Rogers and Soros are snapping up farmland right now. These two old hands are betting that demand for food will soar, pushing up the price of arable land. This from MoneyNews.com:

Falling commodity prices aren’t bringing prices for farmland down with them. Even as the price of grain goes down, the cost of the land it’s grown on keeps going up, leading George Soros and other guru investors to bet big on agricultural land.

The fundamentals are easy to understand: Over the next 40 years the population of the world is projected to grow from 6 billion to 9 billion, hugely increasing the strain on arable farmland worldwide.

The spiking grain prices that caused food shortages and rioting in dozens of countries in spring of 2008 fell some 50 percent by December. Yet even after the correction, grain prices remain above their 20-year average, and food stocks around the world are still near 40-year lows.

“Land is scarce and will become scarcer as the world has to double food output to satisfy increased demand by 2050,” Joachim von Braun, director general at the International Food Policy Research Institute, told Fortune Magazine.

“With limited land and water resources, this will automatically lead to increased valuations of productive land. And it goes hand in hand with water. Water scarcity will probably increase even more than land.”

“I’m convinced that farmland is going to be one of the best investments of our time,” says commodities guru Jim Rogers.

Long-suffering readers will know that we’re bullish on the PowerShares DB Agriculture Fund (NYSE:DBA). But there are a number of other ways to invest in the ag sector.

These include agricultural chemical companies such as PotashCorp (NYSE: POT) , Mosaic (NYSE: MOS) , Agrium (NYSE: AGU) and Terra Industries (NYSE: TRA). Also worth considering is farm machinery outfit Deere (NYSE: DE) and farm products company Archer-Daniels-Midland (NYSE: ADM).

I’m not sure about death, but the broader U.S. economy is like a 2:00 A.M. drunk, continuing to stumble towards the end of a mind-altering 2008, with little long-term relief in sight. Will it ever find its way home again?

One of President-elect Barack Obama’s most ambitious and large-scale plans quite literally seeks to dig America out of this mess – and here’s how you can profit, too. But you’d better act fast. Some of Wall Street’s big boys are already placing their bets.

The Eisenhower Model

Obama will take the oath as 44th president of the United States on Jan. 20.

Since his Nov. 4 victory, the more he’s said about “getting to work immediately” and having “no time to waste,” the more I think the inauguration ceremony will be a time-consuming inconvenience, distracting him from fixing America’s problems.

One key area in which he’s pledged to spend his way out of the mire is by tackling the country’s aging and rapidly deteriorating infrastructure. He plans to make the largest investment to repair and upgrade the country’s public works systems since Dwight Eisenhower spearheaded the nationwide interstate highway system in the 1950s.

In short, this means utility industries like electric and water will receive huge cash infusions. Roads and bridges will be repaired and rebuilt. Schools will be modernized, part of which will include improving Internet access to a nation that ranks 15th in the world in broadband adoption. Energy efficiency, particularly in government buildings, will be increased. The healthcare industry will make greater use of technology to streamline and computerize medical records to cut costs.

That’s the plan anyway. And Obama says it will create 2.5 million jobs by 2011.

Obama’s economic brain trust is currently “busy working, crunching the numbers… to determine what the size and scope of the economic recovery plan needs to be. But it’s going to be substantial.”

Kind of vague right now, I know. But just yesterday (Thursday), one of his advisers floated a dollar figure of $850 billion. In terms of infrastructure upgrades, 5,000 road and bridge projects could get under Caterpillar Digs Deep into the Developing World for Profit way immediately after Obama puts his autograph on the bill.

Brick By Brick… Bridge By Bridge

With U.S. infrastructure set to have a sweaty wad of cash lobbed in its direction, construction firms are lining up to grab a share of the spoils, particularly as the need for equipment and raw materials rises.

Appropriately, we start in Obama’s home state of Illinois, which is also home to the world’s largest manufacturers of construction and mining equipment, engines, and industrial turbines. Founded in 1986 and based in Peoria, Caterpillar (CAT) has seen its shares shoot up from $37 to over $45, as the company feeds off the infrastructure buzz.

