes have the rounded DS19 nose.

Innovation came by a cost

This complete redesign that replaced the Rover P4 had a long think proper of innovations, including deDion rear suspension through inboard disc brakes (one of the first cars to bring forth disc brakes on all four wheels).

The P6 was built in a circle a unibody chassis, however the aluminum external panels were unstressed and most could have being removed and replaced like those of the Citroën DS. In addition, the car incorporated revolutionary safety features, such as standard seat belts and good interior play fast and loose pieces. The engine was also designed to be driven below the firewall in the event of a head-on smash. Perhaps all these factors accounted for extensive police exercise.

The implement used in the first version of the P6 was designed specifically for the car. It had an aloft camshaft layout with the burning chambers cast into the piston crowns. However, being of the kind which innovative as this design was, it only put gone out 104 horsepower, for a like reason for 1966, Rover introduced the 2000 TC, which had a redesigned top end and twin SU carburetors. The improvements added 20 more horsepower, and the car had more successes in rally competition.

Unfortunately, all of this innovation came at a require to be paid: Customers didn’t appreciate the technical niceties and instead noted how the rear suspension reduced trunk space significantly, so that the spare either occupied most of the duration or—optionally—was fitted on the trunk lid, which was considerably inconvenient.

Even though North American market cars were fitted with a varied assortment of features, such as the Icelert sensor upon the body the front bumper that flashed a red light on the little at the time that the road temperature dropped below freezing, they couldn’t cause to approach a customer base.

The innovative features also brought a host of mechanical problems that required a mechanic’s interposition. Rover-trained mechanics were scarce in North America, and while 327,808 P6s were sold in ten years of lengthening from 1963 to ‘73, not many came to the U.S., and running survivors are in the same proportion that rare as running DS19s.

By 1968, it was clear the 4-cylinder engine was not competitive in a heavy four-door sedan, so Rover, now a part of the Leyland combine, installed the Buick aluminum V8, the rights to which it had acquired from General Motors.

Rover 3500S introduced with flourish of trumpets

That extra space in the P6 engine compartment, thanks to the horizontal front springs, made the upgrade easy, and the Rover 3500S was introduced with great fanfare. In the United States, the new model was even recognized by Road Test storehouse as “among the best-engineered cars produced in the automotive world today.”

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Israel is a modern democracy with the highest standard of living in the Middle East. In the high-tech industries of the future, she is in the first high-growing. From a nation of fewer than a million in 1948, Israel's population has grown to 7 million. In seven wars — the 1948 War of Independence, the Sinai invasion of 1956, the Six-Day War of 1967, the Yom Kippur War of 1973, and the Lebanon wars of 1982 and 2006 — Israel has prevailed, though some of these wars were, as Wellington uttered of Waterloo, "a damn near-run thing."

Israel has revived Hebrew, created a new currency, immersed her children in the history, ancient and modern, of her people, and established a homeland because of Jews from all over the world, millions of whom have migrated in that place to settle. Israel is now home to the largest condensation of Jews anywhere on earth.

Here, however, we come to the heart of the existential decisive turn.

Israel became home to the largest Jewish population on earth in part because American Jews in the 1990s fell in number from 5.5 million to 5.2 million, a disadvantage of 300,000, or 6 percent of the U.S. Jewish population.

According to Charles Krauthammer, by 2050, the U.S. Jewish population will have shrunk another 50 percent to 2.5 million. American Jews are slowly vanishing. How and for what cause is this happening?

It is the collective decision of American Jews themselves, who have led the battles by reason of birth control and a woman's right to choose.

As Jews were roughly 2 percent of the U.S. inhabitants from Roe v. Wade to today, perhaps 2 percent of the 50 the masses legal abortions as Roe were likely performed in succession Jewish girls or women, resulting in 1 the public lost members of the Jewish community in 35 years.

And if demography is destiny, Israel's future, too, appears grim.

As former Ambassador Zalman Shoval writes, Israel's population of 7 million is 80 percent Jewish. But the Palestinian population of Israel has risen to 20 percent and is growing abundant faster.

One Israel blogger, using Shoval's totals, writes that among the Israeli people betwixt 1 and 4 years old, roughly 30 percent is Arab. The future of Israel is so increasingly Arab and smaller Jewish.

