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Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez has threatened to expel Japanese carmaker Toyota unless it produces an all-terrain model of 4×4 vehicles used for public transport in poor and rural areas.

The fiery socialist, in a speech late on Wednesday, also said he would not hesitate to expel and expropriate plants from other Asian and U.S. automobile companies operating in Venezuela if they failed to share technology with locals.

"What’s this that Toyota doesn’t want to make the ‘rustic’ model here?" Chavez said, during a ceremony in Caracas to hand owners the keys to economically produced cars that Venezuela’s government has imported from Argentina.

"We must force them. And if they don’t, then they should leave and we’ll bring another company in … The Chinese want to come and they make ‘rustic’ models."

During a decade in power, Chavez has nationalized large swathes of the Venezuela economy — including the oil and power sectors — as part of his "21st century revolution" but has so far left car manufacturing relatively untouched.

He turned on Toyota, the world’s biggest automaker, when a transporter said there was a scarcity of all-terrain models to serve people in under-privileged areas.

Caracas’ poor mainly live in hillside slums, while many rural areas lack decent roads, meaning tough 4×4s are the main means of transport.

Chavez ordered his Trade Minister Eduardo Saman to carry out a "severe inspection" of Toyota, and warned other companies they must start sharing technology with Venezuelans.

"You tell the people at Toyota that they have to produce this model and we are going to impose a quota, and if they don’t meet it, we will punish them," he told Saman, adding that the state would not hesitate to expropriate Toyota’s facilities and pay appropriate compensation.

Car industry in trouble

Following Chavez’s speech, Toyota has asked the Japanese government to verify the true intentions of his remarks as he has not contacted the company on the issue, Toyota’s Tokyo-based spokesman Yuta Kaga said on Friday.

Spokesmen for Toyota’s Venezuelan unit, which operates an assembly plant in the eastern state of Sucre, were not available to comment on Thursday.

But a source at the company said Toyota had stopped assembling the model in question — which he identified as Land Cruiser 70 — in 2007, with the government’s full knowledge.

It planned to import instead, but had not received the necessary licence, he added.

"The government was informed, it can’t be a surprise," the source said, adding that most Toyota managers were on holiday but were communicating with each other about Chavez’s speech.

In addition to Toyota, Japan’s Mitsubishi as well as Hyundai and General Motors have assembly plants in South America’s top oil-exporting nation, whose people are known for their love of cars.

"Companies who come here to set up must be ready to transfer technology to us," Chavez said.

"If they don’t want to, they should go away. I invite them to pick up their things and go," he added, saying companies from allies like China, Russia, Belorussia and Iran were ready to take their place.

Lack of access to dollars at the official exchange rate, and labor disputes, have combined with a recession to hit the automobile industry hard in Venezuela this year.

According to latest figures from the Venezuela Automobile Chamber, car sales in November were down 40 percent at 10,075 units, compared with the same month last year. 

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The traditional start of the Christmas shopping season gets underway Friday, known to retailers as Black Friday, since it's the time they hope to be able to move those balance sheets from unprofitable (red) into the black.

Retailers have been battered by the recession, but have seen some signs of hope in recent months. According to the National Retail Federation, retail industry sales, excluding auto, gas and restaurant sales, were down 1.3 percent over October of last year and flat over September.

Prime Outlets in Grove City, about an hour north of Pittsburgh, will be kicking things off not long after shoppers have digested their Thanksgiving dinners. Its Midnight Madness sale starts, predictably, at midnight.

Michele Czerwinksi, senior marketing manager at Grove City, said the weather plays a big role in the turnout to the midnight event, but the crowds are generally in a good mood.

"This year, with the tough economy, people are really looking for values," she said. She arrives in Grove City at 9 p.m. Thursday, and doesn't quit until the following morning.

This year is the fourth time the mall has opened at midnight on Thanksgiving, and Czerwinski said it's become a tradition of sorts for some area families, who shop together.

Other area malls will be opening early, as well. Ross Park Mall, north of the city, opens its doors at 5 a.m., as does South Hills Village, south of the city. Monroeville Mall, to the east, kicks things off at 6 a.m., and the Galleria at Pittsburgh Mills will be open starting at 7 a.m. Friday.

