3-9-2010 (Tue) Market Activity
Markets, Currency, and Futures for Tuesday, March 9, 2010
^From MarketWatch
^From x-rates.com
^From MarketWatch
3-9-2010 (Tue Afternoon) Activities
- President Barack Obama will corral on Tuesday key Republican and Democratic senators whose support is critical for passing a climate change law, seeking to jump-start stalled efforts to overhaul energy policy - Reuters
- Many hedge funds expect Greece’s debt crisis to spread to other countries, and some managers in the $1.5 trillion industry think the country’s problems will lead to the breakup of the euro, according to a survey released Tuesday – MarketWatch, Alistair Barr
- Can California Declare Bankruptcy?What about Greece? – Slate, Christopher Beam
- Marco Rubio and the Republicans who love him – Washington Examiner, Byron York
- Whither securitization? It’s big, central, complex and famously operated in the shadows. In many ways, it has become, over the past four decades, the engine of the financial markets, for everything from credit card receivables to car loans to mortgages to corporate loans and debt – The Deal, Vipal Monga
- Why every nation cooks its books — As we see with Greece, lying can be a recipe for disaster. But for politicians, the advantages of deception far outweigh any rewards for honesty. (And are we ready for the bitter truth?) - MSN Money, Jim Jugak
3-9-2010 (Tue Morning) Activities
- U.S. stocks fluctuated on the anniversary of the 2009 bear-market low for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index as financial companies and materials producers retreated, while phone companies and industrial shares rose – Bloomberg
- Job openings in the U.S. rose in January for a second consecutive month…….Openings increased by 193,000 to 2.72 million - Bloomberg
- The number of U.S. households with a net worth of at least $1 million jumped 16 percent last year after dipping sharply during the financial crisis – Reuters
- China, the world’s biggest holder of foreign exchange reserves, renewed its commitment to the U.S. Treasury market on Tuesday but said it would be wary of substantially boosting its gold holdings – Reuters
- A new poll on Monday found signs of trouble ahead for President Barack Obama and his Democrats on national security issues such as the handling of terrorism suspects – Reuters
- Mortgage Principal Writedown Won’t Save Housing – CNBC, Diana Olick
- Massa — New conservative media hero – Politico, John Bresnahan
- Amazon cuts off Colo. affiliates because of tax - San Francisco Chronicle (AP)
- Don’t Let Obama’s Anti-Gun Silence Breed Complacency — Inaction on gun control doesn’t make President Obama a Second Amendment loyalist – American Thinker, Anthony W. Hager
- Obama’s Iran Policy Collapses to the Accompaniment of Mockery Around the Globe — Obama’s Iran policy is collapsing to the accompaniment of open mockery around the globe – American Thinker, Joel J. Sprayregen
- German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker called for urgent regulation of credit-default swaps to shore up the euro area and prevent a rerun of the Greek financial crisis – Bloomberg
- The U.S. dollar is the favorite currency of hedge-fund managers, with the Brazilian real a “distant second,” – Bloomberg
- Greece’s debt crisis may lead to slower U.S. growth, a rising dollar and turmoil in credit markets that may make it more difficult for cash-strapped states such as California to borrow. And as President Barack Obama meets today with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, there’s little the U.S. can do - Bloomberg
- Freshman Democratic Representative Eric Massa announced his resignation on Friday, saying an ethics investigation into alleged misconduct toward a male staff member would tear his family and staff apart – Reuters
- >>>Collapse of the American Empire: swift, silent, certain — Commentary: Historians warning of a sudden ‘thief at night,’ an ‘accelerating car crash’…….Yes, America is on the edge – MarketWatch, Paul B. Farrell
- No tea for Wall Street in fall elections — Commentary: Industry donations are flowing to incumbents. Tea party? When it comes to elections, Wall Street traditionally has but one party of choice: the winning party – MarketWatch, David Weidner
- Public Pension Funds Are Adding Risk to Raise Returns – CNBC (NYT)
- Obama’s Housing Shell Game; Short Sales and Relocation Assistance — We’ve now come full circle. Instead of trying to get people to stay in their homes, Obama is willing to pay them to leave - Mike Shedlock
- One of the hallmarks of a vibrant economy is that it is boosted by a consumer who has access to credit, expanding employment opportunities and real (adjusted for inflation) income growth. None of those conditions currently exists – SafeHaven, Michael Pento
- Signs of a China Credit and Real Asset Bubble Are Now Unmistakable! - SafeHaven, Reggie Middleton
- To add insult to injury after increasing the money supply, the Feds then lend billions of dollars to bank all of which played a huge part in making a bad situation even worse. The Feds inflate the money supply and then freely give this money out to individuals who really don’t need it but those who really need it have a hard time even getting $250 bucks – SafeHaven, Sol Palha