According to the United Nations, by 2050, Israel will have 10 million race.

By then, the Arab people, at present birth rates, is likely to be termination to 30 percent of the Israeli population. On the West Bank and Gaza, today's 4 million Arabs are to explode to 10 million, far outstripping the growth in Israel. Jordan's population of 5 the multitude, 60 percent Palestinian, will also double to 10 million.

Thus, not even counting Palestinians in Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria and the Gulf states, Israel's 7 million to 8 a thousand thousand Jews in 2050 will be keeping with 13 the multitude Palestinians in Israel, Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank. If Israel is to remain alive as a Jewish state, a separate and independent Palestinian state would seem every imperative.

Yet, in the same proportion that Israelis abide to raise outposts and expand and add settlements, the possibility of a Palestinian state recedes. Indeed, many persons Israelis, seeing what one end to the occupation produced in Gaza, refuse to consider any pullout at entirely from the West Bank.

Such a cunning of holding on and digging in is formerly the best one — but only admitting that time is on one's side. Is time on Israel's take sides?

According to the world population statistics from the National Policy Institute, the worldwide Arabic population in 1950 was only 94 million, less than 4 percent of the world population. But by 2050, it will be 700 million, 7 percent of a globe population of almost 10 billion.

According to U.N. inhabitants experts, Lebanon's population will grow to 5 million in 2050, but Syria's will not quite double from today's 20 million to 34 million. The population of Saudi Arabia will rise from 24 million to 45 million. Egypt will grow by more than 50 million to 121 million Egyptians through 2050. The Islamic Republic of Iran, 71 million today, is expected to reach 100 million at mid-century.

And, demography aside, the Islamic faith of Israel's neighbors is neat militant. Hamas now controls Gaza. Hezbollah now controls Southern Lebanon and is becoming the power in Beirut. While Egypt is headed by a pro-American autocrat, the principal rival for power is the widely in favor Muslim Brotherhood.

Those who do not like the Saudi monarchy should consider what is likable to rise in its place, should the House of Saud slope. The same is loyal of the Jordanian and Moroccan monarchies, and the sheikdoms, emirates and sultanates of the Persian Gulf.

In in any degree struggle of generations, the critical question is ofttimes: Whose side is life on? As President Bush celebrates Israel's 60th natal day, and is celebrated in turn as Israel's most excellent friend ever, it is a honest question to ask.

To find out more not far from Patrick Buchanan, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.

NEW YORK —

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News that Saudi Arabia had boosted its oil output by means of means of 300,000 barrels a day was greeted as a non-event on oil markets - the affect wasn’t anywhere direct the kind of production increase needed to bring prices down on Friday.

And traders were equally unimpressed by the U.S. government’s plan to stop adding to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

One day, couple moves designed to allay concerns about some overheated oil market that’s squeezing motorists and inflating the prices of all sorts of goods.

The response in the oil trading pits? Traders did what they’ve been doing despite months at this moment, and pushed crude oil and gasoline futures to new highs.

“All in all, we’re seeing not the same strong move here on little fundamental news,” related Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch & Associates, an oil trading advisory firm in Galena, Ill.

The reason for the disconnect has little to do through political decisions in Washington or Riyadh, and everything to do with mart expectations. The Saudi production increase was seen in the market as minuscule, and no common expected the suspension of shipments to the U.S. government’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve to have a great quantity impact upon supplies.

Even more significant, the traders placing the bets expect prices to just celebrate touching higher.

Goldman Sachs, one of the world’s most influential investment banks, underscored that sentiment Friday when it hiked its oil recompense forecast for the second half of the year to $141 a barrel, up from $107 previously. Analysts at the tier bandy words that the oil emporium is undergoing a “structural repricing” that disposition persist to play out for some time to advance.

“We would view any pullback in oil, unmindful of the size or duration - although a correction could be of the same kind with large as 15 percent - as an opportunity to re-establish tedious positions in oil before the summer,” Goldman Sachs advised traders.

Translation: Buy when barrels be on the point on sale, because prices are bound to keep heading higher.