Some consumers have already started their holiday shopping, according to market research firm The NPD Group. Twenty percent of those polled in NPD's annual holiday survey said they started their holiday shopping before Thanksgiving this year.

“This year while Black Friday is still an important business indicator, it is not an obvious one,” Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst with the NPD Group, said in a prepared statement. “There may be some panic when the rush seems lighter than past years, but based on our holiday market research that doesn't necessarily mean less business in the long-run.”

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Retailers heading into the traditional start of holiday shopping are facing consumers who are only a bit less gloomy than they were a year ago as they worry about a weak job market.

The latest snapshot from the Conference Board showed shoppers’ confidence improved only slightly in November, from October, but it’s stuck far below what could be considered healthy and is about half of the historic average.

The private research group said Tuesday that its Consumer Confidence Index edged up to 49.5, up from a revised reading of 48.7 in October. Economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected a reading of 47.7. That compares with a reading of 44 no checking account payday advance.7 in November 2008, a level that sank even lower before enjoying a three-month climb from March through May. But the road has been bumpier since June as rising unemployment has taken a toll on consumers.

A reading above 90 means the economy is on solid footing. Above 100 signals strong growth.

How consumers behave during the holidays and beyond will be key to how strongly the economy rebounds from the worst recession since the 1930s.

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Washington launched its biggest offensive yet against Wall Street pay practices Thursday, taking aim at everyone from senior executives to high-flying traders of complex securities.

Leading the charge was the White House, which outlined a series of drastic pay cuts for 136 top executives at the nation’s biggest bailed-out companies, including AIG (AIG, Fortune 500), Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) and Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500).

Separately, the Federal Reserve proposed a review of pay practices at 28 of the nation’s largest banks to make sure employees are not tempted to make the kinds of risky bets that helped sink firms such as Lehman Brothers.

Much of Thursday’s focus, however, was on the ruling issued by White House "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg, who has been actively reviewing pay plans for top executives at the seven biggest bailout firms — AIG, Citigroup, Bank of America, General Motors, its former finance arm GMAC, as well as Chrysler and Chrysler Financial.

Among other things, Feinberg demanded that each of the bailed-out companies reduce total compensation for their top 25 highest-paid employee by 50%, on average.

Much of the cutting was done to executives’ salaries, which were reduced more than 90% on average.

The pay restrictions announced Thursday will not take effect until Nov. 1, and will serve as a base for executive pay in 2010.

President Obama, who appointed Feinberg to assess compensation practices at these seven companies in June, praised his ability to strike a balance between protecting American taxpayers’ massive investment in these companies while allowing them to return bailout money.

"I believe he’s taken an important step forward today in curbing the influence of executive compensation on Wall Street while still allowing these companies to succeed and prosper," Obama said at a White House event honoring veterans.

Feinberg and the Fed

Thursday’s actions by the White House and regulators certainly represent an unprecedented level of government oversight into how employees on Wall Street and in corporate America in general are paid.

Certain shareholder groups and other social activists have long campaigned for banks and other financial firms to do more to align executive pay with a company’s performance. But those efforts have either failed to build a critical mass or met resistance among company board members.

Under the White House’s newest restrictions, executives will prevented from collecting extravagant cash bonuses. Instead, they will take incentive pay, as well as part of their salary, in the form of company stock, which they will be unable to sell until 2011 at the earliest.

On a company basis, the 22 executives at Citigroup stand to receive the biggest pay packages among the seven firms, collecting pay packages worth an estimated $118.4 million after taking into account salary, options and restricted stock and options that will vest over the next four years.

Recently hired AIG CEO Robert Benmosche will be the highest paid employee, collecting $10.5 million, including $3 million in salary, $3.5 million bonus and $4 million in stock options. (3 AIG execs get bonus OK from pay czar)

Names of other highly paid employees were not disclosed, however. The Treasury Department has indicated it won’t disclose names of the employees that are being reviewed — or the specifics of their payment plans — without an individual’s approval.

The Federal Reserve program, while bold, is expected to take a much more delicate approach. While pay practices for employees at many different levels will go under review, the central bank does not plan to impose limits on pay.

"The Federal Reserve is working to ensure that compensation packages appropriately tie rewards to longer-term performance and do not create undue risk for the firm or the financial system," Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said in a statement.

