Bloomberg:
Yields on Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae mortgage bonds fell as Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson considers a plan to push home-loan rates down to 4.5 percent. Yields on Washington-based Fannie’s current-coupon 30-year fixed-rate mortgage bonds fell seven basis points, or 0.07 percentage points, to 4.27 percent as of 11:15 a.m. in New York, the lowest since 2003, according to Bloomberg data. The difference between the yields and 10-year Treasuries fell six basis points to 162 basis points.
- AT&T Inc.(T) may defy the recession, posting faster subscriber growth this holiday season by tempting shoppers to unclench their wallets for luxury brands like the iPhone even as consumers scrimp elsewhere. AT&T probably will be the lone carrier to show accelerating growth this quarter, gaining 1.5 million contract customers, said Will Power, an analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co. That compares with 1.2 million a year earlier.
- Europe’s central banks cut interest rates as policy makers stepped up their response to the credit crisis that has pushed the region into a recession. The European Central Bank delivered a 75 basis-point reduction in its main refinancing rate, the most in its 10-year history, while the Bank of England cut its benchmark rate to 2 percent, the lowest level since 1951. The Swedish and Danish central banks also lowered their key rates.
- The cost of borrowing in dollars overnight in London plunged, according to the British Bankers' Association. The rate dropped 36 basis points, the largest drop since Oct. 30, to 0.52 percent. That's 48 basis points below the Federal Reserve's 1 percent target rate.
- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke urged using more taxpayer funds for new efforts to prevent home foreclosures, saying the private sector is incapable of coping with the crisis on its own. The Fed chief outlined four possible options, including buying delinquent mortgages and providing bigger incentives for refinancing loans. He called for addressing the “apparent market failure” where lenders aren’t modifying mortgages even in cases where it’s in their own economic interest to do so.
- Crude oil may dip below $25 a barrel next year, Merrill Lynch said. Global oil demand will contract in 2009 as economic growth slows to its weakest since 1982, Merrill Commodity Strategist Francisco Blanch said today. In October, when oil was around $100 a barrel, the bank predicted that prices may slide to $50. “A temporary drop below $25 a barrel is possible if the global recession extends to China and significant non-OPEC cuts are required,” Blanch said.
- Crude oil fell below $45 a barrel to the lowest since January 2005 as the deepening recession in the U.S., Europe and Japan cuts fuel consumption. Pump prices have followed futures lower. Regular gasoline, averaged nationwide, dropped 1.4 cent to $1.789 a gallon, AAA, the largest U.S. motorist organization, said on its Web site today. It’s the lowest price since January 2005. The fuel has tumbled 57 percent from the record $4.114 a gallon reached on July 17. “There is no sign where it will stop,” said Tom Bentz, senior energy analyst at BNP Paribas in New York.
- Gold demand in China, the world’s second-largest consumer, may stagnate this year as volatile prices dissuade buyers and industrial usage drop because of the economic slowdown, an industry group said.
- Wheat prices fell to the lowest in 18 months as demand for U.S. supplies waned, while the amount of grain available worldwide increased, spurring buyers to seek bargains. U.S. exporters sold 207,576 metric tons in the week ended Nov. 27, a low in the year that began June 1, Department of Agriculture data showed today in a report. As demand falls, supplies are expected to increase. Global production may jump 12 percent to a record 682.4 million tons in the year ending May 31, the USDA has said. Farmers in Australia may collect 20 million tons, up 53 percent from the prior year’s drought-damaged crop, the agency said. Growers in the U.S., the largest exporter of the grain, may increase production 21 percent to 68 million tons, the government said.
- Stephen Schork Says Crude Oil Demand to ‘Deteriorate.’ (video)
- Dubai Speculators Quit as Lending Drought Bursts Desert Bubble. The classified ads in Dubai read like an obituary for a real-estate market that until a few months ago seemed immune from the global credit crisis.
- Toll Brothers Inc.(TOL), the largest U.S. luxury homebuilder, reported its worst annual results since going public more than two decades ago and gave a bleak forecast for next year. The stock is jumping 10% on the news.
