bentley

The gap between America's super-wealthy and the rest of us has grown so vast it's hard to even comprehend the sums they spend on their luxuries. But if you measure, say, a $200 million luxury yacht in terms of the average U.S. family's household income, the picture comes back into focus.

A building boom -- and the constrained supply of materials due to mandated energy cuts -- sent Chinese cement, metal and building-equipment stocks up Thursday. Meanwhile, Hong Kong and Japanese exporters benefited from improving consumer sentiment and falling unemployment in the U.S.

Recalling luxury cars to fix faulty hood ornaments might sound like a joke, but ultra high-end automaker Bentley Motors isn't dismissing reports that its famous "flying B" metal emblem on some models may fail to collapse in a crash: It's fixing the problem in its $200,000-plus vehicles.