- Pelosi’s grip on House slips –Her handling of the Rangel scandal reveals a loss of authority over the Democratic Caucus – Politico, Jonathan Allen
- Stress Test Update – Calculated Risk [3 graphs]
- Rubio Now Leads Crist in Florida GOP Senate Race by 2-to-1 - Politics Daily, Bruce Drake
- Vacation Homes for One Buck — The vacation-ownership industry is awash with deals. Are they safe? – Smart Money, Kristen Bellstrom
3-8-2010 (Mon) Market Activity
Markets, Currency, and Futures for Monday, March 8, 2010
^From MarketWatch
^From x-rates.com
^From MarketWatch
3-8-2010 (Mon Afternoon) Activities
- U.S. state and local governments are likely to keep cutting jobs even as the broader labor market shows signs of emerging from the worst slump since World War II, economists said – Bloomberg
- Equity mutual funds are burning through cash at the fastest rate in 18 years, leaving them with the smallest reserves since 2007 in a sign that gains for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index may slow – Bloomberg
- The widely held outlook that U.S. unemployment will ease this year may be overly rosy if companies continue to boost productivity at faster-than-usual levels, economists from the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank said in a study released on Monday – Reuters
- New short-sale push may speed up bank loan losses — A new government push to clean up bad home loans could dent bank earnings because the industry may have to take losses on the assets sooner than some investors expect – MarketWatch, Alistair Barr
- Bernanke Finally Fingers Mark-to-Market - National Review, Brian S. Wesbury and Robert Stein
- Census: A Little Too Personal - SafeHaven, Ron Paul
3-8-2010 (Mon Morning) Activities
- The cost to protect against defaults on corporate bonds is at the lowest in six weeks and U.S. investment-grade issuance is up fivefold as optimism builds that Greece’s budget crisis will be contained - Bloomberg
- >>>The State of the US Economy Is Worse Than It Looks – SafeHaven, Gerard Jackson
- The director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office on Monday said the U.S. fiscal outlook is “bleak,” with a worrisome rise in debt levels looking likely - Reuters
- Hurt Locker vanquishes Avatar: patriotism triumphs over anti-Americanism at the Oscars – Telegraph.co.uk, Nile Gardiner
- Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou said his country’s fiscal crisis could spread beyond Europe unless “unprincipled speculators” and “ill- regulated” financial markets are reined in. “Europe and America must say ‘enough is enough’ to those speculators who only place value on immediate returns, with utter disregard for the consequences on the larger economic system,” – Bloomberg
- Officers: Pakistan arrests American-born al-Qaida…….Gadahn has appeared in more than half a dozen al-Qaida videos, taunting and threatening the West and calling for its destruction. A U.S. court charged Gadahn with treason in 2006, making him the first American to face such a charge in more than 50 years - Yahoo! News (AP)
- Support for Democrats in Iowa fades as anti-incumbent sentiment grows – Washington Post, Peter Slevin
- Weekly Summary and a Look Ahead – Calculated Risk
- Giant waste on the high seas expanding rapidly, scientists claim — Oceanographers have revealed that a vast floating island of rubbish in the Pacific Ocean has doubled in size over the last decade and is now twice the size of Texas – Telegraph.co.uk, Nick Allen
- Pentagon Lawyers Push Back Against Holder’s GITMO Attorneys — Some Defense Department lawyers are worried. Actually, quite a few of them are. They see a train wreck coming with the Obama administration’s evolving Guantanamo Bay detainee policies – Big Government (Capital Confidential)
- Dubai World, the state-owned holding company in talks to renegotiate about $26 billion of debt, will ask banks for permission to delay loan repayments when it presents a plan this month – Bloomberg
- Brazil will raise tariffs on 102 U.S.-made products, including cars, boats and chewing gum, for 365 days in retaliation for subsidies paid to U.S. cotton producers – Bloomberg
- A Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. plan to auction more than $1 billion in assets seized from failed banks next month, including a loan to build a W Hotel in Atlanta, may trigger writedowns that weaken lenders nationwide - Bloomberg
- U.S. regulators are encouraging public pension funds that control more than $2 trillion to inject capital directly into the banking system by buying failed lenders – Bloomberg
- In California’s Napa Valley, producer of the most expensive U.S. wines, 2010 may be a vintage year for foreclosures as the industry is squeezed by falling land values and a consumer shift to cheaper brands. As many as 10 wineries and vineyards in Napa will change hands in distressed sales or foreclosures this year and next – Bloomberg
- >>>>>Massa: Rahm Emanuel “Would Sell His Own Mother” For Votes – RealClearPolitics
