There is no question that the recession took its tool on Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE: CAT). The company saw its stock plummet from mid 2008 through March of this year. Along the way the company was forced to layoff employees to help lower costs, but it announced today that it would be rehiring 550 of its laid off workers.

Chief Executive Officer Jim Owens announced the news and stated that the company was pleased that "signs of recovery in the global economy" is allowing it to bring back some employees.

Job losses continued to mount in September. Unfortunately, the numbers are even worse than expected.

According to the ADP National Employment Report, employers shed 254,000 jobs in September. Analysts had been expecting to see the number of job losses at 200,000 in the month.

A report today in The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) states that Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) is on the verge of a major hiring push. Sources close to the bank holding company said that Morgan Stanley is planning to expand its ranks by as many as 400 new positions in the trading and sales departments, with the hires to be evenly split between the two areas.

Reportedly, Morgan Stanley is embarking on the hiring spree as it attempts to rebuild its position in fixed-income trading, emerging markets, and foreign exchange. So far this year, the banking issue has added approximately 200 employees to its payroll.

The government's "cash for clunkers" has been far more popular than anyone thought, prompting General Motors to boost production at several factories to keep up with demand.

While not everyone is so convinced that the "cash for clunkers" program is good for the economy, there is no doubt that the big American car makers are enjoying the benefits. Five days ago I wrote about the decision by Ford Motor Company (NYSE: F) to boost production by 15% above its prior estimates, and today General Motors announced it will raising output and bringing back employees that it had been forced to lay off.

The market has been trading lower today, despite news that new jobless claims dropped much more than analysts had been predicting.

The Department of labor announced today that there were 601,000 first time applicants for unemployment last week. While it is tough to find the bright side of this many people losing their jobs, the silver lining is that analysts had been expecting to see the report to show 635,000 new applicants.

As the unemployment rate continues to creep toward the 10% threshold, some companies are exploring more creative ways to cut down on labor costs without handing out pink slips.

Case in point, as reviewed by The New York Times: the Vera Institute of Justice, which has reduced some employees' workweeks to 24 hours (or three days out of five). In this example, workers take a 40% reduction in salary as well, but no loss in benefits. Other companies require 32 hours of work in order to retain health care and other benefits.

The earnings parade continues tomorrow, and in the morning Wall Street will get to see how Swiss Bank UBS AG (NYSE: UBS) made out for its fourth quarter.

The company is going to be reporting in the morning, and expectations are not running very high for the troubled bank. Analysts on average are looking to see the company show a loss for the quarter of $1.15 per share. While this looks pretty bad at first glance, it would be a great improvement over the same period last year in which the company showed an actual loss of $5.43 per share.

For employees of Japan's third largest automaker, Nissan Motor Co. (NASDAQ: NSANY), the news today was grim. Nissan announced it will be eliminating a hefty 8.5% of its workforce, or roughly 20,000 jobs.

The news comes at a time when all automakers are struggling to deal with the global recession that continues to keep car buyers off the showroom floors. Nissan said it expects to report its first annual loss in the past nine years.

For the company's most recent quarter, October through December, Nissan reported a $904 million quarterly loss.

One of the biggest complaints of the public equity markets is the incredibly short-term focus of participants. Management teams for publicly traded entities face severe consequences from a market short on patience.

Decisions tend to be focused on delivering short-term results. The "beat the number" game has become standard operating procedure. Such is the cost of accessing capital while providing shareholders liquidity.

But is worth it? I'm not so sure.

Investors want the company to make as much money as possible in the short term. As a result, if a company is not profitable in a given quarter, there is extreme pressure to cut costs and to do so immediately -- no matter the longer-term expense of such action.

In many cases cutting costs are exactly the right tonic to rejuvenate profits, but in some instances, those short-term cuts can do more damage than good.

This past week, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) dropped a big bomb on the market by releasing its quarterly earnings earlier than expected. Lost in the headline of the lower revenue and earnings number was the announcement that the company would be cutting 5,000 jobs from its rolls.

For the first time in its history, MSFT is laying off employees. My question is, why bother?

Employees of General Motors Corporation (NYSE: GM) got the bad news today that there are going to be another 2,000 layoffs coming at three of the company's car factories.

The struggling auto maker announced today that layoffs will be coming to its plants in Lordstown, Ohio; Orion Township, Mich.; and Oshawa, Ontario. The planned layoffs are scheduled to begin sometime in February.

It is no secret the company has been going through some tough times, and recently appealed to the government for some bailout assistance, and the root cause of these current layoffs is, of course, the slowing demand for the company's vehicles.

This is not the first time this year that GM has been forced to announce layoffs, and adds to the 11,000 factory jobs that were eliminated earlier in the year. The current 2,000 jobs represent 2.4% of the company's total North American blue-collar work force, which is currently employing 84,000 people. The Lordstown, Ohio news comes just one month after an announced layoff of 1,100 other jobs.

