Westlund had reportedly decided not to seek treatment for his condition. James Sinks, Westlund’s spokesman, said late last week that Westlund had visited the office earlier that week. He made only two appearances during the state Legislature's February short session, which ran from Feb. 1 through Feb. 26.

"In his speeches, he frequently joked that while folks can learn lifelong lessons in kindergarten, you can learn a lot about being treasurer from ranching," Sinks said in a statement. "For instance, 'watch out for predators;' 'sunshine is the best disinfectant;' and 'watch where you step.'"

He was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2003. Westlund, who took office in January 2009, had recently settled a major lawsuit with OppenheimerFunds Inc. over alleged mismanagement of Oregon’s 529 College Savings Plan. Oregon families will divide $20 million among roughly 45,000 shareholders after Westlund and Oregon Attorney General John Kroger charged the funds manager with securities fraud, breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty.

Westlund was born in Long Beach, Calif., on Sept. 3, 1949, and raised in Lake Oswego. He worked as a Portland businessman before becoming a rancher in Central Oregon. His company, High Country Herefords, sold genetic products used in the livestock industry.

Westlund was elected to the Oregon House of Representatives as a Republican in 1996 and served until 2003. He became a state senator from 2003 to 2008, switching parties to become a Democrat in 2006. He was elected state treasurer in 2008. Gov. Ted Kulongoski must now appoint a successor, who will serve until voters elect a new treasurer this November.

Westlund earned praise from business interests for backing such programs as the Oregon Innovation Council, established earlier this decade. The program distributes millions each legislative session for economic development.

Westlund was known as a hard worker and straight political shooter. He also retained his rancher’s sensibility even though he spent 14 years in Salem. For instance, when ending a phone conversation, instead of saying “goodbye,” Westlund would say, “Down the trail.”

He leaves behind his wife, Libby, and two children.

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The Rock Hill-based company is marketing the ProJet MP 3000, a three-dimensional production system for making dental models.

“We are very pleased to offer our dental-lab customers a new solution designed to increase their productivity, quality and accuracy at a lower cost,” says Lee Dockstader, vice president of business development. “We expect this advanced system to enhance the overall user experience and deliver significant performance advancements to our dental-lab customers free credit score online.”

3D says it expects the ProJet MP 3000 will become a low-cost dental model maker for small- and medium-sized labs.

The company (NASDAQ:TDSC) produces equipment that makes three-dimensional prototypes and working parts for a range of industries.

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What prices are doing: The benchmark 10-year note was up 14/32 to 99-28/32, pushing the yield down to 3.63% from 3.69% late Wednesday. Bond prices and yields move in opposite directions.

The 30-year bond rose 29/32 to trade at 100-23/32 and its yield was 4.58%. The 2-year note ticked up 2/32 to 100-2/32 and yielded 0.83%.

What’s moving the market: The Labor Department released its weekly jobless claims report before the opening bell on Thursday.

Initial jobless claims surged to 496,000 in the week ended Feb. 20. That’s much more than the 460,000 claims projected by a consensus of economist opinion from Briefing.com. It’s also much larger than the revised tally of 474,000 claims reported for the prior week.

The jobs data largely overshadowed a more upbeat report on orders for durable goods, which rose 3% in January — much more than expected. The orders were expected to have risen 1.5%, according to Briefing.com consensus.

Treasurys were also supported by ongoing worries that Greece will not be able to repay all of its debts. While most analysts say a default is not likely, there are still concerns that Athens’ fiscal woes could be a harbinger of more economic pain across Europe.

Traders are also focused on Capitol Hill, where Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke is testifying on monetary policy for a second day.

On Wednesday, Bernanke repeated that the federal funds rate, which is the central bank’s primary tool for monetary policy, is likely to stay low for an extended period. That comment helped spark a rally on Wall Street and sent Treasury yields sharply lower.

Bernanke also told members of the House Financial Services Committee that government action has helped start an economic recovery, but warned that many concerns persist — namely, the state of the job market quick payday loan.

