A lot can happen in a week. Unfortunately, most of us have limited time in our daily schedule to research all the developments affecting industries and jobs today. So we’ve scoured the Internet for last week’s top news and analysis in business and manufacturing to bring you an easy-to-swallow recap — our own weekly working crib sheet.

Pols Want Us to Spend Money
Congress and the Administration plan to allocate about $42 billion to allow businesses to immediately write off 50 percent of the cost of capital purchases, and raise the limit that small businesses can deduct for certain investments to $250,000 from $125,000 in 2008. According to The Wall St. Journal, this bill, along with even more money for consumers, could be signed into law in February.

Stimulus Plan Includes Boost to Home Buyers
The politicians’ proposed economic stimulus package “aims to make getting a mortgage easier and cheaper in high-cost markets, to facilitate refinancing and to prevent foreclosures,” says CNNMoney. It adds that there would be a “guarantee [of] a secondary market for loans of less than $417,000, which makes lenders more willing to issue them. The stimulus package proposes raising that cap to $625,000 for 12 months to make it easier for buyers to get or refinance mortgages.”

Oil Prices High and Going Up
“Several energy analysts say that oil prices will average $80 a barrel this year, $8 a barrel higher than last year’s average — and nearly double the figure of 2004,” The New York Times reports. “Energy traders are betting on historically high prices into 2010, paying around $83 a barrel for futures contacts that call for delivery of oil in two years.”

Overseas Investment in U.S. Increases
In 2007, overseas investors spent $414 billion on American factories, companies and other properties through deals and stock, Thomson Financial told The New York Times. This amount of money represents a 90 percent increase from 2006 and a doubling of the average amount for the last decade. The article adds, “If there is a big controversy [over foreign investment], it will be between Washington on the one hand and corporate America on the other. In that contest, the financiers and the businessmen are going to win, as they always do,” Jeffrey Garten, a trade expert at the Yale School of Management, told the Times.

U.S. Investors Pump Dollars into Mexican Houses
Investors such as those who rely on “the California Public Employees Retirement System, the largest U.S. public pension fund, are already bankrolling [housing] projects” in Mexico, Clark McKinley, spokesman for CalPERS, told The Associated Press. With a shortage of 6 million dwellings and no subprime group, construction is booming as just 30 percent of new homes were self-built by their owners, down from 50 percent in 2004, Carlos Gutierrez, Mexico’s housing policy director, told AP.

Unemployment Claims Fell for 4th Week
First-time claims for state unemployment benefits declined for the fourth straight week, the Labor Department said last week. About 301,000 initial claims were made in the week ending January 19, making it the lowest level of claims since September.

China’s Output in 2007 Was Best in 13 Years
With a hike in Gross Domestic Product of 11.4 percent, China had its highest increase in 13 years in 2007, and this double-digit growth continues a five-year-long habit. However, “the risks of spiraling inflation and overheating also were on the rise,” China’s National Bureau of Statistics told Xinhua news agency (via United Press International).

Caterpillar Sees Sales Rising
Caterpillar said recently that profit rose 11 percent to $975 million and revenues rose 10 percent to $12.14 billion, MarketWatch reports. For 2008, the company noted, “we continue to see positive conditions for our sales in most … of the world.”

Inventor Continues Work on Piston-less Internal Combustion Engine
Bart Watkins has taken his grandfather’s plans, which involve rotons that spin inside a larger three-part cavity (patented and patent pending), and along with team members is testing the design. If tests prove out, the engine would produce “significantly more horsepower per pound of engine weight and cost at least 25 percent less to produce,” says the Knoxville News Sentinel. What happened to the Wankel engine? It wasn’t fuel efficient.

The Legacy engine’s three-dimensional model and a prototype ready for testing.
Image credit: Michael Patrick-Knoxville News Sentinel

Aviation Industry Companies Make Strong Economic Gains
The strength of worldwide aerospace growth has been striking. Honeywell International Corp. said its fourth-quarter new income grew 18 percent in part to demand for aircraft and related services for its aerospace unit products. Quarterly worldwide profit jumped 14 percent to $614 million thanks to sales of Honeywell’s Aerospace goods made for commercial, defense and space customers.

Meanwhile, sales of Rockwell Collins Inc. aviation electronic systems for cargo, regional and business jets led to a fiscal first-quarter profit increase of 7.7 percent. The aerospace and military contractor also raised its 2008 earnings outlook due to more-than-forecast commercial-systems sales.

Also benefiting has been Textron Inc., among others. Its fourth-quarter profit jumped 32 percent. Though the company gave a softer-than-anticipated 2008 earnings outlook, “combined backlog at Bell Helicopter, Textron Systems and Cessna stood at $18.8 billion at the end of 2007, up from $12.9 billion at the end of last year,” says MarketWatch.

Coal Shortage Could Lead to Higher Steel Prices
A coal shortage in Australia due to mine flooding may lead to higher prices for steel, says The Wall St. Journal. The announcement comes from an Anglo-Australian company that has a partner in Japan’s Mitsubishi.

Ford Halves Q4 Loss
Ford Motor Co. said its fourth-quarter loss narrowed to $2.8 billion. The company may offer buyouts to 54,000 hourly workers, potentially trimming “thousands of jobs” and paving the way “for lower-wage replacements,” says The Associated Press (via The San Diego Union-Tribune). I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised, then, that Ford didn’t show up on Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For.

Toyota Exec: Life Cycle Assessment=Super-Green Vehicles
Green vehicles must be judged over the entire life cycle, Bill Reinert, national manager of the Advanced Technology Group at Toyota Motor Sales USA, told Automotive News. He said “the energy required in materials production, vehicle production, driving, maintenance and final recycling all factor in to the ‘life cycle assessment’ of a vehicle.”