The New York Times And Its Weird Take on Japan

Here they go again! The New York Times, for years, has persisted in putting trivialized pieces like this one on their front page. I recall one about farmers in a remote area who couldn’t find wives and I recall another about the high-pitched sing-songy voices of elevator women in Japan, who greet riders when they […]…

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Daimler’s Investment in Alabama, and Other Auto Topics

Years go, we at Business Week discovered that Detroit was moving south, resulting in a cover story called Detroit South. Boy, did we get that one right. Major auto plants have sprung up in Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi, just off the top of my head. One of the companies that has made […]…

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Whither the U.S. Economy?

There is a school of opinion that if the United States simply waits long enough, we will have a “recovery.” Proponents of this school point to the unemployment numbers which have just trended downward to 7.2 percent. But if you read the lead editorials in today’s Wall Street Journal and New York Times, a very […]…

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The Chevy Volt Comes Down in Cost

General Motors CEO Dan Akerson made a splash at a meeting of Safeguard America’s Future Energy (SAFE) in Washington, which I attended, by announcing that GM will introduce a Malibu that can be powered by compressed natural gas. But that’s off sometime in the future. What he said that was perhaps even more exciting was […]…

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Will The Toyota Empire Strike Back?

This is the fourth and final post from a Toyota press trip. As we entered Toyota’s headquarters in Toyota City, I realized I hadn’t written or edited a major story about Toyota since 1985 when we put “Toyota’s Fast Lane” on the cover of Business Week. Most of my automotive writing since that era was […]…

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