Treasurys were also getting a boost from the uncertainty surrounding the future of the U.S. health care system. President Obama and Republican and Democratic leaders engaged in a spirited but civil debate at a health care summit Thursday, finding agreement on some issues such as high costs but not much common ground on how to achieve reform.

Meanwhile, the government concluded a record $126 billion sale of U.S. debt with a well-received auction of 7-year notes.

Investors submitted bids totaling $95.4 billion for the $32 billion worth of 7-year notes offered Thursday. That made for a bid-to-cover ratio, a measure of demand, of 2.98. That compares with 2.85 at the last 7-year auction in January.

Indirect bidders, a category that includes foreign central banks, bought just over half of the notes sold.

On Wednesday, the U.S. sold $42 billion in 5-year notes. It sold $44 billion in 2-year notes Tuesday and $8 billion in 30-year Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, or TIPS, on Monday.

What analysts are saying: "People were nervous about the auction," said Bill Larkin, a fixed-income portfolio manager at Cabot Money Management. "Now I think they’re surprised that it got taken down so well by the market."

Larkin said the jobs data, concerns about Greece and uncertainty about health care reform were all "tailwinds" for Treasurys.

"There’s so much news today," he said. "I think people are bit shell shocked, so they’re sitting on sidelines." 

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Capital spending advanced 5.5 percent from the previous quarter, when it fell a revised 5.2 percent, the Bureau of Statistics said in Sydney today. The median estimate of 19 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News was for a 2 percent gain.

Rising Chinese demand for Australia’s iron ore, coal and gas is stoking what central bank Deputy Governor Ric Battellino this week described as a record boom in mining investment that will fuel economic growth. Falling unemployment and a jump in consumer confidence, helped by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s A$42 billion ($38 billion) stimulus package, were among reasons policy makers boosted borrowing costs three times last quarter.

“These are good signs that businesses are certainly looking at the economic recovery confidently and dusting off those mothballed investment projects,” said Savanth Sebastian, an economist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Sydney.

Investment plans of businesses are at the highest level in five years, “and there are very good signs they’ll follow through on those plans, which is heartening for the Reserve Bank,” said Sebastian, who predicts a quarter-point increase in the benchmark interest rate to 4 percent next week.

The Australian dollar traded at 89.35 U.S. cents at noon in Sydney from 89.36 cents just before the report was released. The two-year government bond yield fell 1 basis point to 4.66 percent. A basis point is 0.01 percentage point.

Investment Plans

Companies forecast investment of A$110.6 billion in the year ending June 30, which is 6.7 percent more than they estimated three months earlier.

They plan A$101.4 billion of new investment in the year ending June 30, 2011.

BHP Billiton Ltd., the world’s largest mining company, said this month that it will increase capital spending on iron-ore mines and oil fields by 63 percent next year to $20.8 billion from $12.8 billion this year.

Global economic conditions have improved over the past six months as the U.S. and Europe lifted industrial output and China returned to double-digit growth, BHP said on Feb. 10.

Companies may boost investment in new Australian mines, ports and infrastructure to 6 percent of gross domestic product, more than double the amount spent during the last resources boom in the late 1970s, Battellino said on Feb. 23.

Natural Gas

Investment as a share of GDP by companies such as Chevron Corp make quick cash. is “significantly higher than recorded in previous booms and is thought likely to rise further,” he said.

Chevron in December announced it signed an $82 billion deal with Japan’s Tokyo Electric Power Co. to supply liquefied natural gas from its Wheatstone field in Western Australia. The project is forecast to generate 6,500 jobs during construction.

That’s in addition to the A$43 billion Gorgon natural-gas venture involving Chevron, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc. The nation’s single-biggest investment project was announced last year and will create as many as 10,000 jobs.

Employers added 194,600 jobs in the five months through January, the biggest increase in more than three years, driving the unemployment rate to an 11-month low of 5.3 percent.

The economy has less scope than previously expected for “robust” growth that doesn’t stoke inflation, Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Glenn Stevens told lawmakers at a parliamentary committee hearing in Canberra on Feb. 19. “Monetary policy must therefore be careful not to overstay a very expansionary setting.”

