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Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest retailer, announced Monday it would expand its discounted prescription drug program to offer 90-day supplies for $10 and add several women’s medications at a discount. It also said it would lower the price of more than 1,000 over-the-counter drugs.

The move marks the third phase of a company program that began in 2006 to provide a 30-day supply of generic prescription drugs for $4. The Bentonville-based company said the program has saved customers more than $1 billion.

With the expansion, the company began filling prescriptions Monday for up to 350 generic medications at $10 for a 90-day supply at Wal-Mart, Neighborhood Market and Sam’s Club pharmacies in the United States. Almost all the prescription generics in the company’s $4 program were included in the expanded $10 offer, said Wal-Mart senior vice president John Agwunobi.

In addition, the company will add several women’s medications to its list of prescriptions available for $9, including drugs to treat breast cancer and hormone deficiency.

For instance, alendronate, the generic version of osteoporosis medication Fosamax, will be added to the list. Company pharmacies will fill 30-day prescriptions of alendronate for $9 and a 90-day supply for $24 at a comparison of $54 and $102, respectively, that women previously paid for the same amounts, the company said.

Tamoxifen, used to treat breast cancer, will be offered for $9 for a 30-day supply, as well as combination estrogen/methyltestosterone tablets, prescribed for menopause and hormone deficiency.

Wal-Mart also will lower the prices of more than 1,000 over-the-counter medications to $4 or less in its pharmacies, company officials said. The company has sold over-the-counter medicines in the past at discounted prices, but revised and expanded its offerings specifically to include commonly used drugs that usually sell for $7 or more, said company spokesman Deisha Galberth.

The over-the-counter medication price rollbacks represent about one-third of the retailer’s over-the-counter medicines cash advance. They include Wal-Mart’s Equate versions of popular drugs, including Zantac, Pepcid and Claritin, and Wal-Mart’s Spring Valley prenatal vitamins.

Since 2006, Wal-Mart’s $4 generic drug program has expanded to every state, except North Dakota, where Wal-Mart has no in-store pharmacies. And many company competitors have followed the retailer’s lead.

While stressing that the expansion was designed to help customers at a time of exorbitant health-care costs and difficult economic times, Agwunobi said the program has worked in everyone’s favor.

"This is the time for us now to begin building capacity," he said. "It offers [customers’] employers potential savings. It offers the customers significant savings. It also offers us the ability to add capacity to our pharmacies without adding people."

Agwunobi expects the 90-day discount will increase the company’s market share of mail-order and online prescriptions as customers realize the value of the company offer.

Wal-Mart Chief Operating Officer Bill Simon said the results in each phase of the program have been strong and prescription volume has increased, "exceeding our expectations." He said the company would not, however, offer free generic drugs at its in-store clinics as some competitors have.

"We’re in business to make money," Simon said. "Free is a price that is not a long-term sustainable proposition."

Shares of Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500) fell 44 cents to $57.06 in afternoon trading Monday. 

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OTTAWA–Canada’s red-hot labour market caught a chill from U.S. recessionary winds in March as the spreading economic gloom sliced 47,000 full-time jobs from the payrolls in manufacturing-heavy Ontario and Quebec.

The overall employment picture was mildly positive, with 14,600 net new jobs created nationally and the unemployment rate edging up a fifth of a percentage point to 6 per cent, mostly because more Canadians were looking for work.

But all those gains and more were part-time jobs as Canada actually lost 19,600 full-time positions, while part-time employment jumped 34,000.

And the news was far worse in the export-oriented economies of Ontario and Quebec, which lost 25,000 and 22,000 full-time jobs, respectively.

"Certainly no disaster," said CIBC senior economist Avery Shenfeld. "But central Canada did see some impacts of the weakening in the U.S. and that could be the start of a trend."

There were new indications yesterday that the U.S. had slipped into a mild recession, and the slump is far from over. U.S. employers reported slashing 80,000 payroll jobs in March, the most in five years and the third straight month of losses.

Shenfeld said that was indicative of a mild recession. "If we were to see a deeper recession, you’d be losing 200,000 jobs a month," he said.

Both employment reports were in line with market expectations, as well as the cautionary statements issued by Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke and Bank of Canada senior deputy governor Paul Jenkins earlier this week.

TD Bank economist Derek Burleton said he expects Canada’s job market will likely soften further, although the much slower pace of retreat than in the U.S http://payday-nofax.com. likely means Canada will avoid a recession.

"I wouldn’t be surprised to see an outright decline in jobs in the next few months. The numbers will definitely soften," he said.

Citing the American slump, the Royal Bank on Thursday downgraded Canada’s economic growth forecast to 1.6 per cent in 2008 and said Ontario and Quebec would be the hardest hit because of their dependence on exports to the U.S.

