TOKYO—The global economic slowdown has taken an early toll on Formula One, with Honda quitting the high-cost sport to focus more on making and selling cars at the expense of racing them. Honda CEO Takeo Fukui told a packed news conference Friday that the Japanese automaker was unable to continue backing a team in the high-cost F1 competition and wanted to put it up for sale.

NEW YORK—Petty Enterprises is in discussions to merge its storied franchise with Gillett Evernham Motorsports, The Associated Press has learned. Multiple people familiar with the talks told the AP Thursday that the two teams were discussing a deal that would merge Petty’s famed No. 43 Dodge with GEM to become a four-car operation. They requested anonymity because the negotiations are ongoing.

Despite an increase in unemployment claims, the jobless rate in Virginia remained steady in October because of seasonal hiring. Experts, however, don’t expect that to last. The jobless rate stayed at 4.2 percent, according to data released yesterday by the Virginia Employment Commission. Virginia has the eighth-lowest jobless rate in the U.S.

At the Morris house, turkey isn’t just for Thanksgiving. Sarah Morris regularly buys a turkey or turkey breast on sale. She roasts the birds not only for dinners, but for sandwich meat, turkey salad and soups. She freezes what she can’t use right away, so she has meals stashed away for days or weeks ahead. When turkey is priced as low as 38 cents a pound, as it was recently when she bought one, “you cannot beat it,“ Morris said.

No one needed to tell former Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, a Richmond resident, that the U.S. economy is in a recession. Not with job growth declining for the past eight to nine months, the housing market in the worst condition in 40 years, and the credit market tighter than most people have experienced. Snow listed those points about the economy yesterday to about 200 people at a lunch meeting of the Kiwanis Club of Richmond at the Virginia Historical Society.

With the stock market lurching like an erratic elevator, the housing bust and credit crunch tipping the nation into recession and financial institutions struggling to find cash, it seems a wildly uncertain time to be learning about investment. Especially if you’re using nearly $5 million of someone else’s money to get the education. But that’s what about 15 Virginia Tech students are doing, and indications are they’re doing fine.

After three Wachovia Securities executives were offered a chance to move to St. Louis or lose their jobs, they spent a lot of time at the library. Every Tuesday night the trio met, hopping from one branch to another. Borne out of those gatherings was Oyster Consulting LLC, a firm that works with brokerage houses and investment advisers to help them with compliance and technology needs.

The holiday shopping season kicks off today with much at stake for retailers. Merchants and consumers are both worried about the slowing economy and how it will take its toll on them. The Richmond Times-Dispatch conducted an online chat on Monday about the upcoming holiday season and what consumers can expect.

Christmas tree growers are optimistic about sales this year, even in the midst of a national Scrooge-like economic atmosphere. For tree growers, the bright side is that shoppers feeling less wealthy this year might be more drawn to the spirit-lifting experience of choosing a Christmas tree.

Food prices continued to rise at a double-digit annual pace in the Richmond area in November, according to a monthly report by a state agency. The Virginia Milk Commission’s monthly market basket survey of food and beverages sold in the Richmond area rose to $131.30 in November, up 1.7 percent from $129.15 in October. The combined price for the 40 items in the report was up 11.3 percent from $118 in November 2007.

President-elect Barack Obama’s quick action to name his economic team was well received by people in the Richmond area business community. “His economic team will hit the ground running with no lag time and some, including myself, believe the team is already working with the existing team,“ said Kent Engelke, chief economic strategist and managing director of Capitol Securities Management.

DETROIT—General Motors is bailing out on Tiger Woods. Woods, a global icon in sports with his 14 major golf championships, has been carrying the Buick logo on his bag for the last nine years and still had one year left on his contract. But General Motors Corp. was looking to cut costs and hoard cash while trying to survive the worst sales downturn in a quarter-century. And it said today the world’s No. 1 golfer wanted more time for himself, especially with a second child on the way.

Frugality is making a comeback. Fearful that economic conditions could worsen and stay that way, Americans are showing an enthusiasm for thriftiness not seen in decades.
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A growing fear of economic deflation helped take the air out of the stock market yesterday, and another white-knuckle final hour on Wall Street pushed the Dow Jones industrials under 8,000 to their lowest close since the financial meltdown began and to levels not seen in five years.

Even Barack Obama can’t change the calendar. The president-elect said yesterday that he wanted to act urgently and deal “head on” with the nation’s economic crisis. But he recognized that his power was limited by the fact that George Bush will be running things until Jan. 20. “The United States has only one government and one president at a time,“ Obama said at his first news conference since winning the presidency three days earlier.