Rate Bets

Stevens and his board raised the overnight cash rate target three times during the last quarter of 2009 to 3.75 percent from a half-century low of 3 percent.

Investors are betting there is a 52 percent chance of a quarter-percentage-point rate increase when the Reserve Bank next meets on March 2, according to Bloomberg calculations based on interbank futures on the Sydney Futures Exchange at 11:44 a.m.

Spending on buildings and structures fell 1.7 percent in the fourth quarter, today’s report showed. Company investment in new plant and equipment advanced 12.4 percent.

Investment is being stoked as Prime Minister Rudd’s government spends A$22 billion on roads, railways and schools. He has also distributed A$20 billion in cash to households, most of it in the first half of last year.

“Preliminary reports suggest that the economy grew strongly towards the end of 2009,” expanding 0.75 percent in the fourth quarter from the previous three months, Ben Dinte, an economist at Macquarie Group Ltd. in Sydney. “Growth should continue to gain pace over 2010, with gross domestic product gaining 3.75 percent.”

Fourth-quarter GDP figures will be published on March. 3.

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Opposition leaders are drumming up votes among their majority ranks before the March 1 opening of congressional sessions to defeat President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s reserves-for-debt fund plan, said Senator Alfredo Martinez.

“We are going to meet at the Senate to try to get as much support as possible to reject the decree,” Martinez, 58, said in a Feb. 18 telephone interview from his constituency in Santa Cruz, the southern Patagonian province where Fernandez began her political career.

A rout in Argentine dollar bonds that has made them the worst performers in emerging markets this year may deepen if the government fails to obtain the $6.6 billion in central bank money, said Paul Biszko, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets. The country’s average dollar bond yield surged last week to a five-month high of 12.12 percent, more than two percentage points above the government’s target yield on new bonds in the debt restructuring, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. indexes.

“If this fund fails to pass, it makes it more difficult for Argentine spreads to compress,” Biszko said in a phone interview from Toronto. “It would be negative and would be more negative if it derailed or delayed further the opening of the debt swap.”

Holdout Investors

Fernandez is seeking to renegotiate $20 billion of defaulted debt that creditors kept out of a 2005 restructuring that paid 30 cents on the dollar. A settlement with the holdout investors would give Argentina access to international capital markets for the first time since the 2001 default on $95 billion of bonds.

The government, in need of money to fund a widening budget deficit, plans to require creditors put up cash for new bonds in addition to tendering their defaulted securities. RBS Securities Inc. projects the deficit will double to 1.2 percent of gross domestic product this year from 0.6 percent in 2009.

Economy Minister Amado Boudou said as recently as Feb. 18 that the country is looking to sell the bonds abroad at rates below 10 percent. The country’s average dollar bond yields closed last week at 11.98 percent after reaching 12.12 percent, according to JPMorgan.

Bonds Tumble

Argentina, which is waiting for authorization from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, will move forward with the restructuring even if the reserves-for-debt fund is defeated in congress, Boudou said at a press conference in Buenos Aires on Feb. 18. He told Buenos Aires-based Radio 10 on Feb. 15 that the government wants to complete the debt exchange by March.

“We’ll continue ahead with the exchange process,” Boudou said at the news conference. “We’re convinced that the rate will fall below 10 percent.”

An Economy Ministry spokesman didn’t answer his mobile phone when contacted by Bloomberg News for further comment.

The country’s dollar bonds have lost 9.4 percent this year, more than all other 38 emerging-market nations in JPMorgan’s EMBI Global Index, in part on concern the reserves plan would fail. That’s a reversal of the 5.9 percent return the bonds posted in December, capping a record 133 percent rally on the year, after Fernandez’s announcement of the plan buoyed confidence in the government’s ability to service its debts.

‘Blank Check’

Fernandez fired central bank President Martin Redrado on Jan. 7 after he sought to block implementation of the fund. A day later, a federal judge ruled the government needed approval from the opposition-controlled congress to proceed with the plan.

Opposition lawmakers in the Senate will look to cobble together votes against the proposal this week as they gather to negotiate the makeup of congressional committees after a three- month recess, Martinez said.