You knew it would happen. When a company as controversial as Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) has one of its employees killed in a Black Friday melee, it's only a matter of time before the company starts getting the blame.

Long Island police and a lawyer hired by the deceased worker's family have concluded that the company should have had better crowd control.

"Hundreds of stores around the country have these kinds of sales, but a tragedy only happens if you don't prepare," attorney Jordan Hecht told (subscription required) The Wall Street Journal. "You need to have people line up in a queue in an orderly fashion, with people giving them updates."

Wal-Mart defended itself by saying that it had set up barricades, hired third-party security guards and had extra staff on hand.

And what of the police's contention that the security was inadequate? It turns out that the police were called to the store before the victim was trampled to death because of the large crowds, but they quickly left before the doors opened. (Read more about that in this Newsday story.) So the police seemed to think everything was fine at the time but are now blaming inadequate security after the fact. I'm not sure that makes sense.

The real blame here falls on the people who trampled someone to death. The victim's family should sue Wal-Mart for whatever they can get, but it's pretty tacky for the police to be blaming Wal-Mart for a tragedy that happened after they left.

Mexico's Supreme Court has ruled that Wal-Mart de Mexico, also known as Walmex, violated the country's constitution by paying workers, in part, in vouchers only redeemable at the store. Walmex is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT).

That's right: Wal-Mart was trying to pay its workers with gift cards. That sounds bad but it's really not quite as messed up as it seems. The Wall Street Journal reports (subscription required) that "the retailer said the program was voluntary, and designed to help our employees acquire basic necessities." It went on to explain in the statement that under the program, "Walmex would put store credit on electronic cards and the employees could contribute a matching amount."

Here's what I don't understand: if the company wants to offer employees the option of being paid with store credit -- and employees want to take advantage of the offer -- whose rights are being violated?

The reality is that Wal-Mart offers compelling values on household items and, for many low-income workers, the chance to receive a portion of earnings in store credit would be a good opportunity. If it isn't, they don't have to take it!

I'm not sure why the courts needed to get involved here.

This story may sound quite strange to some people, as the perks at the Google campus have been known to be among the best in the industry, if not the best. But the blogosphere was abuzz after Valleywag reported on Sunday that Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) will be taking dinners off the menu. Not just that, but while breakfast and lunch will remain free, the rumor had it that there would also be "No more tea trolley. No more snack attack in the afternoon."

The initial reaction to this may be, really, this is what they're whining about? Don't they know many Americans would love to trade with them and "worry" about such things instead of worrying about paying their mortgage or losing their jobs? Why concentrate on a story of "less riches"?

Well, one possible reason this has grabbed the attention of many after all is because of the scary signal it may give. Could this be a sign that the economic hardship has reached even tech darling Google? Are there no safe havens? And with recent concern that the dollar rally could hurt Google's result, the 'no dinner' story has indeed been blown out of proportion.

Over the past year, automakers have struggled to deal with the tough economic conditions in North America, especially the United States. One of the companies that has been able to handle the slowdown better than its peers has been Toyota (NYSE: TM). But the effects are being felt even by the Japanese automaker, as made clear today in the news that the company is laying off 800 workers in one of its Japanese plants.

The 800 workers that are being laid off represent about 10% of the workforce at the company's plant in southwestern Japan. So far, the company has been able to sidestep the steep losses that its American rivals have been forced to deal with, but this year is proving to be a bit tougher, as the company is now predicting a first annual drop in profit, which would be the first time in the past seven years that the company has seen profit fall.

Toyota has been more fortunate than many automakers, mostly due the fact that the company has a long history of building smaller, more fuel efficient cars. This fact alone has helped it weather the slowdown that record high gasoline prices in the U.S. have helped create. Last Friday, however, the company stated that sales dropped 18.7% in July from the same period last year.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Wal-Mart Stores (NYSE: WMT) is warning its store managers against an Obama victory in November. Why? because Wal-Mart executives worry that Obama will boost the power of unions and that unionized Wal-Mart stores will lead to higher worker pay -- and higher prices for Wal-Mart customers.

I can understand why Wal-Mart executives would want to keep President Bush's policies in place for another four years. After all, those low taxes on the top 1% help enrich Wal-Mart brass. I am not suggesting that all Wal-Mart customers are Republicans, not at all, but I do believe that most people who shop at Wal-Mart cannot afford to buy their shoes at Neiman Marcus. And these middle- and lower-income Wal-Mart shoppers are the natural beneficiaries of Democratic policies such as Obama's plan for a middle-class tax cut.

Wal-Mart is clearly trying to be on both sides of this election. The Journal reports that it's reduced its share of contributions to Republican candidates from 98% in 1996 to 52% in 2008 -- giving 48% of its $2.2 million in political contributions to Democrats this year. It also has directors who have been big Clinton supporters, including Hillary Clinton herself who served on its board from 1986 to 1992 and Aida Alvarez, who worked in Bill Clinton's cabinet from 1997 to 2001 and has been a Wal-Mart director since 2006.