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All of those green people in all of those green cars. The Toyota (NYSE: TM) Prius was a gamble when the auto company first designed and built it. The price was more than its "all gas" counterparts because the electric component of the engine was expensive to build. The Japanese firm had to bet that buyers would want to save the environment by purchasing an automobile aimed at cutting emissions.

All of that planning by Toyota worked. The Prius has now sold one million units worldwide. Reuters says that the car company said "Toyota believes that Prius vehicles worldwide have contributed to a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by producing approximately 4.5 million tonnes less CO2 when compared with gasoline-powered vehicles in the same class and of similar size and driving performance."

And who is to say that the calculation is wrong, at least by much.

Toyota has once again put its competition in a situation where they have to catch up. When the company began to produce almost flawless cars 20 years ago, Detroit and Europe had to up their quality to stay in the game. Now they will need to aggressively follow Toyota into the hybrid market.

Being first to market sometimes has its advantages.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com and author of the Ten Stocks Under $10 letter.

Countrywide (NYSE: CFC) directors and executives never did anything wrong? How can people tell? Because they say so.

The judge in a suit against the big mortgage company is not buying it. He wants a trial against the firm and its bosses to continue. According to The New York Times, the court ruled that management "must answer shareholder accusations of insider trading and an overall failure to monitor lending practices that led to the company's collapse."

The charges are serious enough to put some of the Countrywide people in jail, but are they important enough to get Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) to back away from its purchase of the company?

The case looks pretty bad for the mortgage company, at least on the face of it. Officers and directors sold $850 million worth of shares between 2004 and 2007. Toward the end of that period, the company was buying back $2.4 billion in stock, which would tend to keep the price up.

Almost no one would be unhappy to see some of the company's management behind bars. Countrywide issued huge numbers of mortgages to subprime borrowers, which reset at higher prices after the first few years. The homeowners could not make payments and often faced foreclosures. Countrywide got paid for each one of those, a clear reason it might have been aggressive in getting in more customers.

Countrywide executives cannot pay all of those people back, but they can make them license plates from inside a big federal prison.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com and the author of the Ten Stocks Under $10 letter.

IAC/InterActiveCorp (NASDAQ: IACI) needs to build up its little Ask.com franchise before it is spun out in a breakup of the parent company. Ask.com is an "also ran" in the search engine fight which includes Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO).

In an attempt to turn a loser into a contender, IACI is buying Lexico, which owns Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com and Reference.com. According to The Wall Street Journal, "Lexico sites drew about 15.6 million unique U.S. visitors in March, according to comScore Inc., compared with 55.4 million for Ask and an array of affiliated sites."

Even if the price of the new addition is low, the Lexico sites are not likely to do much good for the Ask.com franchise. It has already fallen so far behind the three search leaders that it almost certainly cannot catch up. Internet users have already set their preference in this part of the online market. Owning a dictionary site is not going to help that.

IACI's Ask.com can't come from behind and buying additional reference sites is not going to change that.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com and the author of the Ten Stocks Under $10 newsletter.

CNET (NASDAQ:CNET) is up over 45% on news of a buy-out from CBS (NYSE:CBS).

Sina (NASDAQ:SINA) is up about 10% on an analyst upgrade.

Barclays (NYSE:BCS) is off 3% on weak earnings and high write-offs.

Ctrip.com (NASDAQ:CTRP) is off 8% over worries about the impact of the earthquake in China on its business.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com and author of Ten Stocks Under $10.

CBS (NYSE: CBS), a television network, is buying CNET (NASDAQ: CNET), a collection of technology websites. Other than the fact that the deal makes no sense, it is perfect.

CBS is even paying a premium for the privilege of owning a company that no one else seemed to want. Jana Partners and other activist investors have been pushing for a sale or break-up of CNET, but the news must be beyond the wildest dreams. CNET is up almost 50% on word that CBS will pay $11.50 for a stock which was trading at under $8.

Management's case for the buy-out is that "The acquisition will make CBS one of the 10 most popular Internet companies in the United States, with a combined 54 million unique users per month, and approximately 200 million users worldwide," according to the company.