“We can’t give a blank check to this government,” he said.

Miguel Pichetto, a senator from Fernandez’s ruling coalition, said the government isn’t ready to concede defeat.

“We have to keep talking,” Pichetto, 59, said in a Feb. 14 interview transmitted by Radio 10. “I’m still optimistic. The numbers aren’t decided.”

Markets Last Week

The yield on Argentina’s benchmark 8.28 percent dollar bonds due in 2033 declined 14 basis points to 12.94 percent, according to JPMorgan. The peso was little changed at 3.8542. The Merval stock index rose 2.7 percent to 2,334.99.

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Tajiri, a Hilo resident who represented the Big Island on the board, submitted a letter of resignation on Tuesday. He did not give a reason for stepping down.

The former state representative and chairman of the Hawaii County Council was named to a five-year term on the board in 2008.

His departure will add to three other vacancies on the 15-member board that governs the 10-campus UH system.

Board members of the public university system are nominated by an advisory council and selected by Gov. Linda Lingle. Appointments are subject to approval by the state Senate.

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Company officials put the blame first on floor mats that could entrap the accelerator, later amending that to include gas pedals themselves that could stick.

But they have vigorously asserted that there is no evidence of a glitch in the electronics or software that could cause cars to malfunction, a "ghost in the machine." Some independent safety experts, congressional investigators and others are just as certain that the risk of an electronic flaw is being dismissed by Toyota without an adequate examination.

The causes of unintended acceleration remains under investigation, but an admission by Toyota that sudden acceleration was caused by an electronic defect could be a devastating blow to the company’s already dented reputation for quality, say engineers, attorneys and experts in crisis management.

Compared with mechanical problems such as floor mats and sticky gas pedals, an electronic hardware or software glitch can be difficult to find, costly to fix and would open Toyota to a new onslaught of lawsuits, these people say.

"Every car accident that took place for years will suddenly be blamed on electronics," said Ted Frank, an attorney and founder of the Center for Class Action Fairness.

And considering the fact that every Toyota vehicle sold in the U.S. since the 2007 model year has an electronic throttle, with some models using the system dating to the 2002 model year, the number of potentially affected vehicles could reach into eight figures. "It’s a big potential problem for Toyota," Frank said.

Indeed, less than 24 hours after Toyota announced its recall of the Prius and Lexus HS250h last week, at least two suits alleging economic damages to owners of the hybrids had been filed against the automaker, adding to a pile of suits related to the recalls now numbering in the dozens business cards.

Beyond its legal liability, Toyota’s relationships with its customers could be further damaged by any finding that sudden acceleration is being caused by electronics, instead of floor mats or gas pedals, some say.

"Cars are moving computers, and the electronics are the very heart of the car," said Ian Mitroff, emeritus professor of the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business and a consultant on crisis management. Unlike a mechanical problem, such as a sticking pedal, the fix is not easily understood, he said.

"It’s the most scary component of all," said George Hoffer, an economist at Virginia Commonwealth University who moonlights as a consultant on recalls for automakers.

Toyota, for its part, says it has repeatedly and thoroughly tested its vehicles, including their electronic throttle systems that replace traditional mechanical accelerator controls with sensors, wires and computers, with no finding.

In a letter to Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., that was released Friday, attorneys for the automaker said it had hired an engineering and testing company to test its electronic throttle system. The company, Exponent, found that the system "did not exhibit any acceleration or precursor to acceleration, despite concerted efforts to induce unwanted acceleration," the letter said.

"There is simply nothing there to say electronic controls are causing the problems," said Bob Carter, general manager of Toyota’s U.S. sales division, at the Chicago Auto Show last week. "We have exhaustively tested every scenario."

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, meanwhile, has opened a new investigation at the behest of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to determine if electromagnetic interference could cause sudden acceleration but has said it found no evidence to support that theory in the past.

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The Business Council’s confidence gauge climbed to 64.7 this month, the highest level in at least four years and up from 63.2 in an October survey, a report from the Washington-based group today showed. Readings greater than 50 signal economic growth.