Unintended consequences?

Some compensation experts have warned that actions taken by the Obama administration could have a disastrous series of unintended consequences, including the loss of top employees to companies that are not hindered by government restrictions.

Bailed-out firms such as Citigroup and Bank of America have already lost dozens of key employees to rivals such as JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) and Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500), both of which got out from under the government’s thumb over the summer.

A spokesman for Bank of America said Thursday that competitors were already "exploiting this situation" and will continue to, offering top employees compensation that was twice as much or more in some instances.

Last week, outgoing Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis said he would not accept a salary or bonus for 2009, and the bank said the decision came after Feinberg "suggested" it to Lewis.

There have also been fears that letting talented employees leave could derail efforts aimed at nursing these companies back to health and ultimately returning bailout money to taxpayers.

The reaction to Thursday’s ruling by Feinberg among the automotive-related companies was much more muted.

In a statement, GMAC called the process "fair" and "constructive," noting it would allow them to retain key talent needed to restructure the company.

The next step

With compensation for top executives and other high-ranking employees in place, Feinberg will now move on to review pay packages of the next 75 most highly paid employees at each company.

All seven firms were due to deliver those plans to Feinberg’s office last week. Once those are determined "substantially complete," he will have 60 days to complete his review of those 525 employees.

That could delay Feinberg’s next ruling until late December or early next year.

It certainly stands to reason that additional cuts could be forthcoming. It is not unheard of on Wall Street for star traders or dealmakers to be in line for pay packages that eclipse that of senior management.

Still, it is not clear whether Feinberg’s authority will extend to all 100 top-paid employees at each firm. When the Treasury Department announced Feinberg’s appointment in June, it indicated that his authority would not extend to those employees making less than $500,000 in total annual compensation.

–CNN’s Jessica Yellin and Laura Batchelor, and CNNMoney.com senior writers Jennifer Liberto and Peter Valdes-Dapena contributed to this report. 

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If Congress won’t get the job done on climate change, President Obama has a way to do it himself. But is he strong-arming the legislative branch?

It certainly looks that way as a series of new environmental regulations, released over the past two weeks by the EPA, are putting legislators on notice and executives on edge.

The rules are the federal government’s broadest swipe yet at regulating greenhouse gasses. According to EPA chief Lisa Jackson, "We’ve taken the historic step of proposing the nation’s first-ever greenhouse-gas emissions standards for vehicles, and moved substantially closer to an efficient, clean energy future."

The Environmental Protection Agency, which reports to the White House, is a new player in this arena. Before 2007, greenhouse gases were considered outside the EPA’s purview because regulating them would have required cracking down on specific industrial practices that other agencies had under their charge.

But a 2007 Supreme Court decision ruled them to be an air pollutant, giving the EPA wide authority to regulate any industries that emit them under the 1970 Clean Air Act.

Test drive: auto emissions

The agency’s first target as it moves towards that future? Detroit. Under the new guidelines, by 2016 automakers must reduce their fleet’s average emissions-per-mile to 250 grams. This is in addition to the familiar fuel-mileage standards set by the National Highway Safety and Transportation Authority (NHTSA).

Since there are about 9,000 grams of CO2 produced by burning each gallon of gas, automakers will be able to hit the EPA’s requirements in 2016 simply by raising fuel economy to the 35 miles per gallon levels NHTSA has already ordered for the same time period.

So meeting that 2016 deadline won’t be too challenging. But after 2016 something interesting happens. With conventional gasoline technology, improvements in fuel economy move in lockstep with drops in emissions.

But conventional technology maxes out 35 mpg, which means getting lower CO2 emissions beyond that point will require new technologies like electrics, hydrogen fuel cells or biofuels.

With electrics and hydrogen, there are no "gallons" of fuel to measure, while biofuels producer fewer emissions than gasoline but also get fewer miles per gallon. So the EPA has come up with a solution to encourage carmakers to design for low emissions rather than miles per gallon.

Margo Oge, the EPA’s air quality and transportation director, says carmakers can apply for fuel economy credits for flex-fuel vehicles that use biofuels. That means automakers will have an incentive to focus on low-emission vehicles. It’s a small change, but it amounts to a substantial power grab by the EPA.

