Toyota Zooms Ahead

Contraction of the U.S. auto business has made Japanese car maker Toyota Motor Corp. (TM) the new industry front-runner, the Wall Street Journal reports. The paper has declared Toyota to be the "No. 1 winner" out of the many companines benefiting from the bankruptcies of General Motors (GM) and Chrysler. Its share of the North American light-truck and car market may rise to around 20 percent.

The world's most successful bond-fund manager has recently emerged as a powerful voice in the national financial crisis, the New York Times reports. The paper paints a colorful picture of Bill Gross of the money management firm Pimco, who reportedly gambles in Las Vegas, wears Hermès ties, and does yoga. His savvy financial judgment has won him the esteem of Warren Buffett and Alan Greenspan and, recently, the attention of the White House. His fund is hoping to be chosen to relieve banks carrying bad mortgage debt so they can start lending freely again. According to the paper, "Mr. Gross calls the plan a ‘win-win-win' for the banks, taxpayers and Pimco investors." Though he does admit, "You want to shake hands with the government. But maybe it shouldn't be a super-firm handshake."

In health care news, the pharmaceutical industry agreed yesterday to spend $80 billion over the next 10 years to better drug benefits for seniors on Medicare and to defray the cost of Obama'a health care legislation, the Wall Street Journal reports. The arrangement was negotiated over months and led by U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, chairman of the Finance Committee.

As the morning coffee wars heat up, Starbucks (SBUX) has announced that it's stepping up its game, with plans to grind and brew its coffee more frequently, the LA Times reports. Containers will be refreshed every 24 minutes, instead of every 30 minutes, as of next month. "As stores typically have three batches going at once, a new pot could be ready as often as every eight minutes," a spokesperson told the paper. Facing competition from McDonalds (MCD), Starbucks is aiming to emphasize the quality of its product to gain an advantage.

Your credit score may be more important than you think, the Washington Post reports this morning. Lenders are increasingly looking at credit scores as a reason to deny credit altogether. "Credit scores have taken on a new degree of importance," Scott Talbott, senior vice president for government affairs at the Financial Services Roundtable, an industry group told the paper: "In the past it was a question of 'What will your interest rate be?', and now it's 'Will you even get a loan?' "

Finally, microbiologists and food safety investigators are trying to figure out what precisely caused the outbreak of E. Coli-related illness that has been tied to Nestlé Toll House cookie dough. According to the Washington Post, the outbreak has caused at least 65 people in 29 states to fall ill already. As was the case with the country's recent peanut-butter-linked food borne-illness outbreak, officials are especially worried about young people getting infected. The stats so far do suggest that kids are indeed the ones consuming the most cookie dough—more than two-thirds of the 65 victims are younger than 19.