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NEW YORK — With little money left after buying food and fuel, American shoppers handed most retailers their most dismal March in 13 years.

As retailers reported sales results on Thursday, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Costco Wholesale Corp. were among the few winners, as shoppers stuck to basics. Wal-Mart raised its earnings outlook, noting that better inventory control helped to limit markdowns on merchandise. It also said April sales should top previous expectations.

But March proved to be bleak for most others, including J.C. Penney Co., Gap Inc., and Limited Brands Inc. All of them reported sharp drops in sales. Even high-end department stores like Saks Inc., languished; Saks noted that jewelry and designer women’s apparel were among the weakest areas.

Merchants faced a slew of obstacles to improving sales: record gas prices, rising food costs, a weaker job market, slumping house prices and an early, frigid Easter. The weather may be warming now, but the rest of those problems aren’t likely to dissipate soon.

"Consumers are buying what they need," said Jennifer Black, president of Jennifer Black & Associates, an equity research company in Lake Oswego, Ore. For everything else, shoppers are being pickier and focusing on discounters, she said.

According to a preliminary tally by UBS-International Council of Shopping Centers, sales slid 0.5 percent versus its original estimate of 1 percent growth first cash advance. The results, based on same-store sales or sales at stores opened at least a year, were the weakest since March 1995.

The retail industry already had been bracing for a weak March because Easter landed two weeks earlier than last year, on March 23 when winter weather still gripped most of the country. It was the earliest in 95 years. Retailers also had one less shopping day in March compared to a year ago.

A deteriorating economy, soaring food and gas prices, limited credit and slumping house prices shook shoppers further. The Conference Board, a business-backed group, said late last month that consumers’ outlook for the economy was the gloomiest in 35 years.

Michael P. Niemira, chief economist at the International Council of Shopping Centers, says that the malaise could continue into 2009.

The rebate checks, he said, will "buy retailers some time," but without an improvement in key areas like housing, a recovery in spending won’t happen anytime soon.

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BEIJING — Even morning smog can’t completely obscure the bright facades of hundreds of new high-rise corporate structures as you motor down a thorough

DANVILLE, Ill. — A new group of investors is planning to take over the biodiesel production plant that was recently finished adjacent to Bunge’s milling operation in Danville.

Deb Seidel, director of communications for Bunge North America, based in Maryland Heights, said an asset purchase agreement is being worked out between Biofuels Company of America LLC and Blackhawk Biofuels, a group of about 600 investors, including farmers and businessmen.

If the deal closes, Seidel said, Bunge would lease the property where the biodiesel plant stands to Blackhawk and would supply feedstock, such as soybean oil, to the operation. Soybean oil is a byproduct of Bunge’s milling operation and can be used to make biodiesel, a non-petroleum-based diesel fuel made from vegetable oils and animal fats online payday advance. It can be used alone or as a blend in unmodified diesel engines.

Biofuels Company of America was a partnership between Bunge North America and Biodiesel Investment Group LLC, based in Memphis, Tenn. Bunge was a minority investor in that arrangement.

The News-Gazette (Champaign-Urbana, Ill.)

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PARIS — Soci

Medco Health Solutions Inc (MHS.N: Quote, Profile, Research) reported better-than-expected quarterly earnings on Tuesday, helped by sales of generic drugs, and the pharmacy benefit manager boosted its full-year profit forecast, sending its shares higher.

Medco, which derives more than half its profit from mail-order delivery of generic medicines, said its rosier outlook reflected confidence in its fundamentals, new business, and more generics becoming available sooner than anticipated.

Pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), which administer prescription drug benefits for employers and health plans and operate large mail-order pharmacies, have profited from the availability of low-cost generic versions of popular drugs.

Morgan Stanley analyst David Veal said in a research note, “Another quarter of solid growth, when coupled with higher guidance, affirm our positive view of the PBM industry and should offer relief for the high level of investor nervousness around the quarter.”

After a huge gain in 2007, Medco shares had fallen 3 percent this year through Friday’s close, compared with a 13 percent drop for rival Express Scripts Inc (ESRX.O: Quote, Profile, Research).