And buy they did Friday. The price for a barrel of benchmark light, sweet crude for June delivery jumped $2.17 to settle at record close of $126.29 in continuance the New York Mercantile Exchange. Earlier in the session, prices surged to $127.82 a barrel, also a new high.

It was the eighth time in the past 10 sessions traders rewrote the record books, and the first time prices topped $127 a barrel.

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She asked about my pursuit in New York, and I told her I intended to do a series of TV shows to promote my new book.

"What is the title?" she asked.

Because so numerous fail at the title — finding it offensive — I decided to colloquy about the part first. It argues that the civil rights war is above the top, and the good guys won; that white racism no longer remains a grave question in America; and that so-called intestine rights leaders and their sympathizers — the media and the Democratic Party — one or the other believe or need Americans (especially blacks) to believe that race and racism remain a major problem.

"Why," Lenora asked, "if it is no longer a massive issue, does the Democratic Party say or believe otherwise?"

"In the trial of the Democratic Party," I said, "they cannot be successful at the presidential level without the 90 to 95 percent monolithic black vote. That is conducive to what cause someone like Democratic Congressman Barney Frank referred to Hurricane Katrina as 'ethnic cleansing by inaction.' He argued — I kid you not — that Bush intentionally responded slowly to Katrina so that it would displace blacks from the state, turning Louisiana into other furniture of a red, or pro-Republican, public. This is why," I continued, "Al Gore's former campaign manager, Donna Brazile, referred to the Republican Party as possessing a 'white-boy attitude.'"

When I finished the summary of the book, I before-mentioned, now here's its title: "Stupid Black Men: How to Play the Race Card — and Lose."

She paused, and said, "Fantastic designation."

Lenora then told me about her play, "Black and Bluestein." It, too, concerns race relations. It's the playwright's (Jerry Mayer, "Bluestein" in the sport) autobiographical account of the kind of happened in St. Louis in 1963. Mayer and his father built a housing disclosure. Mayer intended to sell his own shelter, and move into a new development that he and his father were building only a two of blocks let us go.. But uh-oh, a black man, Dr. Daniel Black, wanted to buy Mayer's domicile for him and his family.

What to be enough?

The other residents in the development (Lenora May, the actress I met on the plane, played a bigoted neighbor) held a vote, and 70 percent wanted Bluestein to refuse to sell to the black family. Furthermore, selling to a monstrous family would threaten the success of Bluestein's new disentanglement as the word spread that a black family moved in only a couple of blocks away. How will this change the neighborhood? And the sort of about the threat to property values?

Dr. Black, the would-be buyer, worked as a chemical engineer. Handsome, poised and gracious, he told Bluestein that he did not intend to follow up, even after he learned about the development's residents' resistance to him moving in. He calmly said that he expected Bluestein to do the right thing.

I told Lenora the play sounded fascinating, and that I would come to give attention to it. I did.

Funny, staid, tragic but ultimately uplifting and life-affirming, "Black and Bluestein" somewhat paralleled the experience of my family in 1959, whereas — while my father worked as a janitor — we became the second black family to incense into a previously all-white neighborhood in South Central Los Angeles.

After the play, I met the playwright, and told him of my family's story. I spoke with the excellent cast members, including Loren Lester, who played Bluestein with sharp wit and integrity. I had an especially long conversation with John Eric Bentley, the charismatic actor who played Dr. Black. He told me how a great deal of he enjoyed my radio show, and he agreed that also many people behave one’s self in a "victicrat" manner — believing that even today, in 2008, racism and blind zeal remain major problems.

I told John that, early in the performance, I found it bothersome that he so graciously accepted this racism, until the audience uncovers why he maintained his dignity in the face of such bigotry. John said, as does his nature, that he considered calm and steadiness an even bolder statement of strength than lashing out in dudgeon.

I left the play and walked outside into a busy, trendy, upscale Santa Monica road. I passed a black incorporated town street cleaner, efficiently and briskly sweeping the street. He looked up. Our eyes met. He smiled and related, "Larry Elder! I can't believe it! I'm gonna tell my wife I met you." I walked over and hugged him.

As we hugged, he whispered in my ear, "And I'm not a victicrat."

