The battle between Google and Facebook is brewing. It will be ruthless, take no prisoners stuff.

First, look at the deal between Microsoft's Bing and Facebook where Bing will Bing will power Web search functions from Facebook and then merge information on the Web with the information on Facebook. If it manages to pull this off, it will give Bing a massive boost. Mind you, it has a long way to go because Google still dominate the search market.

In response, Google is moving further into the social networking space. The Financial Times reports that Google plans to announce new features for its G Mail service, allowing users to aggregate updates and develop a stream of notifications similar to Facebook and Twitter.Google has tried moving into this space before and failed. But Robert Scoble says they're more likely to win this time because now, they take social networking seriously. They see it as the future.

Maybe, but Google is fighting it on Facebook's territory which puts it at a disadvantage. It's very much a defensive strategy.

If you're looking for work and if you can read Tarot cards, move to Italy.

Italy, emerging from its worst recession since World War Two and confronted by galloping inflation, has its own unique way of dealing with its problems.

Now we have reports that Italians are spending billions of dollars a year on fortune tellers and astrologers to come up with solutions for their financial woes.

Bloomberg reports that most Italians who turn to the occult do it for financial help or to fix up what's left of their love life. They will pay as much as 3000 Euros ($US4099) for a reading.

Still, you have to hand it to the Italians. They could do a lot worse. For a start, they might go to economists whose forecasts in the lead up to this crisis and beyond have been way off course. A fortune teller can't be worse.

With the the debt load of the PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain) out of control, Europe is on the brink of financial catastrophe, writes Simon Johnson. He makes the point that the stronger European powers like Germany and France, the ones that can pay their debts, can call in the International Monetary Fund but they're unlikely to do so and in any case, the IMF might not have enough cash to back stop the PIGS (actually, it's PIIGs if you include Ireland). And the result may be a Depression.

Johnson writes: "The IMF cannot help in any meaningful way. And the stronger EU countries are not willing to help - in part because they want to be tough, but also because they do not have effective mechanisms for providing assistance-with-strings. Unconditional bailouts are simple - just send a check. Structuring a rescue package that will garner support among the German electorate - whose current and future taxes will be on the line - is considerably more complicated. The financial markets know all this and last week sharpened their swords. As we move into this week, expect more selling pressure across a wide range of European assets. As this pressure mounts, we'll see cracks appear also in the private sector. Significant banks and large hedge funds have been selling insurance against default by European sovereigns. As countries lose creditworthiness - and, under sufficient pressure, very few government credit ratings will hold up - these financial institutions will need to come up with cash to post increasing amounts of collateral against their derivative obligations (yes, the same credit default swaps that triggered the collapse last time) ... Another Lehman/AIG-type situation lurks somewhere on the European continent, and again our purported G7 (or even G20) leaders are slow to see the risk. And this time, given that they already used almost all their fiscal bullets, it will be considerably more difficult for governments to respond effectively when they do wake up."

Can the crisis be averted? AS Jack Ewing in the New York Times points out, the big structural weakness of the EU is that there is no strong central government to pull everything together. The European Council represents 27 national governments which is why European authorities over the weekend failed to offer realistic plans to help Greece out of its debt woes. Let's remember that the "spread" or difference between Greek bonds and German bonds is more than double. Translated into English, folks, that means that the Greeks have to spend twice as much to borrow money and this could put any hope of a recovery in doubt.

As reported in the Globe and Mail, Jim Reid, a strategist at Deutsche Bank in London has warned that "the same problems plaguing Portugal and Greece could be "dress rehearsal for what the U.S. and U.K. may face further down the road."

After all, North America, Britain and Japan are facing rising deficits and falling tax revenues. Watch this space, we could be headed for a double dip recession.

If you own Toyota shares, sell now. These problems are long term.

So Toyota is about to recall 270,000 Prius models. According to Japanese newspapers, it has told dealers it will bow to pressure and inspect the braking systems of these cars after owners complained that the brakes were failing on bumpy roads.

The recall follows Toyota already recalling cars after accelerator problems. A pattern has been established. And Toyota's reputation has been shot.

As Frank Ahrens writes in the Washington Post, Toyota's fortress like reputation has been damaged, perhaps forever. In the long term, it kills the idea that Japanese cars have superior quality. And in the short term, Toyota's big issue is that new problems keep coming up. It's made even worse by the fact that the Prius is the best Toyota can offer.

The damage to its reputation will be hard to fix. As Ahrens writes: "Other companies have recovered from catastrophic public relations disasters. After seven Chicago deaths were traced to cyanide-laced Tylenol in 1982, drugmaker Johnson & Johnson responded by quickly recalling all Tylenol nationwide, destroying the company's market share. But the company's swift action and pioneering, tamper-proof packaging won back its customers within a year. For an automaker, reputation is everything, and it can linger for years even after the facts prove it otherwise. When Japanese cars hit U.S. shores in the early '70s, they were seen as cheaply made and unsafe. Chastened, the Japanese automakers retrenched and doubled down on quality. By the late 1980s, Toyota and Honda, above the rest, were besting their American counterparts every year in quality, reliability, even performance and styling, auto and consumer magazines raved. For Toyota, that reputation lasted, pretty much intact, until last month - despite the fact that, in 2007, Consumer Reports raised flags that Toyota quality was slipping."

Toyota president Akio Toyoda's feeble apology ("I apologize from the bottom of my heart for all the concern that we have given to so many customers") hasn't helped because he failed to give undertakings that the company would actually fix the problem. And there lies the problem. "In moments of a business crisis, people want to see [the head of] a company take full responsibility, be empathic to the victims and their families and be in control by outlining the problem and how they intend to solve it," Ong Hock Chuan, from crisis management firm Maverick in Jakarta told the BBC."Toyota seems to have failed on all counts. Its admission of the problem has been half-hearted and almost reluctant, it has failed to apologise unequivocally to victims and their families, and it's failed to articulate and communicate what it intends to do to regain control of the situation."

As The Economist says, there is no quick fix to Toyota's problems. "Whether Toyota will speedily recover from this setback or suffer permanent harm is uncertain, but the betting must be on the latter. As the recriminations continue and the company's public-relations machine stumbles, the aura that surrounded the firm and allowed it to grow rapidly in recent years, even while charging premium prices, is being dispelled. Other carmakers, notably Ford and the ambitious Volkswagen Group, have closed the quality gap and are offering more interesting cars. Korea's Hyundai is unapologetic about seeing Toyota's (and corporate Japan's) loss as its gain. Toyota still has great strengths, not least financial, but it has lost something precious and may never get it back."

At the end of January, I looked at how one in five Americans were now saying they were going hungry. It's inevitable with one in four American children on food stamps.

Now we have reports that a record 38.2 million Americans were enrolled in the food stamp program at latest count. That's up 246,000 on the previous month and happening right now in the richest country in the world.

All this should put the so-called recovery in perspective. Don't believe it. While the last reports have US GDP growing by 5.7%, it's a statistical illusion, the kind that keeps economists happy. In the real world, there is no recovery and it looks like things are getting worse. Until unemployment is well and truly down, there can be no recovery.