- >>>>>Rep. Massa Blast Dems: He Was Set Up…Hoyer Lied…May Rescind Resignation - BreitbartTV
- Portugal became the latest euro zone country to announce austerity measures to rein in a ballooning budget deficit as bond markets eased pressure on debt-stricken Greece on Monday after a French pledge of EU help – Reuters
- The West faces multigenerational challenge –Commentary: Shift of global power has upsides and down. For years, a common lament among the Western industrialized countries has been that Asian nations save too much and don’t do enough consuming. The critics’ bottom line: By stimulating domestic demand, the emerging economies would encourage imports, curbing exports; reduce their excessive trade surpluses; and bring the world into better equilibrium – MarketWatch, David Marsh
- China can grow, but can it innovate? What economic crisis? After a blip last winter, China is growing at more than 8% a year, and the scale and speed at which the country is building a modern infrastructure are mind-boggling – CNN Money (Fortune), Michael Elliott
- Program Will Pay Homeowners to Sell at a Loss - CNBC (NYT)
- Stocks’ rise no longer weakens the dollar — The relationship between the dollar and stocks that helped define last year’s stock market rally is over - LA Times (AP)
- Medicare Part B Therapy Caps: A Preview of Life under Obamacare - American Thinker, Anthony Ughetti
- Guess Who’s Coming to Your House! Federal funding and supervision for a vast expansion of government intrusion into family life. This is the Nanny State on steroids. All buried in the Senate Obamacare bill being forced down out throats – American Thinker, Ken Blackwell
3-7-2010 (Sun) Activities
- Latest Round-Up of Obama Poll Ratings by State - Politics Daily, Bruce Drake
- North Korea threatened to proceed with nuclear weapons development and renounce the 1953 armistice that ended combat in the Korean War, as it condemned a planned military exercise between South Korea and the U.S. “There is no reason whatsoever,” to adhere to the armistice, a North Korean military spokesman said today – Bloomberg
- German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said the Greek crisis shows the euro region should consider creating an organization with powers similar to the International Monetary Fund – Bloomberg
- Bulls may get more room to run this week on the anniversary of the March 2009 lows — if U.S. stock investors see more signs of stability after Friday’s rally on smaller-than-expected job losses – Reuters
- Iceland Rejects IceSave; Does No Mean No? - Mike Shedlock
- Britain is prepared to be flexible in reaching a solution with Iceland to repay debts, finance minister Alistair Darling said on Sunday, adding it would take many, many years for Britain to be reimbursed - Reuters
- Portugal’s long-term budget austerity plan encompasses spending cuts via reducing tax breaks and containing public sector wages, but entails no Greece-style wage cuts or tax hikes, local media said on Sunday – Reuters
- President Barack Obama’s top healthcare official on Sunday seized on a new report to urge quick passage of healthcare reform legislation, but a top Democrat said they did not yet have the votes in Congress - Reuters
- >>>The Swaps That Swallowed Your Town – CNBC (NYT)
- Missouri Budget Overstates Revenues By Up To $1 billion; Indiana Revenue Falls Short; Budget Battles In Washington; Budget Gaps In Kansas. Budget news from state after state is grim. When will this matter? No one knows but service cutbacks are coming, as are huge layoffs - Mike Shedlock
- Graphs: Duration of Unemployment — Here are two graphs that show the weeks unemployed over the last 40 years – Calculated Risk
- UK’s economic recovery ‘is under threat’ — The risks to economic recovery over the medium term have escalated, one of Britain’s leading business groups has warned, cutting its growth forecasts for 2011 – Telegraph.co.uk, Angela Monaghan
- Zimbabwe’s white farmers plan to seize government property — White Zimbabwean farmers whose land was grabbed by Robert Mugabe plan to turn the tables by seizing Zimbabwean-owned property in South Africa - Telegraph.co.uk, Peta Thornycroft and Sebastien Berger
- Wanted: short, fat white man to succeed Barack Obama — As the glamour of Barack Obama fades, Americans are likely to turn to entirely different presidential candidates next time, argues Toby Harnden in Washington - Telegraph.co.uk, Toby Harnden
- >>>China ready to end dollar peg — The head of China’s central bank has given the strongest signal yet that the country will move away from pegging its currency to the dollar, but he said any changes would be gradual – Telegraph.co.uk, Garry White
- >>>Roubini Forecasts 4% Yuan Gain, End to China Dollar Peg in Second Quarter - Bloomberg
3-6-2010 (Sat) Activities
- Total U.S. consumer credit rose $4.96 billion in January, its first rise in a year and the largest for any month since mid-2008, Federal Reserve data showed on Friday – Reuters