Medco shares rose $2.10, or 4 percent, to $51.08 in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange payday loans. Express Scripts shares were up $3.17, or 5 percent, to $66.87.

Medco’s fourth-quarter net income fell 9 percent to $207.6 million, or 38 cents per share, from $228.8 million, or 39 cents per share, a year earlier.

The latest results were hurt by higher-than-expected costs tied to new clients and expenses related to two acquisitions. The year-earlier earnings were boosted by the temporary availability of a generic version of a popular blood thinner. 

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Merck & Co. posted a $1.63 billion fourth-quarter loss Wednesday as a whopping charge for its Vioxx litigation settlement dragged down results.

The maker of allergy and asthma pill Singulair and osteoporosis treatment Fosamax said the net loss amounted to 75 cents per share, compared with a year-ago profit of 22 cents, or $473.9 million pay day loans.

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The U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks are partly to blame for the financial-market slump that's now threatening to derail the global economy, said investors and former policy makers at the World Economic Forum.

“It's hard to give central banks a very high grade over the last couple of years on recognition of bubbles and actions taken to address them in the policy or regulatory spheres,'' said former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers in a panel in Davos, Switzerland. Billionaire investor George Soros said central banks have “lost control'' of financial markets.

The Fed, which yesterday announced its first emergency rate cut since 2001 as U.S. recession fears rose, has been criticized for paying too much attention to economic growth and not enough to so-called asset price bubbles. By cutting rates to protect growth when bubbles burst, the Fed only encourages investors to take bigger risks in the future, said Morgan Stanley's Stephen Roach.

“It's a dangerous, reckless and irresponsible way to run the world's largest economy,'' said Roach, chairman of Morgan Stanley in Asia, who was also in Davos.

The U.S. central bank yesterday cut its benchmark rate by three quarters of a point to 3.5 percent a day after the MSCI World Index fell 3 percent, the steepest decline since 2002. U.S. stocks dropped for a sixth day today, the longest losing streak since April 2002.

Mortgage Bust

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke is facing the same objections leveled at his predecessor, Alan Greenspan, who was slammed for not doing enough to prevent the Internet stock boom and then cutting rates too low to limit the fallout.

In 2003, the Fed reduced its benchmark to a 45-year low of 1 percent, leading to a house-price boom that turned to bust in 2006. That prompted a collapse in the market for mortgages to risky borrowers. It's now derailing financial markets because so many banks bought derivatives linked to those mortgages faxless payday loan.

“Central banks lost control of the situation when they allowed financial institutions to develop new financial instruments which they themselves didn't understand,'' said Soros.

Too Difficult

Greenspan and Bernanke counter that it's too difficult for central banks to spot bubbles before they emerge and raising rates to curb higher housing or stock prices would risk derailing the rest of the economy.

Nor was the Fed alone in slashing rates at the start of the decade. The ECB cut its benchmark to 2 percent in 2003, the lowest since the aftermath of World War II, and the Bank of England reduced its key rate to a 48-year low.

While house prices surged in the U.K., Spain and Ireland, those booms have now withered as contagion from the subprime collapse spreads.

Some Davos attendees came to the Fed's defense, saying it's difficult to identify bubbles and more attention should be paid to better regulation.

“We could pierce bubbles but we'd pierce a lot of non- bubbles and take a lot out of gross domestic product,'' said John Snow, also a former Treasury Secretary and now chairman of Cerberus Capital Management LP. “We need to reform regulation.''

The ECB nevertheless argues that it may be possible for central banks to “lean against the wind'' by raising rates in the early stage of a bubble to head off future gains.

“It's good for a central bank to ease when the risks are of a crash in the global economy, but that means you have to have a more systematic approach to asset bubbles,'' said Nouriel Roubini, founder of New York-based Roubini Global Economics LLC, in Davos. “If we have a `Greenspan put' or a `Bernanke put,' then we will create over and over again a distortion of excessive debt and leverage.''

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