Almost 70 percent of the executives surveyed said employment at their companies is likely to remain stable this year, indicating the economy will be slow to recover the 8.4 million jobs lost since the recession began. Some respondents said they were skeptical the Obama administration’s stimulus program enacted last February would boost growth or employment.

“These are encouraging signs, even if not all of us believe that the recovery is, as yet, underway,” JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said in a statement for the group. “Business looks to be getting back into business — though there remains much to be cautious about.”

The rate of economic growth in the U.S. this year will be 2.1 percent to 3 percent, according to 51 percent of those polled. Another 41 percent projected the economy will expand as much as 2 percent. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg News this month anticipate 3 percent growth this year, according to the median forecast.

Unemployment in 2010

By the end of the year, unemployment will be within a range of 9.6 percent to 10 percent, according to 61 percent of the company chiefs payday advance. The jobless rate unexpectedly fell to 9.7 percent in January from 10 percent the previous month, the Labor Department said Feb. 5.

About 30 percent of respondents said they expect President Barack Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package to “have little or no impact on the economy in 2010,” with more than half saying it will have a similar effect on job creation, according to the report.

Payrolls will grow by an average 95,000 jobs a month this year, the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers said today in an annual report to the president. The figures show administration economists predicting a monthly gain of 190,000 jobs on average next year and 251,000 in 2012.

The CEA’s report kept a forecast from Feb. 1 for the unemployment rate to average 10 percent this year and gross domestic product to expand 3 percent when measured fourth quarter to fourth quarter.

More Investment

The share of company chiefs that said they will invest more on new plants and equipment doubled to almost 50 percent, according to today’s Business Council survey. Fifty-seven percent of executives polled said they have seen an improvement in their industries in the past six months, and about 61 percent expect the gains to continue during the next six.

Other reports have shown consumer sentiment is also improving. Confidence among U.S. consumers rose in January to the highest level since September 2008, according to the Conference Board’s confidence index.

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The company said it was checking the brakes on one of the Lexus hybrids, the HS250h, as well as a Japanese model called the Sai — because they use the same system as that used on the 2010 Toyota Prius.

Toyota (TM) has announced no recall of these vehicles, however, and said it has not received any complaints about the brakes from consumers.

But the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced Thursday it is opening a formal investigation into problems with the Prius, Toyota’s fourth-best selling model in the United States and the best-selling model in Japan.

The company has admitted to a software glitch that is causing problems with its braking. It said it is looking further at the best way to repair the problem.

On Thursday, Ford (F, Fortune 500) announced that it was changing the software in the braking system for its Fusion and Mercury Milan hybrids to correct an occasional glitch in the old software. Ford said no injuries had been reported involving the problem.

David Champion, the head of auto testing at Consumer Reports, said the Fusion/Milan’s issue seemed less serious than that of the Prius.

The NHTSA investigation involves only 2010 model year Prius hybrids, which went on sale in the middle of last year. There are only 37,000 of those vehicles on the road, according to the agency.

The Prius, which is built in Japan, is not one of the eight models that was affected by two recent recalls — covering several million vehicles — to fix problems with sticking gas pedals. All of those models were built at North American plants.

NHTSA said its Office of Defects investigation has received 124 reports from consumers about problems with the Prius brakes, including four reports that involved crashes and two that resulted in injuries. No fatalities have been reported. Investigators have spoken with consumers and conducted preliminary field work.

Late Wednesday, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood spoke with Toyota president, Akio Toyoda, who reassured him that Toyota takes U.S. safety concerns seriously and puts safety at the top of the company’s priorities, according to NHTSA’s statement.

Toyota had only limited comment on the probe.

"We have heard about NHTSA’s intention to begin an investigation. Toyota will cooperate fully with NHTSA’s investigation," the company said in a statement.

Even if the solution ends up being a relatively simple and inexpensive software adjustment, the Prius braking problems come at a bad time for Toyota, which has seen its prized reputation for quality and safety badly damaged by the recalls and the news attention given to them.

