At a price of just $2,500 each, Tata Motors Ltd.’s (TTM) Nano was billed early in its development as the world’s cheapest automobile and the only car that was both affordable and practical enough for India’s quickly burgeoning middle class. But the car that was emerging as a bright symbol of middle-class opportunity in fast-growing India could now epitomize something much darker: The human cost of rapid industrialization.

Read about the automotive meltdown, and one company is conspicuously absent: India’s Tata Motors (NYSE:TTM).

Tata does not export to North America. It sells Africa, the Middle East, Asia and South America. It also has joint venture operations in Malaysia, Kenya, Bangladesh, Ukraine, Russia and Senegal.

The company seems well positioned to capitalize on the success of so many emerging markets. But trouble from Marxists in India and capitalists abroad is weighing heavily on the company’s shares, says Irwin Grenstein, writing for Contrarian Profits.

Ken Rogoff, former Chief Economist at the IMF, warned that ‘the financial crisis is at the halfway stage. I would go further to state that the worst is yet to come’. His prediction that a large financial institution would collapse led to a fall in global markets.

Valero Energy Corp. (NYSE: VLO), the largest independent refiner in the U.S. market, is a well-known and avidly traded name. Despite being a member of the super hot energy sector, Valero has seen its stock price collapse from its 52-week high of $75.75 to Friday’s close at $34.72 (a 54% decline).

Global investors need to “hit the BRICs” – literally. Back in 2003, the Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), eager to push its clients towards global investing – especially in the emerging markets – invented the acronym “BRIC” (Brazil, Russia, India and China) to represent the four emerging markets it believed were destined to become dominant economies in the years to come.

India’s stock market is down 23 percent this year. But it’s still one of the world’s great long-term growth plays, says Martin Hutchinson in part two of Money Morning’s special report on BRIC economies.

India is suffering high inflation, its growth is slowing and there are signs that a credit crunch is about to hit. But this can work to the advantage of investors. Without these problems, India’s stock market would be trading at 40 times earnings – and not 18 times earnings, as it is now.

Martin says that buy buying into India now, investors are likely getting in on the ground floor of a major long-term bull market.

As investors, we can rejoice in the work ethic of Asian companies, as well as their inventive technology and presence in some of the world’s greatest growth markets. But there’s one “bad habit” that Asian management just can’t seem to shake and it’s one investors need to look out for: Trying to build businesses in the United States, and devoting huge amounts of shareholder resources in the process.Nomura Holdings Inc. (ADR: NMR), the Japanese investment bank, is a good example of this bad habit. On Tuesday, Nomura reported a loss for the quarter ended June 30 of $770 million (84.3 billion yen) due to a write-down of $575 million (63.1 billion yen) on its exposure to monoline insurance companies. Nomura…

Welcome to the latest offshoot of the subprime-mortgage debacle: A burgeoning U.S. pension-fund crisis. Since the global financial crisis struck last fall, the largest 1,500 U.S. public companies have lost a combined $280 billion from their pension funds.

Embattled carmaker General Motors Corp. (GM) is planning thousands of additional white-collar job cuts and mulling over the sale off some of its brands, sources told the Wall Street Journal.

Plagued by plummeting U.S. sales and $4-a-gallon gasoline, General Motors Corp. (GM) may sell its four-foot-tall Chevrolet Beat in U.S. markets, sources told Bloomberg News. The subcompact three-door hatchback was unveiled at last year’s New York International Car Show, though GM said it would be produced overseas and wouldn’t immediately be sold in the United States.