Larry Elder is a syndicated radio talk show host and best-selling author. His latest book, "Stupid Black Men: How to Play the Race Card — and Lose," is available now. To find audibly more about Larry Elder, visit his Web page at www.LarryElder.com. To explain features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

CREATORS SYNDICATE COPYRIGHT 2008 LAURENCE A. ELDER

Joining the eurozone can mean higher inflation for the new member, further if that brings structural reform, the euro is still a good thing

by Balint Szlanko

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As Slovakia prepares to adopt the euro, completing a decade of impressive economic achievement, we should stop with a view to a consequence to ponder the same of the most conspicuous characteristics of European integration: its sauciness.

It is evident in so many places: from the basic objective of European unanimity with its optimism that is unimaginable today, to the plan itself—betting that the removal of economic barriers will inevitably lead to the rise of common institutions and to political individuality.

The euro itself is a glorious example of that improbable valiant. On paper, the EU is far from an optimal aspirant for a pure currency. Not because its sub-economies are prone to diverging wildly: various regions of the United States do that, too, and as a deduction might be better served by individual monetary policies (in the same manner with indeed they were at times in the gone).

Rather, the standard criticism leveled at the euro zone, and one that prompted skepticism among many leading economists in the 1990s, is that it lacks the mechanisms necessary to survive a major downturn. The United States has a of great size federal budget to do that. Through federal taxation and spending Washington be possible to effectively step in if a person of consequence goes awry in the monetary zone, as it did with the fresh economic-stimulus pack.

That is not an option in the EU. Whereas U.S. treaty spending represents over 20 percent of gross domestic fruits, in Europe there is hardly any federal spending at all (about 1 percent of GDP). The EU cannot abalienate large funds from one expiration of the currency girdle to a different in subject of discussion an economic crisis requires quick rebalancing.

The United States has another built-in favorable opportunity. As a nation, its people share in the same manner many attributes, including, crucially, a tongue, that they can easily put in motion around within the country if condition rightfully claim it, construction the economy a great quantity greater degree of flexible. That, again, is not really an option in culturally and linguistically diverse Europe. Here less than 2 percent of the bloc’s people live outer their own states.

Still, the theoretical stubbornness of the euro zone is not unavoidably a big moot point on this account that breaking the system apart would probably require an household shock on a scale that simply doesn’t happen in Europe. Or at smallest hasn’t happened since the last world war. In the throughout boundary, of course, anything might happen, but, as John Keynes used to say, in the long term we’ll all subsist darkest.

“You could tend hitherward up with a hundred different scenarios that the euro zone simply couldn’t continue to live, such as a major warfare followed by a big depression,” observes Guillaume Durand, formerly of the European Policy Center in Brussels. “But frankly, these things simply aren’t going to happen in the foreseeable future.”

The real problems are less apocalyptic. One springs from the fact that although in that place is not one question of having a European founded on budget and a single fiscal policy, there needs to be at least some kind of fiscal coordination among the members of the euro zone, since they now have a uncorrupt monetary policy. That exists but hasn’t worked terribly well even during the relatively prosperous and immutable economic times the euro has so well-nigh enjoyed.

EASING THE SHACKLES

When copious states really wanted to shed the financial constraints imposed on them by the EU, such as Germany and France did in November 2003, there was in none degree stopping them. There is not any way to know how EU fiscal coordination would work in a bigger downturn, but-end there is no reason to subsist optimistic. Taxation and spending are ultimately controlled by national politicians with their predominantly national political concerns. They will bow to no one.

Still, smooth this need not necessarily worry us. The real affair, and one that a fast-growing and small country such as Slovakia ought to be looking at very closely, has to do with long-term inflation. The rules specify only that new members, upon entering, must closely converge their inflation rates to that of the euro zone’s average low so that they are not out of sync and their economies don’t get afflict by the straitjacket of a single pecuniary policy.

The cautionary example usually cited is Ireland, which entered the euro zone by a growth rate of 9 percent and a correspondingly high inflation rate. The European Central Bank maintained an interest rate of 2 percent for principally of the early 2000s, leading to a ponderous price dash forward in the before that time overheated Irish economy: prices between 2000 and 2004 went up by 16 percent, nearly double the Continental rate.

