World Bank President to G8: Economy Still Dangerous; Service Sector Improves for Third Straight Month; Rio Sells Packaging Business to Bemis for $1.2 Billion; Crude Prices Drop Again; Report: Bank of America Writeoffs to Rise; Brazil’s Credit Rating Could Increase; DOJ Investigating Telecoms; Father of Web Browser Starts New Tech Venture Capital Firm

Oil Takes a Spill; SEC Expands Madoff Investigation; Sony Could Lose Largest Game Publisher; Nasdaq Outpaces Other Indices; Walgreens Misses Street Estimates; U.S. Car Brands Close Gap with Toyota Quality…

There’s a lot of figures in the news being tossed around about the smartphone market, and while it may be difficult to make sense of it all, one thing is clear: The market is growing at a rapid pace, and will soon take over conventional mobile phones as the device of choice among consumers and corporate users alike.

There’s something about having servants – even if they seem to love their jobs – that is vaguely disturbing. It offends many Americans’ sense of egalitarianism. But robots are different. They aren’t human. And that’s a big part of their potential appeal. They don’t eat, they don’t get offended and they don’t ask for pay raises. So if a robot could do what a human servant could do, wouldn’t you want a robot?

On Monday, $24.8 billion worth of takeovers were announced. It was the third busiest Merger Monday on record in 2009. Yet most investors remain unimpressed…. They’re convinced it’s nothing more than a short-lived Darwinian event. Weak and unfit companies, exposed by a nasty recession, are simply being forced into the arms of the strong.

On Feb. 5, we knocked the ball out of the park with our recommendation on Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN). After getting pummeled by the worst recession since 1930, it’s heartening to see that at these valuations, and with the massive disequilibrium that’s affecting so many market sectors, we can rewarded much more than during normal times.

When the New York Stock Exchange needed a computer operating system to handle its vast amount of daily transactions, it did not look to the perennial tech-bellwethers like Apple or Google.