However, CNET has had trouble making money on its large audience of internet users, to some extent because those readers are spending time with online tech blogs. The firm does have a large software download business, but quarterly statements do not indicate that it is a large or profitable business.

Perhaps no one will ever understand the CBS motives. The company is controlled by Sumner Redstone, who has done odd things before.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER) is worried that its analysts are going too easy on the companies that they cover. Perhaps they have become too friendly with managements or spent too many nights out on the town with executives trying to get clues about how things are going.

To counter any of that in addition to balancing bad analysis by its researchers, Merrill is insisting that each researcher rate 20% of the stocks in his coverage universe as "sell", or as the brokerage calls it "underperform".

Perhaps Merrill does not trust its army of analysts or at least it sounds that way. According to The Wall Street Journal, "Merrill also will require analysts to publish the reason for their recommendation and a price target for every stock." It goes without saying that a stock researcher who does not do that is not much of a stock researcher at all.

The move by Merrill is a tacit admission that its analysts have been giving bad advice to clients. Why change a system which is based on fair and reasonable ratings?

The only reason for the alteration is that clients have been misled.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com and author of Ten Stocks Under $10.

UBS cut Palm (NASDSAQ:PALM) from "neutral" to "sell", according to MarketWatch.

Citigroup upgraded Sina (NASDAQ:SINA) from "hold" to "buy" according to Briefing.com. The news service also reports that Tivo (NASDAQ:TIVO) was upgraded to "market perform" from "underperform" by Friedman Billings.

First Analysis Securities downgraded Cbiz (NYSE:CBZ) to "equal weight" from "overweight" according to the AP.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) does not want to be known as a place where there are products that could hurt little kids. It is bad for public relations and thus bad for business. So the world's largest retailer is going to set standards for toys that are much tougher that those of the U.S. government.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Wal-Mart does not just want the toys to be manufactured more safely. The paper writes, "The initiative also encourages suppliers to mark children's products with 'traceability information', including the factory in which the goods were made. About 80% of the toys sold in the U.S., including those marketed by U.S.-based toy makers, are manufactured in China."

Wal-Mart is a little late to the party. The threat of lead and other toxins has been causing trouble for retailers for over a year. Several of the company's competitors already have similar programs in place. And Wal-Mart sources a lot of inventory in China, so it may not want to be seen as leading the pack in a public relations war with the People's Republic.

The news also begs the question of why Wal-Mart was not inspecting the toys on its own. Of course, that would be expensive.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com and author of the Ten Stocks Under $10 newsletter.

Merrill Lynch (NYSE:MER) says that the rebate checks that are about to hit those tens of millions of taxpayers won't help the economy avoid a recession. That makes sense. Most of the money will have to go to pay for gas.

According to Reuters, Merrill claims "The U.S. economy is in a recession and stimulus from a government tax rebate later this quarter will only temporarily stem a fall in consumer spending." Well said.

When the economic stimulus package was first conceived, it might have worked. But, things have changed. A lot.

Most of the money handed out by the government is likely to be spent on high food and fuel prices. That will hardly be an incentive for people to buy a new Cadillac or build a swimming pool. A taxpayer getting a check for $600 could use all of that on gasoline between now and the end of the year.

Another factor in the Merrill formula is that house prices may fall another 15% to 20% before reaching a bottom. People may simply put the money in their mattresses to make mortgage payments.

The rebate checks are good for keeping people's heads above water, but they are unlikely to increase consumer spending.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com and author of the Ten Stocks Under $10 newsletter.

Alan Greenspan now says that the U.S. could face a mild recession. Mild? He may be blinded by all the millions of dollars he is earning on his new book. Reuters quotes him as saying, "When home prices stabilize that would mark the end of the credit crisis." Greenspan seems to think housing prices could stabilize before 2009.

He has obviously not bought or sold a home recently. Data from the real estate industry show that prices are still dropping in most cities and states. The housing downturn may be prolonged by the fact that each foreclosure tends to drive down the value of homes near the house being auctioned by the bank. No wonder, since these properties often go for cents on a dollar.