One of Caterpillar’s fellow Illinois-based construction equipment manufacturers, Deere & Company (DE), could also be set to extend a share price boost that has seen the price surge from the upper $20s on November 20 to over $39 today.

If you want a more diversified way to play the industrial and construction sector, take a look at the Industrial Select Sector SPDR (XLI) exchange traded fund (ETF).

On the engineering front, head west and look no further than California’s Jacobs Engineering Group (JEC), which is the largest publicly traded engineering firm in the U.S. The infrastructure love is spreading across the sector, as the stock shot up on news that it has secured two more contracts…

1. A five-year, $17.5 million contract from the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board that will see Jacobs serve SamTrans and the San Mateo County Transportation Authority agencies to work on three programs. This includes project management, scheduling, budget management, and more.

1. A contract from Pima County, Arizona to provide project management and construction inspection services for the Ina Road water reclamation project. Construction costs here will total about $200 million.

Jacobs pulls in a whopping $11 billion annually and employs more than 57,000 workers – a number that could grow under Obama’s bold plan.

Speaking of water, if you’re looking to cash in on this critical industry amid a surging global population, increasing pollution, and a depleting, finite amount of water resources, check out leading firm Watts Water Technologies Inc. (WTS) or the sector ETF, PowerShares Water Resources (PHO), which tracks the price and yield performance of the Palisades Water index.

Be sure to also pay a visit to our own free Smart Profits Report research section, where you can read much more about the water problems facing the world – and the vast profit potential that the industry holds. We’ve got two in-depth (pun intended) water reports up there.

Get Raw

On the raw materials side, several firms spring to mind as potential winners of the Obama infrastructure initiative. And as Jim Cramer might say, they’re “best of breed” in their industries.

• Cement: South of the border – in Garza Garcia, Mexico, to be exact – you can find Cemex SAB de CV (ADR: CX), a world leader in producing, distributing, and selling cement. And when it comes to infrastructure rebuilding and repairs, you don’t get many more commodities more important than this one. Its market cap of almost $8 billion is evidence of this.

• Steel: Talk about a liftoff. U.S. Steel Corp. (X) shares have surged from the mid $20s on November 20 to a current price around $37 a share.

• Copper: Copper hit a 52-week high of $127.24/ton on May 21, 2008. The price now sits around $20/ton. Quite a slump for what is the largest publicly traded copper producer, Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. (FCX). You can blame the prolonged commodities sector slump for that, in addition to the stock market’s woes. But in an Obama-fueled, infrastructure rebuilding rampage, I’m betting on a resurgence.

• Aluminum: Go large. The leader here is Alcoa Inc. (AA). Like FCX, Alcoa has endured a rocky year. Having traded at a 52-week high of $44.77 in May, the stock market’s tank job has whipped this stock into submission. Shares are currently trading around $10 and with a 0.37 Price/Earnings-to-Growth (PEG) ratio, the market thinks it’s ridiculously undervalued.

The bottom line here is that companies like these could all stand to profit from a huge ramp up in infrastructure spending. What’s more, they’re all solid, well-established, industry-leading firms with strong cash positions, doing business in areas where there are clear, critical needs. If you’re looking for outperformers, infrastructure stocks are set up well for 2009.

From Eisenhower To Obama …The Firms Poised To Cash In On The New U.S. Infrastructure Revolution

This from Smart Profits Report:

Six weeks from today, Barack Obama will take the oath as 44^th president of the United States.

Since his election victory, the more he’s said about “getting to work immediately” and having “no time to waste,” the more I think the inauguration ceremony will be a time-consuming inconvenience, distracting him from fixing America’s problems!

One key area in which he’s pledged to spend his way out of the mire is by tackling the country’s aging and rapidly deteriorating infrastructure. He plans to make the largest investment to repair and upgrade the country’s public works systems since Dwight Eisenhower spearheaded the nationwide interstate highway system in the 1950s.

