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Hyundai Motor Co. announced Wednesday that it has set a goal to boost the fuel efficiency of its U.S. vehicle lineup to an average of 50 miles per gallon by 2025.

That target would put the the South Korean automaker more then 40% above the 35.5 miles per gallon level that U.S. government is pushing automakers to reach by 2016.

"Getting to 50 miles per gallon seems like a huge leap, but by making this commitment and aligning our research and development initiatives now, we know we can get there," said John Krafcik, Hyundai Motor America president and chief executive, in a statement.

Highway fuel efficiency for 2010 Hyundai models ranges from 36 miles per gallon in the subcompact Accent to 22 miles per gallon for the Veracruz, a sport-utility vehicle, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

The 2011 Sonata, which went on sale earlier this year, achieves 35 miles per gallon on the highway.

The government says the leading fuel-efficient car for the year is the Toyota Prius, a hybrid that logs 48 miles per gallon on the highway. 

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Family Dollar Stores Inc. ended the week on an up note, with its shares gaining value during a lackluster day on Wall Street.

Shares of the discount retailer gained 37 cents Friday, closing at $41.35.

The Dow Jones Industrials closed out the week at 10,465.9, gaining just over a point on Friday.

Among key public companies in the Charlotte area:

•Bank of America Corp. (NYSE:BAC) closed at $14.04, up a penny.

•Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE:WFC), San Francisco parent of Charlotte-based Wachovia Bank, closed at $27.73, up 4 cents.

•Mooresville-based Lowe’s Cos. Inc. (NYSE:LOW) closed at $20.74, up 26 cents.

•SPX Corp. (NYSE:SPW) closed at $59.56, up 21 cents.

•Snack maker Lance Inc. (NASDAQ:LNCE) closed at $21.13, up 7 cents.

These stocks gave up ground Friday:

•Duke Energy Corp. (NYSE:DUK) closed at $17.10, down 7 cents.

•Nucor Corp. (NYSE:NUE) closed at $39.14, down 2 cents.

•Piedmont Natural Gas Co. Inc. (NYSE:PNY) closed at $26.62, down 33 cents.

•Concord-based Speedway Motorsports Inc. (NYSE:TRK) closed at $13.72, down 13 cents.

•Cato Corp. (NYSE:CATO) closed at $23.28, down 29 cents.

•Goodrich Corp. (NYSE:GR) closed at $72.87, down 8 cents.

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As with fast payday loans, this recently used to be the case, but competitive lenders and higher demand has taken this loan type to mainstay levels.

A proposed rule to stop financial firms from shopping for credit ratings will instead be postponed and studied, under an agreement finalized Wednesday by lawmakers negotiating a final Wall Street reform package.

The deal calls for a two-year study but then would mandate that the Securities and Exchange Commission adopt a system to independently match ratings agencies with firms that want securities rated.

The change is among the most controversial so far in two days of meetings of hammering out differences between House and Senate bills. Later on Wednesday, lawmakers also came to an agreement on new congressional reviews of the Federal Reserve.

The nation’s largest ratings agencies — Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch — have been under fire for their role in the financial crisis. The agencies gave top ratings to toxic financial products, like bonds backed by subprime mortgages. Lawmakers are most concerned with preventing financial firms from fishing for top-notch ratings.

Lawmakers, particularly Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., were concerned that the credit rating agency curb, which passed overwhelmingly in the Senate, would be tough to carry out. The measure originally required the SEC to appoint an independent panel tasked with creating a random process that matched rating agencies with financial firms.

The new measure leaves the door open for the SEC to figure out a better way to match rating agencies with financial firms. But if it can’t, the SEC is required to follow the original plan proposed by Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., in two years.

Lawmakers on the negotiating committee said Franken indicated he could live with the agreement.

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., said the House agreed to the measure on Wednesday.

The provision is not the only one in the Wall Street bill aimed at credit rating agencies. The final legislation is also expected to strip federal law of any provisions that suggest credit rating agencies’ seal of approval is necessary.

Auditing the Fed: The House bill subjected the Fed to ongoing audits, while the Senate had ordered a one-time audit of the central bank’s loans during the financial crisis.