An activist executive

Environmentalists are celebrating the new rules, since the EPA has historically been stricter than NHTSA, which is overseen by Congress. But industry trade representatives whose jobs depend on lobbying Congress on behalf of business aren’t thrilled by the developments.

"NHTSA has 35 years of experience with our technologies, for which the environmental agency doesn’t have the knowledge. They ensure that fuel-economy increases are cost-effective and possible," says Charles Territo of the Automakers’ Alliance no fax pay day loan. "If NHTSA started to lose its role, we would resist that."

While publicly White House officials say that both agencies are working in harmony, privately, they admit that it’s the EPA that is taking the lead.

And by Spring 2010, the EPA is planning to expand its reach even further, issuing greenhouse-gas targets for all firms emitting more that 25,000 metric tons per year.

That might cover enough major emitters that a cap-and-trade scheme, where the government sells permits for emissions above a certain level that companies can trade, becomes unnecessary. Cap-and-trade legislation is currently awaiting consideration in Congress, somewhat stalled because of the focus on health-care legislation.

Not surprisingly, some legislators are calling this a classic case of executive branch overreach. Representative Peter Welch (D-Vermont), who helped draft the cap-and-trade bill, says, "I would prefer for this to be done legislatively, and my contacts in industry would prefer that, because when we write bills, we give them the opportunity to help us." Skeptics would argue that there are lucrative ties to lobbyists that Congress is loath to give up.

There are economic objections too. The Congressional bill has provisions to direct funds raised via cap-and-trade permits into green energy jobs, and takes into account the cost of emissions reductions.

Columbia Business School professor and noted energy economist Geoffrey Heal estimates that discretionary regulation will be twice as costly as cap-and-trade, up to 2% of GDP, since cap-and-trade allows reductions to be made wherever they are most efficient.

"That cost will get passed on to consumers, and it’s not small change," he says.

Power Play

The timing of the EPA’s moves also hint at political motives. Congressman Welch believes the new policies are intended to tell Congress, "that if we don’t pass legislation, the President will not wait and will just go ahead and regulate."

Columbia’s Heal agrees: "The EPA announcements are designed to put pressure on the Senate and on industry representatives who are pushing senators, that if they don’t act, [the EPA] will, in ways industry won’t like."

The administration is also certainly thinking ahead to December’s international climate change conference in Copenhagen. Twelve years after President Clinton signed the Kyoto Protocol, and with both Republican and Democratic senates having failed to ratify the agreement, the last thing Obama wants to do is show up empty handed.

If Congress doesn’t pass a bill before December, the EPA’s moves give him some cover. As Obama well knows, the credibility of America’s commitments is key to extracting similar promises from other nations like India and China.

In other words, Obama seems to be offering Congress a choice: Pass a bill, or be bypassed altogether. 

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The demise of Saturn is a good thing for the new General Motors.

It was a living, breathing reminder of the arrogance that permeated this company for years, in the belief that GM brains, combined with an endless supply of money, could solve any problem.

It wasn’t true then, and it isn’t true now. GM needs to learn its lesson from Saturn and say goodbye.

Saturn was the creation of Roger Smith, who, in his tenure as chairman and CEO from 1981 to 1990, caused much of the damage that current CEO Fritz Henderson is trying to undo.

Smith called his big ideas "lulus," and Saturn was a lollapalooza. Frustrated and impatient with trying to cure GM’s manufacturing, engineering, and marketing woes, Smith decided to start over again with a clean sheet of paper. So he created Saturn as a way to reinvent GM by doing everything differently.

Smith tried to do it all at once. He tried to bypass GM’s balkanized manufacturing system by combining all of Saturn’s factory operations in one place. He tried to whitewash GM’s sorry union relations by giving workers a piece of the action in exchange for more cooperation.

He tried to solve GM’s perennial small-car problem by creating a new division that would do nothing but make small cars. And he tried to create a cohesive and responsive dealer network by awarding dealers exclusive territories so they wouldn’t be forced to compete against each other.

