• Labor Gains Obama Policies Rued by Companies From Cooper Tire to Walmart Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. is paying tariffs on imported tires. Free-trade agreements sought by Caterpillar Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. are on hold. Delta Air Lines Inc. flight attendants may join a union.


• Weak Dollar Is `Welcome Change' for McDonald's, PPG Fourth-Quarter Profit McDonald’s Corp., United Technologies Corp. and PPG Industries Inc. are among the companies whose earnings may get a boost in the fourth quarter from a weak dollar because of foreign operations and exports.


• K1's Kiener, Salesman Turned Hedge Manager, at Center of $400 Million Loss Helmut Kiener went from selling advertising for telephone books and getting paid by the ad to starting a German hedge-fund firm that would eventually make bets using millions borrowed from such banks as Barclays Plc, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and BNP Paribas SA.


• Mercedes Hands Germany Competitive Edge as Stronger Euro Divides Europe Germany is finding quality counts when it comes to the rising euro.


• Porn-Film Maker Turned Farmer Joins Japanese Movement to End Co-Op's Grip Ganari Takahashi’s first career, making pornographic movies, made him $10 million. He hopes his second, growing fruit and vegetables, will help upend a farming system that costs Japanese taxpayers $45 billion a year.


• Backpackers Party Less in Perth as Aussie Dollar Crimps Foreign Wallets A Swiss couple trudged into the deserted lobby of the 12:01 East Backpackers hostel in Perth after an eight-hour drive in Western Australia. Manager Winnie Kuwaja, sitting in a nearby office stuffed with tourism brochures, said he was pleased to see them.


• Commodities Replace Stocks as Best Asset in Global Poll: Chart of the Day Commodities have displaced stocks as the investment that will offer the best opportunity for profit during the next year, according to a global poll of Bloomberg terminal users.


• Lockheed F-35 Fighter Still Raises `Concerns' Over Costs, Pentagon Says Lockheed Martin Corp.’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter still poses a risk of cost increases, according to an independent study of the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons program, the Defense Department spokesman said today.


• Iliad's Founder Niel Brings Promise of Lower Mobile-Phone Prices to France Iliad SA founder Xavier Niel may do for France’s mobile-phone services what his Free brand did for broadband Internet access: bring down prices in one of Europe’s most expensive markets.


• Bernanke Trails Gjedrem as `Big Boys' Delay Rate Increases Until Late 2010 The global monetary policy divide is widening as the Federal Reserve, Bank of Japan and major counterparts lag behind Norway and Australia in raising interest rates, a trend that’s set to continue into 2010.

Bloomberg Daily News 30th October 2009