Before the bell: Slow start on Wall Street as Bernanke heads back to Capitol Hill: RIMM, CSCO

National City (NYSE: NCC) was upgraded to Equal Weight from Underweight at Morgan Stanley due to valuation and the possibility the bank could be bought. The broker reiterated its $10 price target.

After Research in Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) reported such strong earnings and sales Wednesday, many believe it was Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL)'s iPhone that was partly responsible for that. Some say that the introduction of the iPhone in June brought attention to smartphones. Meanwhile, there are reports that there is a shortage of iPhones in Apple's stores in the U.S. Many speculate Apple may be phasing out the existing models in preparation for new ones to work on 3G netwroks.

General Motors (NYSE: GM) - According to The Wall Street Journal, GM may take on more of parts maker Delphi's pension liabilities as it tries to help it emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It's interesting to hear this especially two days after GM posted 19% decline in sales in March compared to a year ago period. How can the already struggling automaker, seeing its sales drop that much, take on such a liability?

Fed chairman Bernanke won't be alone Capitol Hill Thursday as top executives from Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV) are also due to testify before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on problems with safety inspections of its aircraft. The FAA will try to find if the airline tried to keep serious problems with its maintenance program hidden and pressured the FAA to keep out an inspector who noticed the problems.

Schering-Plough Corp. (NYSE: SGP) - only a few days after a study found the cholesterol drugs it markets with Merck & Co. (NYSE: MRK) are no better than cheaper alternatives, causing shares to tank, SGP is announcing a plan to cut costs by $1.5 billion by 2012. While cutting costs is always a positive, the company still needs to find to new source of revenue to replace the ones from its blockbuster cholesterol drugs it relies on so heavily. Whether it could do so and save itself, is another matter. For now, SGP shares are up 1.9% in premarket trading.

Finally, without confirmation from the company, The New York Times reported Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) "is cutting about 300 jobs from the American operations of DoubleClick, the advertising technology company that it acquired recently."
Meanwhile, AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) said it prefers offering handsets that use Google's Android operating system.