The compromise lawmakers are agreeing to would subject the Fed to ongoing audits. But the audits would only review the Fed’s emergency and cheap loans, as well as open market transactions.

Also, the compromise may force the Fed to publicly disclose who it makes loans to, after two years.

Also, Senate negotiators are leaning toward dropping a measure they had wanted that would have made the head of the New York Fed presidentially appointed, instead of chosen by New York banks. 

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ZHONGSHAN, China — Striking workers at a Honda auto parts factory in southeastern China have won higher wages — but not necessarily for themselves.

Factory managers began hiring a steady stream of replacement workers on Sunday, and a significant number of strikers went back to work after increases in wages and benefits, even as many others remained on strike.

The 20 or so members of the factory’s council of workers, chosen by the workers to represent them when the strike began on Wednesday, went into hiding over the weekend, fearing retaliation by the authorities.

It is too early to tell whether the apparent resolution of this strike — somewhat higher wages but lost jobs for many of the strikers — will set a pattern elsewhere as labor unrest spreads. Workers in the industrial southeast of China and elsewhere have been turning a labor shortage to their advantage by demanding better pay and working conditions.

But in Zhongshan, Honda has used the area job market to its advantage.

The Honda Lock parts factory in Zhongshan can run on lower-skilled, less-educated workers than the Honda transmission factory in Foshan, a two-hour drive to the northwest payday loans for bad credit. The Foshan strike brought the company’s auto-assembly operations in China to a temporary standstill — and the regular work force there was lured back to its jobs with reportedly much larger wage increases than Honda is offering in Zhongshan.

Replacement workers and returning employees in Zhongshan are receiving 11 percent higher pay and a 33 percent rise in allowances for food and housing, as of Sunday. The combined increase in wages and benefits was considerably less than the near doubling of wages alone that the strikers had sought. Even so, the improved compensation — wages of $152 a month and an allowance of $59 a month — was enough to make the jobs attractive to replacement workers.

The remaining strikers held a small rally outside the factory on Sunday morning but then went home and made no effort to picket as operations resumed.

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World Vision is launching a microfinance site that allows donors to lend directly to small borrowers in developing nations.

The Federal Way, Wash.-based international charity has created World Vision Micro, a website that allows donors to give to entrepreneurs in developing nations who are seeking capital to start or expand their businesses.

The model is similar to Kiva.org, a San Francisco-based organization that connects individual lenders with individual borrowers. The microfinance industry actually uses several models, including Seattle’s Global Partnerships, which allocates investor or philanthropic capital to nonprofit lenders in developing nations that then distribute microloans or other financial services.

Under its new service, World Vision will approve applicants and pay their loans up front. Then the loan is posted on the website where donors can select it and pay for it; that money that is used to repay World Vision. Donors can search loans based on business type, gender of the borrower, location and size. Once the entrepreneur pays back the loan, the capital is recycled to pay for future loans.

World Vision already has a broad portfolio of microloans worth about $346 million, but the new site aims to enable individuals to make direct microloans. According to World Vision, the new microloan site has funded more than 850 loans worth a combined $230,000.

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Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker said Thursday that more needs to be done to regulate the financial system before the lessons of the recent crisis are forgotten.

"We must not shrink away from change but accept the need for basic financial reform," said Volcker, currently chairman of President Obama’s Economic Advisory Board, in remarks to the Economic Club of New York.

He said the economy appears to be growing slowly, and that the financial crisis is beginning to seem to some like a "bad dream."

But the magnitude of the crisis showed that the underlying problems are "more fundamental" and require "broad reform" of the financial system, he warned.

The former Fed chairman said the central bank should play a key role in overseeing the financial system. Among his ideas, he said the Fed should have the power to dismantle big banks that pose a systemic risk to the economy.

"The old question (about banks) colloquially described as ‘too big to fail’ looms larger than ever," Volcker said.

In a response to recent criticism of the Fed, he said the central bank is less subject to political pressure than other regulatory bodies.

"These days, best-selling books remind us that the challenges to that structure, and particularly to the Fed’s insulation from political pressure, arise from time to time," Volcker said, referring to a popular book by Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas.