- US corporate bonds have benefitted from “risk migration,” and dividend-paying stocks may be next, according to Michael Shaoul and Timothy Brackett, analysts at Oscar Gruss & Sons. “The next stage of ‘risk migration’ would see capital cross asset classes” and move into shares of larger companies that have relatively high dividends and are best positioned to keep paying them, Shaoul and Brackett wrote.
- Measles deaths tumbled 74 percent worldwide from 2000 through 2007, the result of a campaign to vaccinate children in developing countries, world health officials said today.
Wall Street Journal:
- Leveraged-buyout legend Thomas H. Lee, who barreled into hedge funds when the market was booming, is considering shrinking or even shutting down two funds that had $1.5 billion in assets after suffering losses of about 40% this year, people familiar with the situation said.
- International Business Machines Corp.(IBM) is hoping to convince corporate customers that they no longer need Microsoft Corp.(MSFT) IBM says it has created a "Microsoft-free" virtual desktop -- a complete suite of applications that run on a backroom server and don't require Microsoft software or costly desktop hardware.
- A bad year for hedge-fund titan Kenneth Griffin got much worse last month. Mr. Griffin's Citadel Investment Group lost about 13% in November, bringing the Chicago hedge fund giant's investment decline this year to 47%, according to investors.
MarketWatch.com:
- Dimon steers JPMorgan(JPM) through financial storm. Tough tactics, focus on risks, helped giant bank pounce as rivals fell.
NY Post:
- Buyout kingpin Stephen Schwarzman finds himself knocking on more doors and pressing more flesh than ever before as the private-equity boom grinds to a halt. Schwarzman has been able to raise some $8 billion for his new fund - $12 billion shy of his targeted amount, sources say. But even as the gilded age of buyout shops seemingly comes to an end, Schwarzman is betting that he can pull off a turnaround. "If you look at the last recession, there were times in the 1990-1 period where it wasn't much fun to be in the private-equity business in terms of one's existing portfolio. But at the end of the day, this fund generated 19 percent returns," he's stated publicly.
- NBC Universal's cost-cutting moves may soon hit its CNBC unit. Sources say that as many as 80 staffers could be getting pink slips as early as today. The expected cuts are said to be across the board but will not affect the familiar on-air faces on the business channel.
Charlotteobserver.com:
- The immediate future will continue to be rough, but the recession should shift to economic recovery sometime next year, the chief executives of three of Charlotte's largest employers and a top Federal Reserve Bank official said Wednesday.
USA Today:
- American combat deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan totaled 11 in November, the lowest combined level since the US started fighting more than five years ago.
Boston Globe:
- Eight years after selling its chain of community newspapers, the Boston mutual fund giant plans a broad revamp of its fidelity.com website to give top billing to business news articles and personal finance columnists from around the Web, plus budgeting tips and other research from outsiders. Investors will still keep the same access to their accounts, but overall the changes previewed by Fidelity executives yesterday show the company's home page will resemble financial portals such as News Corp.'s Marketwatch.com and Yahoo.com's finance section.
StreetInsider.com:
- Citi Adds Advanced Auto Parts(AAP) and Google(GOOG) to Recommended List
RockyMountainNews:
- Level 3 CEO Jim Crowe is bullish on the future of the U.S. economy and the broadband industry, once the current economy can get the blood flowing again.
Reuters:
Microsoft Corp (MSFT) is cautiously optimistic about holiday sales of its XBox 360 game console, but even flat sales in 2009 could be remarkable for the video game industry, a senior executive said on Wednesday.
- Blockbuster Inc (BBI), the leading U.S. DVD rental company, said it planned to initiate a 99-cent DVD rental offering for the first time in its history on thousands of titles starting this January.
AFP:
“If we fix the oil price at $30 a barrel in the budget, we will have to abandon many of our economic projects,” Ahmadinejad said. He said “oil prices will be low for some time.” Ahmadinejad said on Nov. 23 that Iran can survive even with an oil price as low as $5 a barrel, and that the economy is “self-reliant.”
AccountancyAge:
- EU is poised to regulate hedge funds following a public consultation launched by Charlie McCreevy.
This Day:
Nigeria is currently losing 397,697 barrels per day of crude oil as a result of production deferment caused by the crisis in the oil-rich Niger Delta and other operational reasons, according to official statistics by the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR).
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