In short, this means utility industries like electric and water will receive huge cash infusions. Roads and bridges will be repaired and rebuilt. Schools will be modernized, part of which will include improving Internet access to a nation that ranks 15^th in the world in broadband adoption. Energy efficiency, particularly in government buildings, will be increased. The healthcare industry will make greater use of technology to streamline and computerize medical records to cut costs.

That’s the plan anyway. And Obama says it will create 2.5 million jobs by 2011. But we want profits. Read on to find out how you can grab some…

It’s The Economy, Stupid… Six Weeks Away From $500 Billion Rescue Plan

Obama’s economic brain trust is currently “busy working, crunching the numbers… to determine what the size and scope of the economic recovery plan needs to be. But it’s going to be substantial.”

Kinda vague right now, I know. But early estimates put the economic recovery bill at $500 billion. In terms of infrastructure upgrades, 5,000 road and bridge projects could get underway immediately after Obama puts his autograph on the bill.

Here are some investments that could revel in the building boom…

Brick By Brick… Bridge By Bridge

When the U.S. infrastructure sets to have a sweaty wad of cash lobbed in its direction, construction firms are lining up to grab a share of the spoils, as the need for equipment and raw materials rises.

Appropriately, we start in Obama’s home state of Illinois, which is also home to the world’s largest manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, engines, and industrial turbines. Founded in 1986 and based in Peoria, Caterpillar (NYSE:CAT) has shot up from $37 to over $43 over the past five trading days, as it feeds off the infrastructure buzz.

One of Caterpillar’s fellow Illinois-based construction equipment manufacturers, Deere & Company (NYSE:DE), could also be set to extend a share price boost that has seen the price surge from the upper $20s on November 20 to over $38 today.

If you want a more diversified way to play the industrial and construction sector, take a look at the ETF, the Industrial Select Sector SPDR (NYSE:XLI). ETF’s are a smarter investment choice in a rollercoaster market; our Guest Editorial on Good ETF Investments tells us why.

On the engineering front, head west and look no further than California’s Jacobs Engineering Group (NYSE:JEC), which is the largest publicly traded engineering firm in the U.S. The infrastructure love is spreading across the sector, as the stock shot up today on news that it has secured two more contracts…

1. A five-year, $17.5 million contract from the Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board (JPB) that will see Jacobs serve SamTrans and the San Mateo County Transportation Authority (SMCTA) agencies to work on three programs. This includes project management, scheduling, budget management, and more.
2. A contract from Pima County, Arizona to provide project management and construction inspection services for the Ina Road water reclamation project. Construction costs here will total about $200 million.

Jacobs pulls in a whopping $11 billion annually and employs more than 57,000 workers – a number that could grow under Obama’s bold plan.

And speaking of water, if you’re looking to cash in on this critical industry amid a surging global population, increasing pollution, and a depleting, finite amount of water resources, check out leading firm Watts Water Technologies Inc. (NYSE:WTS) or the sector ETF, PowerShares Water Resources (NYSE:PHO), which tracks the price and yield performance of the Palisades Water index.

Be sure to also pay a visit to our own free Smart Profits Report research section, where you can read much more about the water problems facing the world – and the vast profit potential that the industry holds. We’ve got two in-depth (pun intended) water reports up there. An earlier issue titled, The Water Industry analyzes how the economics of this increasingly scarce commodity are shaping our world.

Get Raw

On the raw materials side, several firms spring to mind as potential winners of the Obama Infrastructure Initiative (I just made that term up). And as Jim Cramer might say, they’re “best of breed” in their industries.

Cement: South of the border – in Garza Garcia, Mexico, to be exact – you can find Cemex (NYSE:CX), a world leader in producing, distributing, and selling cement. And when it comes to infrastructure rebuilding and repairs, you don’t get many more commodities more important than this one. Its market cap of almost $8 billion is evidence of this.

Steel: Talk about a liftoff. U.S. Steel Corp. (NYSE:X) shares have surged from the mid $20s on November 20 to a current price around $37, having enjoyed its biggest daily jump in almost 20 years on Monday.