The company has estimated that the problem with the gas pedals will cost it about 100,000 sales this year, and $2 billion in repair costs and lost revenue.

Other experts say the problem could be more long-lasting if consumers who once trusted the Toyota brand decide to shop elsewhere.

Toyota said Thursday that the Prius problem is a "disconnect" in the vehicle’s complex anti-lock brake system that causes less than a one-second lag before the brakes start to work. At 60 mph, though, a vehicle will have traveled nearly another 90 feet before the brakes begin to take hold.

The company also said it changed the braking system software in January for vehicles built since then. But it has yet to determine how to fix the brakes of vehicles already on the road.

– CNN’s Kyung Lah and CNNMoney.com’s Peter Valdes-Dapena and Chris Isidore contributed to this report 

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“It’s never been so bad in my working life,” the 35-year- old mechanic says in the Feb. 15 issue of Bloomberg BusinessWeek magazine as he shops at Bangalore’s Johnson Market, a century- old tangle of food stalls.

Inflation in India is at a decade high, with consumer prices rising faster than in any other major economy. Industrial output in January increased the most in 17 months, pushing up prices for raw materials. Cotton has jumped up by 13 percent since October, and the benchmark wholesale price index, up 7.3 percent in December, could hit 10 percent within two months, predicts brokerage CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets.

India’s central bank governor, Duvvuri Subbarao, is trying to cool things down. To lower the amount of capital available for lending, the Reserve Bank of India on Jan. 29 increased the cash reserve ratio for banks — the minimum they have to keep on hand — by 0.75 point, to 5.75 percent. Higher interest rates may be next. The bank has moved from “managing the crisis to managing the recovery,” Subbarao told reporters on Jan. 29.

China Comparison

As he tries to tame inflation without snuffing out the economic recovery, Subbarao has a tougher challenge than most of his Asian counterparts. In China, inflation was 1.9 percent in December, and the central bank remains focused on nurturing an economic rebound: People’s Bank of China Deputy Governor Zhu Min said Jan. 30 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that officials will “continue with current accommodative fiscal and monetary policy.”

Even with India’s thriving technology industry, it remains beholden to the vagaries of the monsoon. Less than half of India’s fields have irrigation, so a drought last summer led to food shortfalls in several states. Underdeveloped railroads and highways make it tougher to transport food, leading to shortages and higher prices in many cities.

“You don’t have enough roads, you don’t have enough railroads, you don’t have enough ports,” says Nikhilesh Bhattacharyya, an economist with Moody’s Economy.com. “That amplifies any price shock.”

Challenge for Singh

Rising prices are a headache for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. In the past 15 years, Indians have ousted two national governments after inflation eroded spending power. Higher interest rates will make it harder for companies to expand, and a 16-year high budget deficit threatens to limit increases in spending on roads and ports.

Indian companies are expressing concern at higher labor costs.

“The rise in food prices will have a cascading effect,” says M.S. Unnikrishnan, managing director of Thermax, a Pune- based maker of heating and cooling equipment. “We can’t keep paying people the same amount if their cost of living is increasing.”

Even as inflation concern escalates, India’s economic outlook is brightening. The International Monetary Fund last week boosted its 2010 gross domestic product growth projection for India to 7.7 percent from 6.4 percent in October, compared with a 5.6 percent pace for last year. Some investors are counting on that trend to continue.

“In the next decade, India is going to grow a lot more than China,” says Justin Leverenz, who has invested in India $2.5 billion of the $15 billion emerging markets fund he manages at OppenheimerFunds. That’s his largest country allocation.

Investor optimism won’t do much to help Kumar, the mechanic in Bangalore. No matter how hard Subbarao and the Reserve Bank of India try, structural problems almost guarantee that India will suffer more wild swings in food prices in the years ahead. The RBI is on the case now, says Singapore-based economist Rajeev Malik of Macquarie Group Ltd., but it’s still at the mercy of India’s weather, infrastructure, and politicians.

“There’s little,” Malik says, “that the RBI can do to fix that.”

-With assistance from Natalie Obiko Pearson in Mumbai. Editor: Chris Anstey

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