GM Clears A Major Hurdle

General Motors (GMGMQ) overcame a major hurdle to emerge from bankruptcy after federal Judge Robert E. Gerber approved the sale of the auto maker's assets to a new government-run company, the Wall Street Journal reports. Gerber delivered his ruling late Sunday after rejecting calls from dissident bondholders and product-liability claimants to block the move, citing that the alternative—liquidating the company—would be "a disastrous result for GM's creditors, its employees, the suppliers who depend on GM for their own existence, and the communities in which GM operates." Under the deal, "new GM" will run the best parts of the old company, including its Chevrolet and Cadillac brands, with a less expensive work force, fewer debts, and a stripped-down dealer network. The so-called dead wood of the old company will be liquidated. Gerber said the sale will “prevent the death of the patient on the operating table," the Financial Times writes.

Speaking of rising from the ashes: Oil is back and striking fear into the hearts of economic revivalists the world over, the New York Times reports in its lead business article. Prices of crude oil have more than doubled since the beginning of the year in a wave of market volatility that has government officials both puzzled and worried that the unpredictable cost of commodities will derail any economic recovery. Despite plummeting from a record high of more than $145 just last summer, crude is currently trading at more than $70 a barrel and making life difficult for energy-intensive industries like airlines and automakers (note to GM above) as well as "households, already crimped by falling home prices, mounting job losses and credit pressures, [who] are once more forced to monitor their discretionary spending as energy prices rise."

Staying with the topsy-turvy world of commodities: Mega Anglo-Australian metal corporation Rio Tinto has agreed to sell a U.S. division of Alcan Packaging to Wisconsin-based Bemis for $1.2 billion in cash and $200 million in shares, the FT reports. Rio has been straddled with debt ever since acquiring Canadian aluminium giant Alcan at the top of the commodities market in 2007 for $38 billion. Ever since, it's been trying to offload assets—notably the noncore packaging business—as it tries to pay down the nearly $40 billion it owes creditors. "Any packaging that Rio is getting rid of [from] its balance sheet is good and will be liked by the market," Olviia Ker, an analyst with Merrill Lynch (MER) told the BBC.

Can tech maintain its 2009 surge? That's what Wall Street is keen to find out as a raft of technology companies this week report second-quarter earnings, the WSJ reports. "Makers of semiconductor chips, computers and software have blazed a path for the broader market this year as investors bet that they would be among the first beneficiaries of any economic recovery," it writes, noting that while the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 5.7 percent for the year, the Nasdaq Composite Index is up 14 percent. But with new economic and jobs data causing analysts to question America's economic recovery, all eyes will be on the performance of tech and semiconductors in particular since they are viewed as being at the "front end of the manufacturing process for tech," as one analyst puts it.

Finally, we're watching longer and longer videos online, the NYT reports. And "while online video is not going to replace television anytime soon, it is now decidedly mainstream. About 150 million Internet users in the United States watch about 14.5 billion videos a month, according to the measurement firm comScore, or an average of 97 videos per viewer," it writes. That's a lot more crazy cat tricks to watch during lunch-hour video snacking.