Copper: Its 52-week high on May 21, 2008 was $127.24. Its price now sits around $20. Quite a slump for what is the largest publicly traded copper producer, Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. (NYSE:FCX). You can blame the prolonged commodities sector slump for that, in addition to the stock market’s woes. But in an Obama-fueled infrastructure rebuilding rampage, I’m betting on a resurgence here.

Aluminum: Go large. The leader here is Alcoa Inc. (NYSE:AA). Like FCX, Alcoa has endured a rocky year. Having traded at a 52-week high of $44.77 in May, the stock market’s tank job has whipped this stock into submission. Shares are currently trading around $9.50 and with a 0.37 PEG ratio (Price/Earnings-to-Growth), the market thinks it’s ridiculously undervalued.

The bottom line here is that companies like these could all stand to profit from a huge ramp up in infrastructure spending. What’s more, they’re all solid, well-established, industry-leading firms in strong cash positions, doing business in areas where there are clear, critical needs. If you’re looking for outperformers, infrastructure stocks are set up well for 2009.

Source: From Eisenhower To Obama… The Firms Poised To Cash In On The New U.S. Infrastructure Revolution

• Deere & Co. (DE), the world’s largest maker of farm equipment, dropped the most in 20 years after reporting earnings that missed analyst estimates yesterday (Wednesday). The company reported third-quarter profit rose 7% to $575.2 million, but $140 million increase in raw materials and freight costs pushed profit below estimates. Deere stock fell as low as $61 a share before closing at $67.10.

• Genentech Inc. (DNA) yesterday (Wednesday) rejected a $43.7 billion buyout offer from Roche Holding Ltd. (OTC: RHHBY) but said it is open to a higher takeover bid. Roche, which already owns about 55.9% of Genentech, offered $89 a share last month for the California-based company. Several analysts have said Genentech is worth over $100 per share, The Associated Press reported.

• U.S. crude settled up $2.99 at $116 a barrel after a government report showed declines in fuel and crude inventories. U.S. crude stocks fell by 400,000 barrels in the week ended August 8, and gasoline stocks dropped by 6.4 million barrels.

• China Fire & Security Group Inc. (CFSG) said yesterday (Tuesday) that income rose 57% to $6.7 million in the second quarter. Revenue jumped 44%, from $11.5 million a year ago to $16.7 million. China Fire & Security, which makes industrial fire protection products, attributed the increases to total solution contracts and maintenance service.

• Ten exchanges yesterday (Wednesday) agreed to consolidate insider-trading surveillance and investigation efforts, turning over the responsibility to the regulation arms of the New York Stock Exchange and to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority in an effort to cut down on overlap between individually run programs, The Washington Post reported. “I think we all recognize that in a world of electronic trading, where there are more venues and more opportunities where people may be able to hide their activity, consolidating the review of insider-trading activity was critical,” said Richard Ketchum, chief executive officer of NYSE Regulation and chairman of Washington-based FINRA.

• Best Buy Co. Inc. (BBY) will begin selling the Apple Inc. (AAPL) iPhone, previously only available at Apple and AT&T Inc. (T) retail locations. While Best Buy is not likely to make much on the sale of the phone itself, the electronics retailer should profit from the sale of higher margin accessories, The New York Times reported.

• Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. (MER) analyst Guy Moszkowski downgraded four Wall Street investment banks in a research report yesterday (Wednesday), Reuters reported. Citing continued fallout from the credit crisis, Moszkowski cut the ratings of Citigroup Inc. (C), Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (LEH) and Morgan Stanley (MS).

• Ford Motor Co. (F) announced yesterday (Wednesday) that it expects sales of small cars to increase as it tailors its North American offerings to follow its European models. “Ford already delivers the best small cars in Europe,” said Mark Fields, Ford’s president of the Americas, in a speech at a conference in Traverse City, Michigan, Reuters reported. “Now it’s North America’s turn, and we intend to deliver these small cars profitably.”