As the famous ads would proclaim in the early 1990s, Saturn would be a different kind of car company. It really was a noble idea that had tremendous appeal. As GM vice chairman Bob Lutz said much later, the Saturn experiment was an attempt to answer the question "Why can’t we have it both ways? Let’s have wonderful dealers and consumers who are enthusiastic about the product."

And parts of the original concept proved durable. Saturn did go on to set new standards for satisfied buyers and to form remarkably strong bonds with its customers payday loan online. "The Saturn experience," which started with the dealer sale and ran through the life of the car, became the talk of the industry.

But even with a clean sheet and a blank check, Smith couldn’t produce a winner. In its two decades of operation, Saturn built a gigantic new factory, introduced several all-new models, conducted massive ad campaigns, and consumed billions of dollars of GM’s money. But it was all in vain.

The notion of a tiny "independent" American company like Saturn making low-margin small cars and trying to sell them profitably proved totally unworkable. The Saturn cars just weren’t good enough, and GM couldn’t charge enough for them.

Meanwhile, competition from Japan, and later Korea, proved much tougher than anyone expected.

Exactly 20 years after it opened for business, GM put Saturn up for sale to the highest bidder as part of its bankruptcy proceedings. By then, Roger Smith’s concept of a new way of making and marketing cars was already dead.

Wednesday’s collapse of the Penske deal, which was always a chancy proposition, kills the Saturn brand. Will it kill GM’s historic arrogance? Critics see the same mentality that led to Saturn in GM’s zealous promotion of the Chevy Volt.

As one observer pointed out recently, after the Volt’s batteries have been discharged from 40 miles of driving, its performance will be reduced by half. In other words, the acceleration time of this $40,000 car under its gasoline engine will double, making maneuvers like merging onto a highway and passing pretty risky.

That’s hardly likely to be a strong selling point for a car that GM is promoting — as it did with Saturn — as a revolutionary game changer. 

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In a challenge to Yahoo’s display ad dominance, Google unveiled a new technology aimed at making advertising easier for marketers.

Called the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, Google’s new system simplifies and improves how advertisers put display ads onto Web sites. Like Google’s previous ad exchange, the new one allows advertisers and Web site publishers to buy and sell ad space. But the company says the new system gives advertisers much more control over who sees their ads, and where and when they are displayed.

Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) has been the search advertising leader for years, but it makes the vast majority of its revenue on what are called relevant text ads or those ads that appear next to search results on Google and its partner Web sites. Rival Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500), on the other hand, has led the display advertising universe, which controls the banners and colorful ads consumers see on the Internet.

Google’s goal is "to simplify the system for buying and selling display ads, to deliver better performance that advertisers can measure, and to open up the ecosystem for all," said Neal Mohan, Google’s vice president for product development.

The new and improved ad exchange comes at a good time for the company. Text ads, Google’s bread and butter, are flatlining as the market has become saturated with the punchy and cheap ads. Google has tried to expand its display ad operation, acquiring DoubleClick in the first quarter of last year, but it has been unable to make much headway.

Overall, Google is the clear search leader, maintaining a 64.7% share of the search market, according to data tracker comScore. Yahoo holds just 19.3% of the overall market.

What is an ad exchange? A typical ad exchange allows advertisers to automatically bid on ad space as soon as an Internet user clicks on a site. The Web publisher accepts the highest bid, and the ad is instantly displayed for the user. Since the process is all automated, the bidding happens in a fraction of a second.

Google’s new exchange improves upon an element that allows advertisers to target audiences by weighing a series of factors. Web site publishers typically send information about who is viewing their site based on a user’s traffic history. The new exchange asks advertisers questions about who they are targeting, giving the advertiser the ability to automatically bid on the ad space depending on whether a user fits a particular set of criteria.

Another new feature will open the DoubleClick exchange to the hundreds of thousands of users of AdWords and AdSense. Those users — Web site publishers and advertisers — will be able to bid to sell their ads and space on the new display exchange.

Unlikely to unseat Yahoo. Analysts say Google’s improvements could help it give Yahoo a run for its money, but a coup is unlikely anytime soon.

"Google has a lot to bring to the table in terms of simplifying the process and adding more transparency around search results," said Matthew Egol, partner in the consumer media and digital team at management consultancy Booz & Co. "Google makes it easier to buy and sell ads than Yahoo, but Yahoo also offers a large scale volume of traffic that can also be branded."

