Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:
- Bonds backed by auto loans are showing signs of a revival after GMAC LLC, Chrysler LLC and Ford Motor completed sales in the past two weeks.
- The European Central Bank and the Bank of England kept interest rates unchanged today, trying to balance the risk of faster inflation against the danger that higher credit costs will drag down economic growth.
- Crude oil may rise to $200 a barrel because of a weakening US dollar, OPEC President Chakib Khelil said today.
- General Motors(GM) said it will provide as much as $200 million to help American Axle end a two-month strike that has idled all or part of as many as 33 GM plants.

Wall Street Journal:
- Italian aerospace and defense company Finmeccanica SpA is in advanced talks to purchase New Jersey defense company DRS Technologies Inc.(DRS).
- Lenovo Group Ltd. and Asustek Computer’s new subnotebook laptop computers are new consumer entries that have flaws, most notably in battery size and life, Walter Mossberg wrote.

NY Times:
- 18-Cent Gas-Tax Holiday Makes Bad Policy Less Likely.

Washington Post:
- Several leading Iranian clerics criticized President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday for saying that the last imam of Shiite Islam, a messianic figure who Shiites believe was hidden by God 1,140 years ago, leads modern-day Iran.

Infectious Greed:
- The folks at Bespoke Research have out a fascinating new chart comparing the oil, housing, and tech runs. You can see duration as well as percentage gain – and the oil price bubble just out-did the tech bubble. It has been running longer, and it has newly climbed higher.

Reuters:
- Microsoft(MSFT) has no plans to make another approach for Yahoo Inc.(YHOO) after it pulled its $47.5 billion bid earlier this month, Microsoft’s Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie said on Thursday.

Europa:
- In the EU27, social protection expenditure¹ accounted for 27.2% of GDP in 2005. In the EU25² this ratio was 27.4% in 2005, compared with 27.3% in 2004 and 27.4% in 2003. The EU27 average continued to mask major disparities between Member States. Social protection expenditure as a percentage of GDP was above 30% in 2005 in Sweden (32.0%), France (31.5%) and Denmark (30.1%), and below 15% in Latvia (12.4%), Estonia (12.5%), Lithuania (13.2%) and Romania (14.2%).

globeandmail:
- Watch for the Sprott Asset Management IPO to be priced early Thursday, with underwriters likely to put in the pin at $10 a share, giving the hedge fund a $1.5-billion valuation.