Source: Global Investing Roundups Thursday, August 14th, 2008

Assuming the stock market doesn’t move much from here, a typical U.S. company can expect its pension expense – a direct charge against profits – to increase between 20% and 30% in 2009.

With such a hefty burden ahead, it’s not difficult to understand that this pension fund crisis will certainly exert a downward pressure on corporate earnings, and doubtless on stock prices, too.

But there is a silver lining: By choosing your stocks carefully, you can dodge this pension-fund crisis altogether. To make sound choices, it’s first necessary to have some knowledge of pension systems, and the funding crisis that’s brewing up like a summer squall.

Pension-Fund Proliferation Leads to Pension-Fund Crisis

The pension fund problem emanates from the huge expansion of pension funds after World War II, when companies saw additional pension promises as being cheaper than cash wage increases. And they were cheaper: Big industrial companies like General Motors Corp. (GM) were growing rapidly, meaning they had relatively young work forces who could be expected to pay pension contributions for many years before being eligible to receive pensions.

Add a certain amount of old-fashioned sloppiness in the accounting – for instance, the total value of pension liabilities didn’t have to be reported at all until 1985, and have only been brought onto the corporate balance sheets under the recent pension-focused accounting rule, SFAS 158 – and you can see why defined-benefit pension plans, in which workers got a benefit based on a percentage of final salary, were popular with all concerned.

The defined-benefit pension system got into serious trouble in the 1980s – thanks to some developments from the decade before. Under the ERISA Act of 1974, employers were forced to make payments to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., so employees would be paid if the employer went bust. As the 1970s wore on, high inflation (which led to higher wages, and therefore higher pension obligations) and lousy stock markets (which reduced the pension funds’ returns), caused many defined-benefit pension schemes to become seriously under-funded, creating a major risk to employee benefits.

The Generally Lousy Moves of General Motors and General Electric

The aging work force didn’t help: By 1980, GM had stopped expanding and was moving towards its current position, in which retirees outnumber active workers.

The industry’s new solution was the so-called defined-contribution plans, such as today’s ubiquitous 401(K) accounts, in which employers and employees combine to fund employee pensions. These had one modest benefit for the employee: They were much more “portable” than defined-benefit plans.

Under the old pension system, if you had completed 20 years at General Motors, you were basically stuck there until retirement. And employers really liked 401(K) plans, as well, for this new format meant that they were freed from being responsible for employees’ welfare in retirement (a huge cost savings in the retirement area, thanks to the massive escalation in health-care costs, as it turned out). Employers also could generally substantially reduce the percentage of employee wages they devoted to pension contributions.

Defined-benefit plans had something of a comeback in the 1990s, when inflation declined and the stock market rocketed ahead so fast that the under-funded pensions of the 1970s disappeared, and were replaced with over-funded pension plans, so that employers no longer needed to make contributions. The result was that many companies took holidays from making pension contributions, boosting their earnings, their stock prices and the value of their top management’s stock options by doing so.

General Electric Co. (GE) even went further; it figured out a way in which it could make negative pension contributions, essentially withdrawing money from the pension fund, and boosting its earnings still further by doing so. GE Chief Executive Officer John F. “Neutron Jack” Welch (whose tenure at GE was from 1982-2001) never missed a trick – as that company’s unfortunate shareholders, employees, and customers are only now discovering.

Possible Pension Profit Plays

Since 2000, stock market returns have been lousy. What’s more, bond yields have declined. That’s had the effect of raising the nominal value of pension liabilities, which are calculated 30-40 years ahead and then discounted back to the present day by some appropriate bond rate.

When you factor in the recent downturn, it’s easy to see why defined-benefit pension contributions will be zooming up.

So, how do you deal with the pension-fund crisis?

So begins a letter from one of our more-dedicated readers.

In today’s markets, it is extremely difficult to find winners. With a market beset by soaring oil and energy prices, the forced liquidation of securities by large financial institutions that are quickly urged to comply with the U.S. Federal Reserve’s capitalization requirements and the rest of the market afraid of its own shadow, rumors proliferate and bear raids abound.