Many industry experts expect that as more subprime ARMs reset this summer default rates will actually go higher. Although the Administration and Congress have talked about a comprehensive national plan to help homeowners, the only legislation is too narrow to stanch most problems for people who cannot make house payments.

Perhaps the largest issue of all is that most homeowners cannot get refinancing or new mortgages. Banks are taking in cheap money from the Fed, but are using it to improve balance sheets instead of passing it on to consumers in the form of lower interest rates.

Greenspan may be rich, but he is also crazy.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com and the author of the Ten Stocks Under $10 newsletter.

Sony (NYSE: SNE) posted a loss last quarter. That was not what Wall Street had expected. Part of the problem is that falling stock markets hurt the company's securities portfolio. Maybe Sony should stick to consumer electronics and stay out of the stock market.

The only large division of Sony that really did well was its digital camera business.

Sony made a long-term error by believing its television business could push its earnings up. Price competition in that sector has knocked margins down. Sony had also hoped that sales of the PS3 would pick up. They have to some extent, but Sony has dropped the price on the product. That is hardly a way to drive operating profits.

According to The New York Times, "Sony aims to sell 17 million liquid crystal display TVs in the year to next March, up from 10.6 million in the year just ended." Of course, if it can't make money on all those TVs, the volume increase may not matter much.

Sony says the next year looks good, but that may well not be the case. It missed numbers in the quarter announced today, and the key engines of future performance are TVs and improved PS3 sales to eliminate the losses in the company's gaming unit.

Both of the businesses are critical to a turnaround at Sony but may not do well at all.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) is trading up about 7% on better-than-expected earnings.

Cardiome Pharma (NASDAQ: CRME) is up 9% on a good quarter.

Whole Foods (NASDAQ: WFMI) is selling off 9% on weak quarterly numbers.

Under Armour (NYSE: UA) is up 3% on news that S&P MidCap 400.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Oppenheimer & Co reiterated its "outperform" rating on STEC (NASDAQ: STEC) saying that "We remain bullish on STEC's unfolding solid state drive (SSD) story and see further room for shares to run," according to the AP.

Wachovia upgraded Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) from "market perform" to "outperform," according to Briefing.com The news service also writes that Bernstein has downgraded EDS (NYSE: EDS) to "market perform" to "outperform."

Staples (NASDAQ: SPLS) raised to "buy" from "hold" at Jefferies according to Briefing.com.

Big French bank Crédit Agricole is planning to raise over $9 billion after huge losses in its investment bank, which made big bets on subprime related debt, resulted in a big write-down and lower profit.

According to The Wall Street Journal, "Crédit Agricole said it will launch an action plan to refocus the corporate and investment banking division on its core activities and to reduce risk." It may be a little late for that. Much of the damage is already done.

What it is not too late for is the realization that with each new round of bank earnings, the mortgage securities problem is not going away. Several large American banks say they see some light at the end of the tunnel. But if the US mortgage market continues to be marked by defaults and falling housing prices, that point of view may be deeply flawed.

Another point of view is that banks like Crédit Agricole and Citigroup (NYSE: C) are raising money to make up for losses in the past. The more ominous look at the trouble is that they are bringing in capital in anticipation of future problems.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

It may be victory of hope over reason. Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER) is telling everyone who will listen that it has enough cash to make it though the current crisis and will not have to raise any more.

It might be best for the management at Merrill to say nothing, but it cannot help itself. According to The Wall Street Journal, Merrill's top two financial executives "attempted to assuage concerns that Merrill will have to raise more equity to maintain its strength as its difficult-to-value assets and its exposure to weak counterparties rise."

Merrill has created reserves against future losses, but the firm acts as if it has an ability to look into the future. If the current credit crisis has two hallmarks, they are that Wall Street did not see the problems coming and that, over time, the trouble seems to be getting worse and not better. Merrill not only has to face mortgage-backed securities losses but it also faces troubles with LBO loans and consumer credit derivatives.

Investors are having none of it. Over the last six months, shares in Merrill are down almost 15%, about the same as Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) and not nearly as good as the Dow.

Merrill now faces the potential humiliation of not living up to its promise if the tide turns against it later in the year. Shareholders don't like managements to make promises that they cannot keep.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.