For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – November 12, 2009 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Macy’s Inc. (M), Nissan (NSANY), Priceline.com (PCLN), General Electric Co. (GE) and United Technologies Corp. (UTX).

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Here are highlights from Wednesday’s Analyst Blog:

Macy’s Raises Earnings Guidance

Macy’s Inc. (M) recently reported third-quarter 2009 results. The company posted a loss of 3 cents a share that outshined the Zacks Consensus Estimate loss of 9 cents, and improved substantially from a loss of 8 cents delivered in the prior-year quarter.

Effective

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Nissan to Build World’s Cheapest Car Carlos Ghosn, the Chief Executive of the alliance Renault and Nissan (NSANY), has revealed that the company will roll out a small car with its Indian partner, Bajaj Auto, that will be cheaper than any other car in India -- and in the world. The car, which is scheduled for launch in India in 2012, would beat India’s largest automaker Tata Motors’ Nano both in terms of pricing and fuel-efficiency, and become the world's cheapest car. Presently, Tata Nano is the world's cheapest car. The car has a starting price of about Rs100,000 ($2,150). When Renault and Bajaj started discussing on their "ultra low-cost" car 2 years ago, it has been revealed that the car would have been priced between $2,500 and $3,000. However, at the World Economic Forum meeting in New Delhi, India, Mr.Ghosn announced that the ultra low-cost ...

Over the weekend Owen Matthews published a preemptive political obituary of President Dmitry Medvedev in Newsweek, pointing out that all of the problems that he has tried (and mostly failed) to confront in Russian society were specifically made by the hand of Vladimir Putin.  It's a pretty devastating and concise summary of the key issues.During his two terms in office, Russia's bureaucracy doubled in size, while according to Transparency International, the size of the "bribe economy" increased 10-fold. The bureaucracy became the business elite as the state--from the Kremlin to provincial governors and even local policemen--swallowed up private businesses. Today business rivals regularly use state power to put opponents in jail. They conjure up crippling tax raids and steal whole businesses with the connivance of local authorities. This makes it almost impossible for Russian businesses to compete internationally ...

The United States is the New Tanzania? Ugh…

by Robert Williams, Publisher

Switzerland sits atop the overall ranking in The Global Competitiveness Report, just released by the World Economic Forum, representing the first time since 2004 that the United States doesn’t hold the top spot. But hey, that’s what being at the epicenter of a global financial crisis will do, right?

Singapore, Sweden and Denmark round out the top five.

The shocker, however, is how badly the United States scored for the soundness of its banks. It placed 108th, just ahead of Venezuela, Serbia and Vietnam and right behind Tanzania.

“Given that the financial crisis originated in large part in the United States, it is hardly surprising that there has been a weakening of the assessment of its financial market sophistication…” said the WEF.

Yeah. But Tanzania?

For the record, Tanzania borders nations

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I've finally gotten around to looking more closely at the World Economic Forum's annual Global Competitiveness Report, released last week. The report ranks 133 countries on the basis of 12 measures of an economy's competitiveness: institutions, infrastructure, macroeconomic stability, health and primary education, higher education and training, goods market efficiency, labour market efficiency, financial market sophistication, technological readiness, market size, business sophistication and innovation.

Russia's overall rank dropped from 51 to 63, but as the country highlights discussion makes clear, this overall rank masks a more telling underlying story:

Russia falls 12 places this year to 63rd, the only BRIC economy

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This recovery is wonderful in every way, except the important ones. It is like a shiny new airplane. It has glossy aluminum wings. It has plush seats in the first class section. Trim stewardesses serve drinks. Movies are available on demand in all sections…

A majority of those polled by Bloomberg think it’s great; 61% said they thought they economy had taken off and was flying high. Stocks are up. Commodities are up. And here’s another Bloomberg headline: “Global investors give Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke top marks…”

The recovery has won the approval of economists and the public. It has almost everything going for it. It just won’t fly!

Comes news this morning that the US economy is still on the runway. This report from the AP explains why:

“WASHINGTON (AP) – Consumers slashed their borrowing in July by the largest amount on record as job losses and uncertainty about the

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The global recession claims another victim - the United States is no longer the worlds most competitive economy. Switzerland, a beacon of relative stability during the past 18 months of worldwide economic turmoil, toppled the topsy-turvy U.S. from the No. 1 spot in the latest update of quot;The Global Competitiveness Reportquot; from the World Economic Forum. The WEF uses a wide range of metrics to measure competitiveness, which it defines as quot;the set of institutions, policies and factors that determine the level of productivity of a countryquot; as a means to produce prosperity for its citizens. The U.S. was panned in the report for too-close relationships between government regulators and the private sector, and for quot;the perception that the government spends its resources wastefully.quot; Specifically mentioned were the massive additions to the federal deficit made by the Bush and Obama administrations, used to finance the Iraq war and economic stimulus. Singapore ranked third, with ...

The global recession claims another victim - the United States is no longer the worlds most competitive economy. Switzerland, a beacon of relative stability during the past 18 months of worldwide economic turmoil, toppled the topsy-turvy U.S. from the No. 1 spot in the latest update of quot;The Global Competitiveness Reportquot; from the World Economic Forum. The WEF uses a wide range of metrics to measure competitiveness, which it defines as quot;the set of institutions, policies and factors that determine the level of productivity of a countryquot; as a means to produce prosperity for its citizens. The U.S. was panned in the report for too-close relationships between government regulators and the private sector, and for quot;the perception that the government spends its resources wastefully.quot; Specifically mentioned were the massive additions to the federal deficit made by the Bush and Obama administrations, used to finance the Iraq war and economic stimulus. Singapore ranked third, with ...

Canadian Banking: Sober, Boring, and Successful

Ryan Cole, The Investment U Research Team

It wasn’t so long ago Canada’s banking system was considered behind the times. Almost cute, an antiquarian relic, it banked in the old ways… and it was holding Canada back.

After all, while real estate throughout the world was doubling every few years, Canadian homes were moving up relatively modestly.

While risk in the rest of the world had been eliminated through complicated instruments that everyone trusted “someone else” understood, Canada was still using the traditional loan-and-hold mortgage model…

I’m sure you see where this is going.

Canada’s banks weren’t caught up in one of the biggest global bubbles of the last few decades, and they aren’t participating in the fallout either. It’s why investors around the world are looking at Canada, and three of its banks that

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Hot IPOs Coming Your Way: Why Innovation Will Lead Our Recovery

by Louis Basenese, Advisory Panelist

Senior Analyst, The Oxford Club

Most folks have long since left the IPO market for dead… and it’s no wonder.

Scan the financial markets and very little - if anything - is consistently moving in a positive direction. And the latest economic data - unemployment, home foreclosures, bankruptcy filings, consumer spending - only underscores how far and wide this recession is cutting.

One thing, however, keeps chugging along, undeterred - innovation…

Innovation Will Lead The Economy’s Recovery

“Innovation goes up while the economy goes down,” says W. Chan Kim, Fellow of the World Economic Forum. And history suggests he’s not wrong. In 1969, while the economy slumped 1.9%, the number of patents granted jumped 14%.

During the energy-induced recession of the early 70s, unemployment hit 9%. GDP dropped 4.7%. And yet innovation handed us major breakthroughs

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