Stocks that already represent a fine value get hit nonetheless and become even deeper bargains. Yet, it is precisely in these circumstances, as the Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index – usually referred to as the VIX Index – is regarded as a proxy for fear in the markets. The index is once again quickly approaching the July 2007, January and March 2008 spikes above 32 that marked the broader market’s tradable bottoms. We have to remain vigilant and look to scoop up bargains if this market ends up as a fire sale.

Enter Cummins Inc. (NYSE: CMI). This no-nonsense Midwest industrial company is almost 100 years old, has been trading publicly since 1947, and is best known as the maker of bulletproof diesel engines.

But the Columbus, Ind.-based company is actually much more. Indeed, in many ways it’s actually the ideal Money Morning/Money Map Report stock pick: It serves basic industries, is diversified globally and just boosted its dividend payout 40%.
Cummins does business in four areas:

• Diesel and natural-gas-powered engines (52% of the company’s overall revenue).
• Electric-power-generation systems distribution systems (19% of revenue).
• Power-generation systems (19% of revenue).
• Engine components (10% of revenue).

The company holds leadership positions in all of its product areas. All these lines are in the “sweet spot” of increasing growth rates and margins due to the specific reasons that differentiate them from the rest of the market.

Very importantly, Cummins enjoys strong, sustainable competitive advantages in every segment of its business. It has well-integrated product plans, focused on being the low-cost producer and developing strong distribution-and-servicing channels in all its markets across the globe.

That translates into consistent market-share dominance for most of its products. What’s more, even though a great proportion (about 45%) of Cummins’ sales come from the U.S. market, the huge spike in oil and gasoline prices has accelerated the U.S. migration into diesel engines, which are more- fuel efficient and have longer lives – and which is the company’s dominant product line.

Diesel engines already are in widespread use overseas, where Cummins derives the remaining 55% of its overall corporate revenue. The company is particularly strong in Europe (18% of sales), Asia/Australia (20%) and Mexico/Latin America (9%). Cummins can expect a big long-term growth boost from its power-generation business, where the company has a big advantage in such product areas as standby, mobile and distributed power generation. This business is growing quickly overseas, because of the inadequacies of the national electricity-distribution grids and the risks to interruption in many emerging economies.

With global growth across the world established solidly for the next two decades, and especially driven by the vast demands in China and India in power generation due to urbanization and industrialization, this business will be major growth driver for Cummins for years to come.

The company is very strong financially. Cummins has a market value of $13.4 billion. Last year it reported profits of $739 million on sales of $13.1 billion. Free cash flow was $1.23 billion. For all of 2008, Cummins is projecting that sales will advance 5% to $13.71 billion, while cash flow will increase 6% to $1.3 billion.

The input cost increase due to higher electricity and steel prices should pose no problem to Cummins’ margins, since its market dominance, cost leadership, and the scarcity of these products across the board gives this industrial heavyweight plenty of pricing power.

At Friday’s closing price of $65.95, Cummins’ shares were down 12% from their 52-week high of $75.09. But they’re 73% above their 12-month low of $38.11. However, there has been some recent weakness, induced by forced liquidations and unrelated factors to Cummins’ fundamentals. Ignore that as a negative: It actually only provides investors with an attractive buying opportunity. This opportunity is available to the very few, since the stock is under-covered by Wall Street, since it is boringly and consistently profitable.

Action to Take: BUY Cummins Inc. (CMI). Investors should rev up their purchases of this major maker of diesel engines and power-management systems.

[Editor’s Note: Horacio Marquez was working as a vice president of the Merrill Lynch Emerging Markets Fixed Income Group in 1994 when he correctly predicted that both Argentina and Mexico were headed for currency crises - cementing his reputation as an expert on both the emerging markets and on the nuances of global finance. Now Marquez brings that expertise to you with the newly created "Shadow Stock Trader" specialized trading service. To find out how to subscribe, please click here. "Buy, Sell or Hold" is a brand-new Money Morning feature that so far has covered Cisco Systems Inc. (CS), and ABB Ltd., ADR: ABB). Readers should feel free to write to us and suggest a stock they’d like to see analyzed.]