But the Canadian Labour Congress saw more red than the economists, particularly in the continued bleeding of manufacturing jobs, and called for Ottawa to launch a job-creation strategy to mitigate the impact of the U.S. recession.

"Today’s labour force numbers give clear evidence that the U.S. recession is now spilling over into Canada, especially in Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes," said economist Andrew Jackson, noting almost all the job gains came in Alberta and B.C.

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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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The U.S. Federal Reserve is expected to slash interest rates by as much as a whole percentage point at its policy meeting on Tuesday as investors warily await investment bank results that could aggravate fears of a full-blown markets crisis.

Traders expect the Fed to cut rates by a full percentage point in an effort to stop hemorrhaging in financial markets and boost the flagging economy. The Fed is expected to announce its decision around 2:15 p.m. EDT.

The Fed has cut overnight rates by 2.25 percentage points to 3 percent since mid-September as a rise in defaults on subprime mortgages has escalated into a financial crisis that this weekend claimed one of Wall Street’s most venerable firms, investment bank Bear Stearns, as a victim.

While financial markets expect the Fed to fire off its biggest rate cut since 1982, they might focus more on the quarterly results due hours earlier from Goldman Sachs Group Inc, the most profitable U.S. investment bank, and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc, the fourth-largest.

The banks are expected to show how badly they were hit by the credit crunch in the three months ended February 29 — and any major shocks could send markets into another tailspin, especially given the vulnerability of the financial sector exposed by the fire sale of Bear Stearns to JPMorgan Chase.

The Fed has already taken a series of radical steps in an attempt to stabilize the financial system.

It narrowed the gap between the discount rate — the rate at which it lends directly to banks — and the federal funds rate, the overnight rate banks charge each other for loans and the Fed’s main policy tool, from three-quarters of a percentage point to a quarter point.

The U.S http://fcrwizard.com. central bank also unleashed a barrage of other unorthodox steps to provide liquidity, including $30 billion in financing to enable JPMorgan to buy Bear Stearns. In addition, it set up a new program to provide cash to a wider range of big financial firms through loans at the Fed’s discount window. 

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NEW YORK — Stocks rose for a third day Wednesday, the longest stretch of gains this year, after increased demand at Applied Materials Inc. spurred a technology rally and energy shares rose.

Applied Materials, the largest maker of semiconductor-production machines, climbed the most in five years and helped push the Nasdaq composite index to its best gain since November. Exxon Mobil Corp. and ConocoPhillips led oil shares higher after the Commerce Department said rising prices at filling stations spurred an unexpected increase in retail sales last month.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index added 18.35 points, or 1.4 percent, to 1,367.21, its biggest gain in two weeks. The Dow Jones industrial average climbed 178.83, or 1.5 percent, to 12,552.24. The Nasdaq increased 53.89, or 2.3 percent, to 2,373.93.

The gain in retail sales defied economists’ forecasts for a drop in purchases. Excluding financial companies, profits have risen 18 percent for S&P 500 members that have reported fourth-quarter results so far.
Applied Materials climbed $1.84, or 10 percent, to $19.91. The company said orders for machines that make flat screens will rise as much as 5 percent this quarter, exceeding estimates.

Network Appliance Inc., the maker of data-storage computers for Oracle Corp. and the U.S. Army, added $1.51, or 7 percent, to $23.04.

Exxon, the largest U.S. crude producer, rallied $1.11 to $85.49. ConocoPhillips, the third-biggest, jumped $2.25 to $78.65. Energy companies in the S&P 500 advanced 2.3 percent as oil for March delivery rose 49 cents to $93.27 a barrel in New York http://abc-cashadvance.com.

Filling station sales increased 2 percent in January after remaining unchanged the previous month, the Commerce Department said. Total retail sales advanced 0.3 percent, compared with economists’ forecast for a drop of 0.3 percent.

Target Corp., the second-largest U.S. discount chain, climbed 60 cents to $54.51. Gap Inc. rose 12 cents to $20.06.

Genentech Inc. rallied 93 cents to $70.85. The largest U.S. maker of anti-cancer drugs said its Avastin treatment helped slow the spread of breast tumors in a clinical trial.

Technology shares also gained after the Wall Street Journal reported Yahoo! Inc., seeking to thwart Microsoft Corp.’s $44.6 billion takeover bid, is in talks about a combination with News Corp.’s Internet assets instead.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. would get a stake in Yahoo that could be more than 20 percent, the newspaper said on its website. Yahoo added 31 cents, or 1.1 percent, to $29.88. News Corp. Class A shares slid 12 cents to $19.25 and Microsoft added 62 cents to $28.96.

Rockwell Automation Inc., increased $3.34, or 6 percent, to $58.92.

Qwest Communications International Inc. rallied 39 cents, or 7.4 percent, to $5.67.

Deere & Co. fell 94 cents, or 1.1 percent, to $85.54.

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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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