Republicans plan to cut $6 trillion from the budget over the next decade (Reuters)

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) may be investigated by the FTC (Bloomberg)

The FAA will begin inspection of most older Boeing (NYSE: BA) 737s. (Reuters)

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said the US would hit its debt ceiling before mid-May (Reuters)

Silver hit a 21 year high as Brent crude rose above $121 (Reuters)

The promotion of Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) Larry Page to CEO concerns some employees and investors (Reuters)

Symantec (NASDAQ: SYMC) said targeted cyber-attacks would rise (Reuters)

Living Social, which competes with Groupon, will raise $400 million (WSJ)

Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN) will buy National Semiconductor (NYSE: N) for $6.5 billion, a 78% premium (Reuters)

A re-balancing of the Nasdaq 100 will hurt Apple’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) share price (WSJ)

Executive confidence in the economy has caused a new round of M&A (WSJ)

The problem with a Southwest (NYSE: LUV) 737 shows that older planes can be dangerous (WSJ)

Moody’s downgraded Portugal (WSJ)

Federal officials have begun a probe into whether smartphone apps are used to collect privacy data (WSJ)

Ben Bernanke shrugged off the effects of inflation (WSJ)

Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) sold its Capsugel unit for to KKR for $2.4 billion (WSJ)

Hulu’s pay service will reach 1 million subscribers (WSJ)

Wind power has lost popularity in many global markets (WSJ)

Honda Motor (NYSE: HMC) has raised its target for US sales (WSJ)

Huawei of China is a finalist for building a US 4G network (WSJ)

Google made a bid to buy a number of Nortel patents (WSJ)

Money market funds face a shortage of Treasuries (WSJ)

Corn reached a new high (WSJ)

The Federal Reserve helped 100 banks which eventually failed (NYT)

Expedia (NASDAQ: EXPE) and American Air (NYSE: AMR) settled on an agreement for e-commerce sales (NYT)

Douglas A. McIntyre