pFiled under: a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/japan/" rel="tag"Japan/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/plants-manufacturing/" rel="tag"Plants/Manufacturing/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/toyota/" rel="tag"Toyota/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/earnings-financials/" rel="tag"Earnings/Financials/a/pa href="http://www.autonews.com/article/20081202/COPY01/312029894/1176"img vspace="4" hspace="4" border="1" align="right" alt="" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/12/toyota_250_opt.jpg" //aManagement bonuses will be slashed 10 percent at Toyota as a result of the global economic slowdown. About 5,000 managers will take cuts as the Japanese automaker reels from falling global sales that are hitting its local market hard. Toyota vehicle sales in Japan dropped 27 percent in November (excluding 660cc minivehicles) and Lexus sales dipped 24 percent -- mirroring the same sales issues that both brands are having in the United States. As a result, the Japanse Juggernaut will halt production for two days on one of the Tahara production lines manufacturing the Lexus LS, GS and IS models, which will prevent about 5,000 luxury cars from being built, and idle another factory in southern Japan for two days, as well. Toyota is also expected to announce lower sales and production estimates at its year-end press conference that happens at the end of this month. That news will follow the 1 trillion yen ($10.7 billion) yanked just last month from its annual operating profit forecast. p /p p[Source: a href="http://www.autonews.com/article/20081202/COPY01/312029894/1176"Automotive News/a, subs. req'd]/p p /p p /pp style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/02/as-sales-slump-toyota-cuts-bonuses-and-vehicle-production/"As sales slump, Toyota cuts bonuses and vehicle production/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.autoblog.com"Autoblog/a on Tue, 02 Dec 2008 19:01:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/02/as-sales-slump-toyota-cuts-bonuses-and-vehicle-production/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/forward/1388772/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/02/as-sales-slump-toyota-cuts-bonuses-and-vehicle-production/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/7cyMl4l_iNP_JPNVvK4NKXtNLEw/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/7cyMl4l_iNP_JPNVvK4NKXtNLEw/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=5Ywtvpn2"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=5Ywtvpn2" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?a=LMjOjfsH"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/autoblog?i=LMjOjfsH" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/autoblog/~4/gRtv3IrJUQQ" height="1" width="1"/

psource: a href=http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE4B01HI20081201Reutersbr //abr /In other words, we expect available consumer liquidity in the form of credit-card lines to decline by 45 percent.quot;/p pquot;Pulling credit when job losses are increasing by over 50 percent year-over-year in most key states is a dangerous and unprecedented combination, in our view,quot; the analyst said./p

Now that Lord Conrad Black (former Daily Telegraph proprietor) is in prison, he has come to the conclusion that the US justice and prison systems (and the "war on drugs") are flawed. The system is based on the plea bargain: the barefaced exchange of incriminating testimony for immunity or a reduced sentence. It is intimidation and suborned or extorted perjury, an outright rape of any plausible definition of justice. The US is now a carceral state that imprisons eight to 12 times more people (2.5m) per capita than the UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany or Japan. US justice has become a command economy based on the avarice of private prison companies, a gigantic prison service industry and politically influential correctional officers’ unions that agitate for an unlimited increase in the number of prosecutions and the length of sentences. The entire “war on drugs”, by contrast, is a classic illustration of supply-side economics: a trillion taxpayers’ dollars squandered and 1m small fry imprisoned at a cost of $50 billion a year; as supply of and demand for illegal drugs have increased, prices have fallen and product quality has improved. From my cell I scent the reeking soul of US justice...br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=92ef21067bda5b790c52da047a686fd0p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=92ef21067bda5b790c52da047a686fd0p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=92ef21067bda5b790c52da047a686fd0" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

Now that Lord Conrad Black (former Daily Telegraph proprietor) is in prison, he has come to the conclusion that the US justice and prison systems (and the war on drugs) are flawed. The system is based on the plea bargain: the barefaced exchange of incriminating testimony for immunity or a reduced sentence. It is intimidation and suborned or extorted perjury, an outright rape of any plausible definition of justice. The US is now a carceral state that imprisons eight to 12 times more people (2.5m) per capita than the UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany or Japan. US justice has become a command economy based on the avarice of private prison companies, a gigantic prison service industry and politically influential correctional officers’ unions that agitate for an unlimited increase in the number of prosecutions and the length of sentences. The entire “war on drugs”, by contrast, is a classic illustration of supply-side economics: a trillion taxpayers’ dollars squandered and 1m small fry imprisoned at a cost of $50 billion a year; as supply of and demand for illegal drugs have increased, prices have fallen and product quality has improved. From my cell I scent the reeking soul of US justice...br style=clear: both;/ a href=http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=92ef21067bda5b790c52da047a686fd0p=1img alt= style=border: 0; border=0 src=http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=92ef21067bda5b790c52da047a686fd0p=1//a img src=http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=92ef21067bda5b790c52da047a686fd0 style=display: none; border=0 height=1 width=1 alt=/

The banking profession is going through rough days. So far the cost of the bail-out worldwide is well on the way to US$ 5 trillion or one-tenth of the Gross World Product. Some analysts put the eventual estimate at the exorbitant figure of US$10 trillion. This would increase by one-fifth the (...)

(Reuters) - The U.S. credit card industry may pull back well over $2 trillion of lines over the next 18 months due to risk aversion and regulatory changes, leading to sharp declines in consumer spending, prominent banking analyst Meredith Whitney said.div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~f/reuters/topNews?a=YjgHA5bU"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/topNews?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~f/reuters/topNews?a=aGL7ZKQL"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/topNews?i=aGL7ZKQL" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/~f/reuters/topNews?a=WLicHvy5"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/reuters/topNews?i=WLicHvy5" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/reuters/topNews/~4/hjii5fteWaw" height="1" width="1"/