CNBC's Week in Review: 6 Stories You May Have Missed

A Wal-Mart bribery scandal, a Federal Reserve meeting, Ben Bernanke holds a press conference, Lloyd Blankfein gives a rare interview, Spain gets a downgrade, the Netheralnds falters, and earnings, earnings, earnings.

It’d be easy to miss a story here or there amid all the major headline hubbub; even stories with some long-range import.

Here we’ve assembled some of those under-the-fold stories that caught the attention of a fair number of readers, but not on the scale of the major headlines of the day. Most of these stories involve signals or issues that could become major problems down the road. Click ahead to make sure you have them on your radar.

By Allen Wastler
Posted 27 April 2012

The U.S. is the No. 1 producer of corn, so when a story comes along suggesting that there is a looming problem for production, we should probably pay attention.

In this case the underlying problem is “super weeds” that are beginning to encroach on corn production. To fight the super weeds, you have to use pretty strong weed killer that not only kills the problem plants, but also hurts the corn. But now, a Dow chemical subsidiary has developed new strain of corn resistant to the weed killer. Problem solved, right?

Maybe not. Environmentalists and producers outside of the corn business worry that widespread use of the new corn, called Enlist, would encourage over-use of the strong weed killer, leading to damage to other crops and the development of even more super-weeds.

Steve Smith, director of agriculture at Indiana-based Red Gold, the world's largest processor of canned tomatoes, called the issue a "ticking time bomb."

Regulators are in the last stages of considering the argument, which is coming amid ongoing drought and storage concerns about the corn crop.

Guess where housing has been hot, despite all the financial hullabaloo of recent years. Bien sur!

French housing prices have climbed 121 percent since 2000, with prices in Paris rising at the fastest pace. Home values saw only a minor fall during the financial crisis, and in 2009 they started rising again, according to an analysis by Danske Bank.

"We see signs of a bubble in the French housing market and would not be surprised to see French house prices declining 10-20 percent in coming years," Danske analyst Frank Oland Hansen wrote.

Recent economic problems and higher interest rates are finally creeping into the market, pushing home demand off and slowing down construction plans. Take a clue from the other side of the ocean, when your housing market is in the gutter, it’s hard to get your economy back on track.

Many believe China is the main economic driver these days. But it’s shown some signs of slowing down. Government officials there, most notably Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, have complained some of the stall is due to bank inefficiency—four large banks control most of the lending market and they haven’t been so nimble at getting money to the smaller outfits and enterprises that could keep economic growth humming.

But here’s an eyebrow lifter…one of the bank chiefs agrees.

“I totally agree with Premier Wen that we should break the monopoly,” Jiang told CNBC’s Christine Tan on "Managing Asia." “In a healthy economy, you have to have sufficient competitiveness and anti-monopoly enforcement.”

Did you know milk prices decline before an economic decline? They do, according to one researcher. And in 2012, milk prices have been going down.

"A more sluggish domestic economy is always bad for milk prices, so we have to treat the recent pullback as a warning sign about the national economy," Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at ConvergEx in New York, said. And some other indicators seem to be flashing, as well.

But what about an inverted yield curve…a favorite predictor of economic gloom and even recession? Could the Fed’s Operation Twist and various QE efforts kill that indicator? Then maybe we should cry over spilled milk (prices).

There was a lot of political campaigning this week about student loan debt and efforts to keep interest rates on that debt from going up. But very little focused on the actual problem for the economy at large: $1 trillion in bankruptcy-resistant debt and the bulk of the people owing it, because of the bad job market, having little wherewithal for paying it off.

As default rates creep up, the problem is likely to become more and more urgent.

Just forgive the debt? That’s a pretty big taxpayer bill. And should anyone be able to just walk away from a loan commitment entirely? And what’s to keep the debt load from growing again with the next bunch of students?

Facebook’s coming-out party for the stock market has been a hot topic in the investment world. Indeed the size and scope of it, not to mention the symbolic significance for social media and the tech world at large, will make it a seminal event in some eyes.

But what may have gotten lost in the rush of the week’s earnings and international news is the likelihood that the IPO may be delayed. Why? Well, the company has had a couple of major deals lately. Those deals seemed to have grabbed the attention of CEO Mark Zuckerberg in such a way that the IPO may have to wait a bit, according to some.

Even with the delay the IPO, expected to raise $5 billion and give the company a market cap over $100 billion, will be something to behold.