Egol said Google will attract more advertisers who want to drive more click traffic.

But the new technology doesn’t solve the reason Google has been slow to take off in display. The company has been mostly focused on the number of clicks ads get, but not on a brand’s particular strategy. While Yahoo also offers an ad exchange, it is far better at helping premium advertisers develop a marketing strategy, he argued.

In July, Yahoo agreed to sell its search technology to Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) in exchange for a revenue exchange and Yahoo’s exclusive right to solicit premium advertisers for both companies. 

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Oracle shares fell sharply in after-hours trading Wednesday after the database software maker reported quarterly sales that missed Wall Street forecasts.

The company reported net income of $1.1 billion, or 22 cents per share, for the three months ended Aug. 31. That was up 8% from earnings of $1.07 billion, or 21 cents per share, a year earlier.

Excluding certain items, Oracle said it earned $1.5 billion, or 30 cents per share, which was up 3% from a year ago and in line with estimates from analysts surveyed by Thompson Reuters.

However, sales fell 7% to $5.1 billion in the quarter, missing analysts’ expectations for $5.25 billion in revenue.

Sales of new software licenses, considered a gauge of software sales growth, sank 17% to $1 billion, while software license updates and product support revenues rose 6% to $3.1 billion.

Oracle also declared a cash dividend of 5 cents per share of outstanding common stock, which will be paid Nov. 4.

The drop in sales weighed on Oracle’s stock price. Shares of the Redwood Shores, Calif.-based company fell nearly 6% in extended trading after closing $22.66.

Safra Catz, Oracle’s president, said the company was able to increase profit despite weak sales by "substantially" improving its operating margins.

"Our operating model continues to drive earnings for our stockholders," she said in a statement.

Trip Chowdhry, an analyst who covers Oracle for Global Equities Research, said the company’s results are relatively strong considering the economic backdrop.

"It’s brutal out there," Chowdhry said. "IT budgets have not opened up and in that environment, Oracle is doing pretty well."

"The new licensing revenue decline is giving a false impression that the business is much worse than it truly is," Chowdhry said, adding that he thinks the stock price will recover based on Oracle’s product pipeline and market share.

Looking ahead, Oracle said it expects adjusted earnings per share in the current quarter to be between 35 cents and 36 cents, up from 34 cents the year before.

Based on current foreign exchange rates, Oracle said it expects sales to rise 2% at best in the company’s fiscal second quarter.

In April, Oracle (ORCL, Fortune 500) announced plans to buy Sun Microsystems, which makes the Java programming software language, for $7.4 billion dollars. The acquisition, Oracle’s 52nd since Jan. 2005, could make the company a major player in the hardware market, which is dominated by IBM. (IBM, Fortune 500)

Larry Ellison, Oracle’s chief executive, told analysts in a conference call that his company is "well positioned to compete against IBM."

But the deal with Sun is being held up by European antitrust regulators, who are concerned about Sun’s MySQL open-source database, which could compete with some of Oracle’s products.

Oracle did not provide an update on the status of the Sun purchase.  

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My investments need to be a lot more diversified, I was told. Within a split of 55 percent stocks and 45 percent bonds, I was presented a list of 10 mutual funds and exchange-traded funds to buy (plus 23 others as alternatives).

I won’t buy any because the suggestions were based on faulty assumptions. But I appreciated the concept of building a broadly diversified portfolio consisting of different asset classes, including growth and value stocks of large and small U.S. companies, and stocks from foreign companies.

And I relished the idea of keeping costs down by focusing on index mutual funds, exchange-traded funds and low-cost actively managed funds with consistent performance.

I received these fund suggestions from Cake Financial, an online computer-driven mutual fund "engine" that analyzes your investments and suggests and monitors a low-cost diversified portfolio appropriate for your age. For $99.99 a year — there is a 30-day free trial — Cake Financial claims it can save investors many thousands of dollars in the long run by selecting lower-cost and less-risky funds. The site also offers a more basic investment tracking service for free and a fund-comparison service for $29.99 a year, also with a 30-day free trial.

