Kevin Cronin, chief investment officer for Putnam Investments, finds upside in four tech stocks in an economy he believes is currently suffering from inflation and deteriorating economic growth. “The tech sector and the utility sector have been two of the more defensive sectors over the course of the last year and we do find some attractive names there,” Cronin told Erin Burnett and Mark Haines on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street.

The four stocks Cronin believes have promise are Microsoft [MSFT], Adobe [ADBE], Apple [AAPL], and EMC Corp. [EMC]. EMC Corp., based out of Hopkinton, Massachusetts, specializes in information infrastructure technology and solutions. “We debate whether Apple is a consumer company or a tech company, but we like Apple as well,” Cronin said. Cronin recognized that the current deterioration of economic growth is not only an American issue, but a global issue as well.

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Yesterday Atelier.fr reported that AOL’s AIM has released a plug-in that allows users to transfer money to friends over the popular instant-messaging service, using the peer-to-peer payment service, Revolution MoneyExchange.

“Millions of people separated by time and distance increasingly rely on AIM to communicate with friends and family,” said Jason Hogg, President and CEO of Revolution Money. “We’re proud to team up with AOL to give AIM users the benefits of the MoneyExchange integrated online payment service.”

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A new study reports that Canadians lead the world in the frequency of online bank visits.

According to the Internet media metrix company, 67.1 percent of Canadian Internet users banked online in April 2008 – 15.5 million out of Canada’s nearly 24 million internet users. This is a significantly higher percentage than the U.S., which had 44.4 percent. Other English-speaking countries were also lower that Canada, as in the U.K. 49.5 percent of internet users banked on line, and in Australia, 41.7. Canadians also led the world in online banking frequency, with an average of 8 usage days and 10.5 online banking visits per visitor in April, spending an average of 46 minutes, viewing approximately 121 pages per visitor. The leading bank in usage growth is Bank of Montreal [BMO].

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