The dollar remains well bid…G-7 to hand currencies off to G-20? Car Sales collapse…Auditing the Lehman cash movements…And Now… Today’s Pfennig!

Investment banks have gotten fat off the land since 1982, when the great U.S. bull market got its start. Their business has multiplied many-fold, and their earnings have soared into the stratosphere, to a level far higher than any other sector.

There has not been much good news coming from Detroit or the nation’s auto industry over the past year. Is the industry finally out of the woods?

The bankruptcies of Chrysler Group LLC and General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GRM) provided Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE ADR: TM) with an unparalleled opportunity to increase U.S. market share. But now patent-infringement claims could result in a U.S. import ban on some of the company’s most popular hybrid cars.

Is the U.S. housing market truly at a turning point, as investors seem to increasingly believe? Or is this actually a false dawn, meaning that there are problems and pain ahead for those who turned bullish too soon?

Even as investors get more and more bullish about the outlook for the U.S. economy, the economy’s underlying foundation continues to erode.

Asia is poised to become the “new” Detroit.

Steel maker Nucor Corp.’s (NYSE: NUE) stock has rallied some 51% from its March 3 low of $29.84 a share and has twice bumped against its recent high of $49.91 a share. 

Just when it thought the competition was leveling off, Blockbuster (NYSE:BBI) faces another nasty barrage. The company missed estimates yesterday, now the Street is forcing it to pay.

First, a historical note…US equities have just come off their best July since 1989. Overall, the market is up over 8% for the year. But if we look backward (after all, hindsight is 20/20), March 1989 also saw a huge run up. It was followed by an even stronger rally in July, during which volume dried up. It appears the same is happening now. What came next in 1989 was a big sell-off in September, followed by an even greater one in October.