Free Republic

<p>DETROIT -- Not since the 1920s have American consumers had so many choices when shopping for a new car or truck.</p> <p>Twenty-one American, British, German, Swedish, Japanese and now South Korean automobile companies offer 41 brands comprised of more than 1,000 car and truck models in total.</p>

CINCINNATI — Much of the public outcry over America's failure to generate jobs has focused lately on a surge in the outsourcing of work to China and India. But another dynamic closer to home is weighing on job creation — the slow process of working through a glut of boom-era investment that continues to litter the economy with underused factories. Procter & Gamble, for example, has been dumping its weakest brands and the plants that produce them. At its Ivorydale industrial complex here, in Procter's hometown, the company has sold factories that make Crisco shortening, Olean fat substitute and Ivory...

Like hundreds of other CFOs in Asia, Oh Se Kang has spent a good part of this year assessing the merits of a new investment in China. In particular, he's looked at whether or not to build a US$300 million paper mill in Hebei province, 280km southwest of Beijing, to feed the local market with newsprint. Oh's analysis was exhaustive but, in the end, positive. On September 10, his firm, Singapore-based Pan Asia Paper, decided to go ahead. When the plant opens in late 2005, it will make the company the biggest producer of newsprint in China. The business case...