Source: Buy, Sell, or Hold: Cummins Inc.

As the big dominos of $125 oil, $4 copper, $6 corn, and $1,000 gold fall onto the market, raw-material producers enjoy record cash flows. The next domino is all the cash finding its way to companies that supply equipment, services, and infrastructure to those producers.

If you’ve listened to our commentary on oil services, you’ve probably made a lot of money. But don’t forget companies like John Deere… Don’t forget the “ag services.”

John Deere is America’s largest farm-equipment maker. Think tractors, hay balers, plows, mowers, planters, and combines. Deere expects the booming farm economy to push up ag equipment sales by 35% in 2008. Shares are in a smooth uptrend. Like oil-service stocks, expect ag services to keep rising in response to high corn and bean prices.

Source: The Other Way to Make a Fortune in ‘Services’

• Deere & Co. (DE), the world’s biggest maker of farm machinery, said yesterday (Wednesday) that its second-quarter profit rose 22%, mostly due to a jump in overseas sales. However, the company warned that rising costs of raw materials could cut into its earnings in the months ahead, the Associated Press reported. Profit for the period ended April 30 reached $763.5 million, or $1.74 per share, up from $623.6 million, or $1.36 per share, last year.

• E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. (DD) – commonly known as DuPont – said yesterday (Wednesday) that it would form a new joint venture with Genencor, a division of Danisco A/S, to develop and commercialize cellulosic ethanol, or fuel derived from nonfood sources. The venture, to be called DuPont Danisco Cellulosic Ethanol LLC, will focus initially on making fuel from the leaves and stalks of corn and from sugar cane bagasse, the Associated Press reported.

• SABMiller Brewing PLC (SBMRY) said yesterday (Wednesday) that it would buy the rights from rival Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc. (BUD) to distribute Grolsch beer in the United States, the Associated Press reported. Anheuser-Busch acquired distribution rights to the Dutch beer in February 2006, but SABMiller took over Royal Grolsch NV this past February for $1.2 billion.

• As China recovers from the devastating 7.9 magnitude earthquake, some economists say the government is less inclined to raise interest rates in the near future, despite widespread inflation. “In the coming months there will be no rate hikes,” Ting Lu, an economist at Merrill Lynch & Co. (MER) in Hong Kong, told Bloomberg. “During a natural disaster policy makers will be very careful not to use aggressive policy tools.”

• Shares of BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP) rose yesterday (Wednesday) amid speculation that Aluminum Corp. of China Ltd. (ACH) is interested in acquiring a stake in the world’s biggest mining company, Bloomberg reported. If it happens, it could add an interesting twist to BHP’s $178 billion hostile offer for rival Rio Tinto plc (RTP), as Aluminum Corp. of China recently purchased a stake in Rio in February.

• Whole Foods Markets Inc. (WFMI) shares dropped 14% yesterday (Wednesday) when the high-end food retailer reported that same-store sales open for a year or more only increased 6.7%. The once-popular food chain has been hard hit as consumers seek out bargains to make the weak dollar stretch farther. Whole Foods shares shed $4.68 to close at $28.96.

• Higher food and packaging costs took a big bite out of Jack in the Box Inc.’s (JBX) bottom-line. Same-store sales dropped 0.1% for the San Diego-based fast food chain in its fiscal second quarter. Shares dropped over 10%, with a decline of $2.90, to close at $24.87 yesterday (Wednesday).

• Shares of U.S. mortgage giant Freddie Mac (FRE) gained more than 9% yesterday (Wednesday) after the firm announced a smaller loss due to accounting changes that reduced charges by $2.6 billion. Freddie Mac shares gained $2.29 to close at $27.25.

Source: Global Investing Roundups: Thursday, May 15th, 2008