"The sense of anger about the amount of funds required to bail out both institutions and markets is palpable," he added. "But that truly exceptional response to the financial crisis — drawing on long-dormant emergency powers — was a properly coordinated decision with the administration, not a misuse of independent authority."

The remarks came on the same day that President Obama called on Congress to tax the largest banks to ensure that U.S. taxpayers don’t lose a penny from the federal bailout of the financial, auto and insurance industries over the past year

Volcker said the proposed tax "seems to me to be a not unreasonable response." He said the banks subject to the tax have benefitted from taxpayer aid and "should carry their share of the burden."

The proposed "financial crisis responsibility fee" is aimed at large institutions that received significant federal aid during the height of the crisis, but have since recovered and are now poised to pay tens of billions of dollars in bonuses.

On Wednesday, four top bank chief executives went before a panel to answer questions about the role their institutions played in causing one of the worst financial shocks in a generation.

The CEOs of Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500), Morgan Stanley (MS, Fortune 500), J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) and Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) told the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission that they made mistakes but didn’t realize how bad they were at the time. 

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U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Thursday that no financial firms should be able to escape regulation and the largest firms need a single, strong regulator.

“The regulation of the largest, most interconnected firms requires tremendous institutional capacity, clear lines of authority and single-point accountability. This is no place for regulation for council or by committee,” Geithner said in testimony to the congressional Joint Economic Committee cash advance flexible payments.

Geithner also said he expected U.S. economic growth to continue in the fourth quarter and into 2010, but America’s long-term stability and strength could not be ensured without comprehensive regulatory reform.

(Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by James Dalgleish)

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Shares of Starbucks Corp jumped 1.5 percent to $20 after the bell on Thursday as the coffee chain operator posted its quarterly results.

(Reporting by Ellis Mnyandu)

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China has quietly eased restrictions on its citizens traveling from Guangdong province to Macau, sending casino stocks soaring on Monday as industry executives bet on record October earnings in the world’s hottest gambling market.

Shares in Galaxy Entertainment and Melco International jumped around 9 percent, and SJM Holdings was up more than 6 percent, while the broader Hang Seng stock index fell 0.7 percent.

Alarmed that some Guangdong residents were gambling too much in neighboring Macau, China last year imposed new rules limiting them to two trips a year to the former Portuguese enclave.

But the authorities began easing up on the rule as early as two months ago, and noticeably loosened the restriction at the start of this month, said top executives at two of Macau’s six casino licensees, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation.

“The latest version is (they can travel to Macau) once a month out of Guangdong,” said one of the executives. “Gaming revenues for the first two weeks of the month have been good.”

The other executive forecast that October — a high travel season for Chinese because of the October 1 Golden Week holiday — could see record monthly casino revenues, in part due to the relaxing of the visa rules.

Macau’s six casino operators include U.S. giants Las Vegas Sands and Wynn Resorts, along with home-grown players Galaxy and SJM Holdings and joint ventures Melco Crown and a casino jointly operated by MGM Mirage.

“We’re seeing repeat customers coming back more regularly than previously,” said an executive at one of the six operators insurance quotes. “It’s been occurring for two and a half months, but they probably lightened up even more since September 1.”

Macau has rocketed on to the global gambling stage in recent years following reforms earlier this decade that saw an end to a previous monopoly and awarding of licenses to multiple players, boosting competition.

The market grew 57 percent in 2007 alone, fueled by a huge influx of mainland Chinese, who now make up about 65 percent of casino visitors.

GOLDEN OCTOBER

Macau generated HK$105.6 billion ($13.5 billion) in gross gaming revenues in 2008, more than double the HK$46.7 billion generated by the Las Vegas Strip during the same period, according to a prospectus from Wynn Macau, the Macau assets of Wynn Resorts, which is preparing an IPO in Hong Kong.

But Beijing clamped down on mainland visitors to Macau in the middle of last year amid a proliferation of stories of officials illegally gambling away millions of dollars in government funds.

That clampdown, combined with the global financial crisis, sent a chill through Macau, with gaming revenue down 12.5 percent in the first half of the year.

The return of Chinese tourists and an improving economy helped Macau post record casino revenue in August. 

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