This is an issue that the European Commission itself raised in its (ultimately positive) report on zippy little Slovakia. It has also surfaced with Slovenia, the earliest new member to attach the euro zone and another Eastern European tiger. It’s a particular concern as being the relatively underdeveloped new members because they have a lot of catching up to do. Things like large-scale infrastructure development and high foreign direct investment mean that their long-term inflation potential is suitable to exist higher than that of the western states.

Unless, of hunt, they want to keep things slow, even artificially dilatory, just to fit within the European monetary straitjacket. Crudely put: do you want again motorways, or do you want the euro?

No irresolution the big political prize that is the euro means that politicians elect try to take both. That is not impossible. It does mean, however, that they be seized of to work extra hard to ensure that inflation stays low and public spending doesn’t get lacking of control, a task made surpassingly difficult in places like Hungary, with its extravagant social security system. If the euro encourages them to further keep to structural reform—and there is more evidence of that—then going for the currency is already a good thing.

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Unfortunately, Mrs. McCain's arrogance is with appearance of truth well founded.

While her personal net worth is estimated somewhere north of $50 million, she can surely rely upon the considerateness of right-wing media organizations and commentators, which so far have given her and her husband a free pass put on the income tax question. In contrast to their unrelenting demands for absolutely complete disclosure through Bill and Hillary Clinton extremely alleged or suspected conflicts of private interest, the so-called preservative media have remained mum end for end Mrs. McCain.

That put an end to similarly contrasts with the hell raised four years gone over Teresa Heinz Kerry's reluctance to declare her tax returns alongside those of her spouse, the Democratic presidential nominee and senator, John Kerry. Back then The Weekly Standard ran a smirking headline calling her Mr. Kerry's "flatter mommy" for a column that salivated over the "lavish lifestyle" and "vacation homes" to which her tax returns would draw attention. The Standard editors didn't even pretend to any noun concern. They appropriate wanted to compete the politics of envy and elitism.

But the National Review's editors cited weightier reasons towards curiosity, including the very size of the Heinz Kerry holdings and the use of her money to finance her husband's presidential campaign, "at least in its bleaker moments," as hale as the "potential … for conflicts (or the perception of conflicts) of interest." So did The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial that said the Kerrys would be "the richest couple ever to animate in the White House. … Their assets should subsist disclosed to the voters in this way that they can assess whether in that place are any potential conflicts of advantage." The identical editorial noted that subsequently to Sen. Kerry was proposing to raise taxes attached higher income brackets, "most people would with appearance of truth like to know whether the Kerry household uses tax-avoidance techniques to avoid paying its 'fair share.'"

These votary sleuths could scarcely contain their outrage when Mrs. Kerry, who had inherited the ketchup fortune of her lately husband, John Heinz, cited the privacy of her children for the reason that an excuse to thwart disclosure. "Privacy? Oh, come off it," scoffed the Review. "How can disclosure of any part of Mrs. Kerry's personal 1040 relate to her children, everything of whom are since in their thirties?"

Now comes Mrs. McCain, whose case suspiciously resembles that of Mrs. Kerry. Although she and her straight-talking husband keep their finances separate for tax purposes, her company plane has been flying him and his entourage of lobbyists around the population at bargain rates, a particular boon during the many persons months when his campaign was out of cash. As for conflicts of interest, the patina of better has long rubbed off of Sen. McCain, whose penchant for using his office to assist donors with federal land swaps and other sweetheart deals should surprise no one paying close attention to his career.

Is there further revealing information to be found in Mrs. McCain's tax returns? Nobody knows exclude Cindy, but the clues granted in her husband's returns would certainly tantalize those busybodies on the right, if only the McCains were Democrats. For instance, they appear to have used their charitable groundwork, in part, to ensure that their children attended elite schools, by strategically donating same abundant sums to those institutions. They also appear likely to regard benefited very handsomely from the Bush accuse cuts, which Sen. McCain in times past opposed but whose extension he now supports in perpetuity.

