The new G.M. CEO, Frederick “Fritz” Henderson gave his first news conference today, following the directive to GM by the Obama Administration to shape up in 60 days. Henderson promised to get the job done. “We will either do it out of court or we will do it in court," but G.M. will be reinvented as a “competitive enterprise, one that wins in the marketplace.” The CEO’s paisley tie was much maligned in the online comments sections. The markets’ reaction to the new CEO was not much better: GM stock fell 34 cents, or 13 percent, to $2.36 by mid-afternoon in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. That was the worst performance among the 30 stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which rose 2 percent. Overall the markets are doing better on this last day of 2009's 1st quarter. Stocks did better in March than they did in the first two months of the year. The Dow is up 6.5% for the month, while the S&P 500 has gained 7.1% and the Nasdaq has climbed 9%. However, company quarterly reports due to come out shortly should provide a more solid understanding of the health of the economy than the extremely volatile stock market does. Despite world-wide economic downturn, Japan still looks to the markets abroad to generate profits. Japanese firms don’t believe in the domestic market, even as the country’s exports plunged 49 percent in February. Japanese Prime-Minister Taro Aso announced the second stimulus right before he left for the G-20 meeting, but the prospect of Japanese consumers pulling themselves and the economy up by the bootstraps is not very realistic. And President Obama and the First Lady have arrived in Europe on an 8-day, 5-country trip, that begins with the series of G-20 meetings in London.