In my case, the fund suggestions were based on the wrong assumption that all my money was in large-company stocks. That’s because Cake Financial can analyze only investments held in brokerage and fund accounts it can link to its site (for a list, to which customers can recommend additions, go https:// www.cakefinancial.com/help/linking-a-brokerage). More than half my assets are outside brokerage accounts.

For investors who have the bulk if not all their retirement savings — including 401(k)s — with brokerage and fund providers, this online fund "engine" can provide a useful service that will add to diversification and keep costs down credit reports free. The average Cake user is in his early 40s with about $150,000 to $200,000 mostly in mutual funds, said Steven Carpenter, the company’s founder and CEO.

Cake is not the only place you can get fund recommendations online. Several free sites run by investment advisers, such as www.fundadvice.com, list model portfolios consisting mostly of index and other low-cost funds. Of course, the people running these sites are trying to sign you up as a client. The sites of many fund companies provide solid advice on asset allocation and sometimes suggest certain funds or combinations of funds (naturally, the funds they sell). By contrast, Cake is an independent information and screening service that gives you fund choices from which to pick.

"We are not an adviser and we do not effect transactions," Carpenter said, but simply base fund suggestions on computer models that look for strong consistent performance and incorporate fund fees in their calculations.

"We show all the top funds for an asset class and sort them by fees," Carpenter said. "Where we feel we are better than an adviser is that we don’t have" any incentive to recommend one fund over another. A survey by Harris Interactive on behalf of Cake Financial found only 21 percent of Americans who use financial investment firms are confident the firms put customers’ best interest ahead of their own.

To be fair, many advisers who act in a fiduciary capacity focus only on what’s best for the client. Cake Financial does a bare-bones job in estimating how much money you need in retirement and is not a substitute for a trusted financial professional adviser.

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Don’t believe Lloyd Blankfein when he says he feels your bonus pain.

The Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500) chief executive officer took aim Wednesday at the million-dollar bonuses paid last year by some of the firm’s rivals. Public anger in such cases is "understandable and appropriate," he told the audience at a banking conference in Germany.

Blankfein went on to outline the standards he believes should prevail on a cleaned-up Wall Street. Multiyear guaranteed employment contracts should be banned, he said, and executives should be obliged to hold equity awards until they retire.

But as sound as Goldman’s policies are, adopting them won’t change the equation that makes so many people squeamish: Players in the financial sector are reaping huge rewards — while taxpayers continue to bear much of the risk.

"The principles they’re talking about go mostly to the structure of pay," said Sarah Anderson, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington-based think tank. "There’s no real critique of the pay levels."

Consider the study released last week by the institute. It showed that the top 100 executives at the 20 biggest banks that received Troubled Asset Relief Program loans — firms such as Goldman, JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) and Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), which now owns Merrill Lynch — made an average of $13.8 million each last year.

Admittedly, that’s down from $19.1 million in 2007. The figure, derived from company proxy statements, covers salary, bonuses, stock awards and other compensation.

Even so, $13.8 million is a nice sum for executives whose companies, in many cases, wouldn’t have survived last fall’s financial apocalypse without taxpayer assistance free copy of my credit report.

At Goldman, Blankfein made $43 million last year, using the institute’s math — bringing his three-year take to $151 million.

To be sure, Blankfein turned down his bonus last year, citing the firm’s acceptance of federal support. And Goldman has surged back to profitability this year after a tough second half in 2008. The firm said in July it had already set aside $11 billion this year for employee pay.

But skeptics might point out that those gains have been built on the support provided, willingly or otherwise, by taxpayers — at a time when unemployment is approaching 10% and personal income has been falling.

Anderson notes that even beyond the $700 billion TARP program, the government has provided financial firms with assistance via expanded deposit insurance, federal guarantees of bond issues and extensive subsidies, via Fannie Mae (FNM, Fortune 500) and Freddie Mac (FRE, Fortune 500), for the mortgage market.

And while Goldman and other firms have made headlines by repaying TARP funds and repurchasing associated warrants, most of those other programs remain in force.

Though reform of pay practices was high on the agenda earlier this year, as the stock market fell to levels last seen in the mid-1990s, the subsequent recovery has pushed that discussion into the background for the time being.

"It has been a real eye opener to see how much this system is entrenched," Anderson said. "It goes to show you can’t rely on companies to do the right thing."  

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