- U.S. corporate borrowers amassed the most cash relative to debt on record through the fourth quarter and will likely preserve cash levels this year, supporting corporate bonds, Morgan Stanley said on Friday – Reuters
- President Barack Obama’s budget plans would rack up $9.8 trillion more debt by 2020, or $1.2 trillion more than the White House has forecast, the Congressional Budget Office said on Friday – Reuters
- Friday’s better-than-expected jobs report, while cheering stock investors, hasn’t taken the threat of a double-dip recession off the table – CNBC, Jeff Cox
- Congressional estimates show grim deficit picture – Yahoo! News (AP)
- Icelanders Set to Reject Depositor Bill in Referendum – Bloomberg
- General Motors Plans to Reinstate 661 Dealers to Shore Up Sales – Bloomberg
- Chinese central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan said the nation should be careful in exiting anti-crisis policies, suggesting that the government may not let the yuan appreciate soon against the dollar – Bloomberg
- Deutsche Bank on Saturday denied a magazine report that its financing of a Greek trade deal seven years ago was “questionable.” - Reuters
- French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the European Union must support Greece or risk destroying the euro as Prime Minister George Papandreou heads for Paris to lobby support for the debt-laden country. “If we created the euro, we cannot let a country fall that is in the eurozone,” – Bloomberg
- Greek debt crisis could raise problems for U.S. and other countries – Washington Post, Neil Irwin
- President Barack Obama said on Friday a forthcoming review of the U.S. nuclear posture would reduce the number and role of nuclear weapons in Washington’s national security strategy – Reuters
- The week’s top videos – MarketWatch
- MarketWatch’s top stories: March 1-5 – MarketWatch
- U.S. consumers are starting to look like a frugal, debt-fearing lot as they pay down billions of dollars in credit-card obligations. But an alarming trend is emerging: A small but growing number of people are skipping mortgage payments in favor of paying their credit-card bills – MarketWatch
- Economists have long been predicting commercial real estate could be the next day of reckoning for the financial markets, with a wave of defaults looming as billions of dollars in troubled loans come due in the coming months. But a little-noticed bill introduced in January could help bring a new source of desperately-needed liquidity to the sector: foreign investment – CNN Money (Fortune), Janet Morrissey
- Credit Union Pays Savers to Close Their Accounts; Deposit Insurance Makes Saving Accounts a Losing Proposition for Banks - Mike Shedlock
- Construction Developer Says Banks Suddenly Playing Hardball, Asks “Mish, What’s Going On?” – Mike Shedlock
- Unofficial Problem Bank List at 641 Banks – Calculated Risk [table]
- Thursday, Virginia became the first state to enact a law exempting its residents from any health insurance mandates. It’s one of 36 states where lawmakers are trying to head off potential federal legislation - Politics Daily, Sandra Fish
3-5-2010 (Fri) Market Activity
Markets, Currency, and Futures for Friday, March 5, 2010
^From MarketWatch
^From x-rates.com
^From MarketWatch
3-5-2010 (Fri Afternoon) Activities
- German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the use of derivatives must be restricted to halt market “speculators” from exploiting the Greek fiscal crisis. “We must succeed at putting a stop to the speculators’ game with sovereign states,” - Bloomberg
- President Barack Obama said today’s reports on unemployment and payrolls show the measures the government is taking to spur hiring are working, and he called on Congress to extend aid to the unemployed – Bloomberg
- A new real estate cost to watch for: Developer’s private transfer fee - Washington Post, Kenneth R. Harney
- Two of the three Republicans hoping to challenge Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid this fall have hit or passed the 50 percent mark in widening their leads over him, according to a Rasmussen Reports poll conducted March 3 – Politics Daily, Bruce Drake
- Germany pours cold water over hopes of a Greek bail — Germany says it will not bail out Greece, while Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the Greeks have not asked for financial help for dealing with its troubled economy – Telegraph.co.uk
- Beware The Carry Trade Collapse — When interest rates rise, don’t be surprised how low markets can go - Forbes, Richard Lehmann
- Jim DeMint took to the Senate floor and the pages of the Washington Times earlier this week to expose a plan by the White House to seize over 10 million acres of land in nine Western states – HotAir
- Greek police clashed with demonstrators protesting sweeping budget cuts Friday as the government sought support from Germany to help it avoid default, only to be told not to expect a single cent. Police fired tear gas after a union leader was struck and hurt by youths, an AFP reporter on the scene said, during protests against sweeping new budget and spending cuts announced Wednesday – Breitbart (AFP)
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