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What are you up to, DFW?

Americans won’t use the coins, preferring $1 notes. But the US keeps minting them anyway, and the Fed estimates it already has enough $1 coins to last the next 10 years.

And at the current rate, the inventory will grow to $2bn (£1.3bn) by 2016, the Fed estimates.

Yet the piles have continued to grow because the law requires the US Mint to issue four new presidential coins each year even if most of the previous year’s coins remain in government vaults.

The Wall Street Journal claims that

Nonfinancial companies were sitting on about $8.4 trillion in cash as of the end of March, or about 7% of all company assets, the highest level since 1963. Even before its [$1.5 Billion] bond issue, IBM had $12.3 billion in cash and short-term investments, which accounted for about 12% of all its assets.

That’s 8 1/2 Trillion, with a T. Sitting on the sidelines, waiting.  We need to end this uncertainty, and get back to the business of making money.

Obama ready to show mortgage holders some love

Rumors are running wild from Washington to Wall Street that the Obama administration is about to order government-controlled lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to forgive a portion of the mortgage debt of millions of Americans who owe more than what their homes are worth. An estimated 15 million U.S. mortgages – one in five – are underwater with negative equity of some $800 billion. Recall that on Christmas Eve 2009, the Treasury Department waived a $400 billion limit on financial assistance to Fannie and Freddie, pledging unlimited help.

The move, if it happens, would be a stunning political and economic bombshell less than 100 days before a midterm election in which Democrats are currently expected to suffer massive, if not historic losses. The key date to watch is August 17 when the Treasury Department holds a much-hyped meeting on the future of Fannie and Freddie.

What is happening is that the president’s approval ratings are continuing to erode, as are Democratic election polls. Democrats are in real danger of losing the House and almost losing the Senate. The mortgage Hail Mary would be a last-gasp effort to prevent this from happening and to save the Obama agenda. The political calculation is that the number of grateful Americans would be greater than those offended that they — and their children and their grandchildren — would be paying for someone else’s mortgage woes.

According to Blizzard, StarCraft II had already managed to rack up over a million sales in its first day alone, making it the best-selling PC game of the year in just 24 hours. Blizzard says it compiled the figures using a combination of public data, reports from distribution partners and its own internal company records.

The U.A.E. market is relatively small for Canada’s Research In Motion Ltd., which makes the BlackBerry smartphone. But the suspension comes amid unease by at least one other government, India, over the inability to monitor or review electronic communications via the device in criminal, terrorist or national-security investigations. A Saudi Arabian official said the Communications and Information Technology Commission ordered telecommunications firms to block BlackBerry messaging services later this month, according to Zawya Dow Jones.

GM's Electric Lemon

Quantifying just how much taxpayer money will have been wasted on the hastily developed Volt is no easy feat. Start with the $50 billion bailout (without which none of this would have been necessary), add $240 million in Energy Department grants doled out to G.M. last summer, $150 million in federal money to the Volt’s Korean battery supplier, up to $1.5 billion in tax breaks for purchasers and other consumer incentives, and some significant portion of the $14 billion loan G.M. got in 2008 for “retooling” its plants, and you’ve got some idea of how much taxpayer cash is built into every Volt.

Data comes courtesy of the public sales information on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, and Amazon.co.jp, with sales split out for each platform and territory, and pre-orders disregarded.

PC Sales from Gamasutra follows after the jump.

North America:

1. Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty (Blizzard),
2. Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty – Collector’s Edition (Blizzard),
3. Starcraft Battle Chest (Blizzard),
4. World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade (Blizzard),
5. World of Warcraft (Blizzard).

UK:

1. Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty (Blizzard),
2. Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty – Collector’s Edition (Blizzard),
3. The Sims 3: Ambitions (EA Games),
4. Football Manager 2010 (Sega),
5. The Sims 3 (EA Games).