Microsoft’s Bing Off to Strong Start; U.S. Natural Gas Reserves Higher Than Once Thought; Carnival Cruise Lines Beats the Street; Treasuries Fall Again; GE Capital May Come Under Fed Scrutiny; Mexico’s Tourism Plummets on Swine Flu Scare; Discover Profits Down

Many commentators have picked the East Asian economies of China, Korea and Taiwan to emerge the most vigorously from the ongoing global financial crisis.

General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM) is closing in quickly on its June 1 deadline to finish overhauling its operations, or opt for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Because that deadline is actually one week from yesterday (Monday), analysts and investors will be watching GM closely this week.

While the entire U.S. housing market was on the verge of collapse and corporate America was being systemically undermined, regulators purposely looked the other way.  Why would they do this?

The base metals were mixed on Thursday. Copper flirted with the $2.20 mark in the late pre-dawn hours, but then fell off through the day, finishing at its intraday low of $2.1135/lb., down nearly 6 cents.

Tuesday trading in gold turned into a pretty big bear raid. As I mentioned briefly in my rant yesterday…starting shortly after Sydney opened on Tuesday morning…someone bombed the bullion market with a big sell order. The word ‘big’ is relative in this case. In the extremely thin trading that characterizes Far East gold and silver activity…a 1,000 contract sell order would hammer the market…and that’s pretty much what happened in gold. Ditto for silver.

BEIJING, The People’s Republic of China – If there’s a recession here in China, I don’t see it. Granted, I just stepped off the plane here in Beijing a few hours ago, but already the city feels much more vibrant than I expected, given the dire reports that keep appearing in the mainstream Western financial-news media. The Beijing economy appears strong.

Avery Goodman at Seekingalpha.com asks the intriguing question, “Did the ECB Save COMEX from Gold Default?”

Gold didn’t do much of anything in the Far East or Europe on Tuesday morning. There was a smallish rally at the Comex open that got stopped dead in its tracks at 8:30 Eastern. Gold had $10 carved off its price by the time the bottom was in…shortly before London closed for the day. It managed to regain that loss by the time Comex trading was over…but lost half of it by the time electronic trading on the Globex was through at 5:15 p.m. in New York.

After an unparalleled fall, natural gas prices could double by next year, as a growing number of idle rigs create a supply crunch.