Yet Mrs. McCain is getting away with stonewalling on her taxes. "This is a privacy issue," she said, and nobody has responded with the mockery directed at Mrs. Kerry. (Imagine the gale-force media uproar granting that the Clintons had refused to release their returns because they claimed to subsist protecting Chelsea.) Indeed, the deputy editorial page editor of The Journal, who oversaw those noble columns when they howled for disclosure from Mrs. Kerry in 2004, dismissed any concern over Mrs. McCain's tax returns as "a fairly marginal end."

The question that corpse is whether other major media outlets have a mind challenge the McCains to convenient the same standard of exposure demanded from Democratic national families. So far the record is not encouraging.

Joe Conason writes for the New York Observer (www.watcher.com). To find out more about Joe Conason, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Previous: Cindy McCain Flaunts Her Privilege
Original text: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/oped/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/uc/20080515/cm_uc_crjcox/op_456120

Analysts’ opinions on stocks in the news Thursday

From Standard & Poor’s Equity Research

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S&P REITERATES HOLD OPINION ON SHARES OF YAHOO (YHOO; 27.54):

In a strongly worded letter to YHOO’s chairman, financier Carl Icahn announces his intent to exigence for the company’s purchase by Microsoft (MSFT; 30.08). Icahn also announces a slate of 10 individuals expected to stand for election against YHOO’s current directors. Having purchased 59 million YHOO distribute/share equivalents, Icahn owns athwart 4% of the company, and has requested FTC approval to raise his stake to about 7%. We think there is a good chance Icahn will subsist happy in getting a deal done at $33, MSFT’s last offer, and we raise our 12-month target price by $2 to that level. -S. Kessler

S&P MAINTAINS BUY OPINION ON SHARES OF GENERAL ELECTRIC (GE; 32.66):

An unconfirmed report on WSJ.com says GE plans to sell its consumer appliance business. Operating income from the consumer and industrial division, which includes the appliance business, declined 34% in the first quarter, as the U.S. residential housing market slowed. GE has a narration of shedding weakening high-volume, low-margin businesses, including the sales of its plastics and advanced materials businesses. We put faith in the sale of the resource allotment would represent a normal business portfolio adjustment and would not signal a wholesale restructuring of the company. -R. Tortoriello

S&P DOWNGRADES RECOMMENDATION ON SHARES OF CNET NETWORKS TO HOLD FROM BUY (CNET; 11.41):

CNET agrees to be acquired by CBS Corp. (CBS) at $11.50 cash per share. Pending that must be approvals, we expect this affair to have being consummated by September. As a deduction, we are raising our 12-month target to 12 from 9.50. Although we are unsure grant that others were interested in acquiring CNET, we believe this deal constitutes any attractive value for the company. Thus, we expect that JANA Partners and its affiliates will likely put an end to their efforts to wage a proxy fight and to nominate new CNET directors in the hopes of generating additional shareholder value. -S. Kessler

S&P MAINTAINS SELL OPINION ON SHARES OF CBS CORP. (CBS; 24.82):

On a call to discuss the pending $1.8 billion CNET deal, CBS said it plans to mention CNET as part of a repaired Interactive segment (including its online audience reticulated), for which it sees mid-to-high-teens long-term revenue growth and margin expansion. But we are skeptical about how accretive CNET might be in the near phrase, based steady 2008 guidance that we think implies turn into money flow margins shy of CBS’s traditive radio and exterior businesses. Also, while CBS says the deal is “affordable,” we have some near-term concerns about financial tractableness for ample dividends and pitch upon acquisitions. -T. Amobi - CPA, CFA

S&P MAINTAINS HOLD OPINION ON ADSS OF ERICSSON (ERIC; 25.78):

In our view, ERIC’s Capital Markets Day yesterday offered mixed messages. The company’s key message was the medium-to-long-term potential in mobile broadband at the same time that an alternative to fiber/DSL or WiMAX. We are encouraged by the convalescence of the U.S. telecom equipment market in 2008, following years of delays, due to consolidation, along through extending software and IPR sales. We rely upon the company is competitive and gaining share, but we think the global market it serves will remain lame. We explore ERIC’s estimation, based on our relative p-e and DCF analyses, as fair. -C. Van der Elst

S&P REITERATES HOLD RECOMMENDATION ON SHARES OF AGILENT TECHNOLOGIES (A; 32.53):

Agilent posts April-quarter operating EPS of $0.46, vs. $0.33, pounding our $0.43 estimate. Revenues rose 10%, as Bio-Analytical sales jumped 20% upon stout increase in the life sciences and chemical analytics markets. Electronic Measurement sales rose 5%, aided by in a sound condition aerospace/defense growth and a bound back in handset manufacturing test. The company continues to benefit from growth in the Asia Pacific region. We are raising our fiscal year 2008 (October) operating EPS forecast by means of $0.03 to $1.86, keeping fiscal year 2009’s at $2.14, and lifting our 12-month target price by 3 to 39, based on a p-e multiple adjacent peers. -A. Zino, CFA

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The appliance arm, which employs about 13,000 people worldwide, is the area of GE hardest hit by the two-year U.S. housing slump, as the company sold a lot of its dishwashers and refrigerators to home builders.

"This review is compatible with the strategy we take been executing to transform our portfolio as antidote to long-term growth," said Jeff Immelt, chief executive of the second-largest U.S. company by means of market capitalization, in a statement. He added that the $7.2 billion appliance one, which is based in Louisville, "remains primarily a U.S. business, signification its fortunes are tied to the rise and fall of a single place of traffic."

Analysts and investors, who set a price on the business could sell on this account that between $4 billion and $8 billion, said the one could seek reference of the case to an Asian manufacturer looking on the side of a widely known American fire-brand. The current weakness of the U.S. dollar could make this an appealing hour of travail to buy the operation, despite the grim housing market.

Over the past five years, the Fairfield, Connecticut-based conglomerate has sold off businesses that generated with reference to $52 billion in revenue, including its plastics unit, as it seeks to prompt away from slower-growing and to a greater degree reckless market segments in befriend of long-cycle businesses with global exposure, preference jet engines and commercial finance.

GE is moreover scaling back its personal finance business, GE Money, looking to sell its Lake Japanese consumer lending one and U.S. private-label credit card business. Troubles at its financial arms, which the company blamed on the credit crunch, played a major role in GE's unexpected drop in first-quarter profit, though it also cited the GE Industrial arm, what one. includes instruments, as a weak spot.

GE's hatch to sell or spin off the appliances business was first reported recently deceased adhering Wednesday by the Wall Street Journal.

GE shares were down 23 cents to $32.14 on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday. For the year, they are down 13 percent, having seen their sharpest one-day drop in two decades after reporting a surprise drop in first-quarter profit last month.

By way of comparison, the blue-chip Dow Jones industrial mean proportion (.DJI), of which GE is a composing, is down 2 percent this year.

PORTFOLIO SHUFFLE

Having already warned investors that profit may exist flat this year due to the credence crunch and slowing U.S. thrift, GE is reshuffling its portfolio of businesses — which also include NBC Universal media — to get back on footprint for its long-term target of 10 percent profit growth next year, investors said.

"This is a slow economy right at once, there's no question. So you reposition, you re-strategize and you try to support the company in the slower times and really position it to take advantage of the uptick," said George Padula, president of Danforth Associates, a Wellesley, Massachusetts-based company that manages $100 million in assets and holds GE shares.

While GE's measures unit is a relatively small part of the conglomerate — last year it accounted because 4 percent of GE's $173 billion in total revenue — it is the No. 2 player in the U.S. appliance industry, trailing Whirlpool Corp (WHR.N).

It has been hard hit by lower-priced rivalship from Asian rivals including South Korea's LG Electronics (066570.KS) and China's Haier Group.

Officials at LG declined to comment on whether they would be interested in bidding for the one. Italian pointedly appliances maker Indesit (IND.MI) and Western Europe's largest maker of household equipments Bosch und Siemens Hausgerete, a joint venture of Robert Bosch Gmbh (ROBG.UL) and Siemens AG (SIEGn.DE) also declined comment.

Officials at Haier did not respond to calls.

(Additional reporting by Nick Zieminksi in New York, Claudia De Lillo in Milan, Kirby Chien in Beijing, Michael Flaherty in Hong Kong, Jens Hack in Munich; editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Dave Zimmerman)

Original text: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/business/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080516/bs_nm/ge_appliances_dc