Bloomberg:
- Mortgage rates for 30-year fixed U.S. home loans fell for the second consecutive week, pushing borrowing costs to near record lows. The average U.S. 30-year rate dropped to 4.87 percent from 4.94 percent last week. The 15-year rate was 4.33 percent, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac of McLean, Virginia, said today in a statement. Falling rates helped boost home-loan applications last week to the highest level since May. The Mortgage Bankers Association’s index of applications to purchase a home or refinance rose 16 percent. Rates around 5 percent, slumping home prices and a government tax credit for first-time homebuyers are bolstering demand for housing.
- European Central Bank President Jean- Claude Trichet signaled the bank will keep interest rates at a record low to stimulate growth as the euro’s appreciation threatens to undermine the economic recovery. “The current rates remain appropriate,” Trichet said at a press conference in Venice after ECB policy makers left the benchmark lending rate at 1 percent. “Excess volatility and disorderly movements in exchange rates have adverse implications for economic and financial stability,” he said, repeating the Group of Seven’s mantra on currencies. The euro has surged 18 percent against the greenback since February, eroding export returns just as Europe emerges from its worst recession since World War II. The ECB “continued to signal a cautious stance about recent signs of recovery, implying that it would not be raising interest rates any time soon,” said Nick Kounis, an economist at Fortis Bank Nederland NV in Amsterdam. “At current levels, the situation is becoming very difficult for all industrial companies that have their costs in euros,” Airbus SAS Chief Operating Officer Fabrice Bregier said in Paris today. “We can only appeal to monetary authorities to ensure currency stability.”
- The number of Americans filing first- time claims for unemployment benefits fell last week to the lowest since January, a sign the labor market is deteriorating more slowly as the economy emerges from the recession. Applications fell by 33,000 to 521,000, lower than forecast, in the week ended Oct. 3, from a revised 554,000 the week before, Labor Department data showed today in Washington. The total number of people collecting unemployment insurance dropped in the prior week to the least since March. “Companies are now in a situation where they’ve cut enough jobs, but they’re still not hiring enough,” said Harm Bandholz, a U.S. economist at UniCredit Global Research in New York. The jobless claims report showed the four-week moving average of initial applications, a less volatile measure, fell to 539,750 last week from 548,750. The unemployment rate among people eligible for benefits, which tends to track the jobless rate, decreased to 4.5 percent in the week ended Sept. 26, from 4.6 percent the prior week.
- Inventories at U.S. wholesalers dropped in August for a 12th consecutive month, clearing the way for a pickup in orders as sales improve. The 1.3 percent decrease in stockpiles was larger than anticipated and followed a revised 1.6 percent drop in July, figures from the Commerce Department showed today in Washington. Wholesale inventories have had the longest series of declines since records began in 1992. Sales climbed 1 percent, the biggest gain since June 2008. Distributors will likely increase bookings after companies drew down inventories at a record pace in the first half of the year. The gains may give the world’s largest economy a boost in the early stages of a recovery as American factories rev up assembly lines to prevent stockpiles from dwindling even more. “The degree of decline has been extreme and will likely slow in coming months,” said Guy LeBas, chief economist and fixed-income strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC in Philadelphia. At the current sales pace, it would take 1.2 months for wholesalers to deplete the amount of goods on hand, the lowest level since September 2008. The reading was as low as 1.1 months in June 2008.
- A suicide car bombing outside India’s Embassy in the Afghan capital, Kabul, killed 17 people and wounded 73 in the second attack to hit the mission in 15 months. The attackers “came up to the outside perimeter wall of the embassy with a car loaded with explosives, obviously with the aim of targeting the embassy,” Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao told journalists in India.
- U.S. retail sales rose for the first time in 13 months as September results at American Eagle Outfitters Inc. and Kohl’s Corp. topped analysts’ estimates and discounts drew shoppers back to stores. Sales at U.S. chains open at least a year climbed 1.1 percent last month, according to Swampscott, Massachusetts-based Retail Metrics Inc. Seventy percent of retailers reported sales results that exceeded the average of estimates compiled by Retail Metrics, said Ken Perkins, president of the researcher.
- Corporate borrowing in the U.S. commercial paper market expanded the most in almost a year as the economy showed signs of recovering from the longest recession since the 1930s. Unsecured commercial paper outstanding climbed $67.6 billion, or 5.5 percent, to a seasonally adjusted $1.3 trillion in the week ended Oct. 7, the highest since May 6, the Federal Reserve said today on its Web site. That’s the biggest percentage increase since the Fed began buying commercial paper directly from companies at the end of October 2008. “As the pace of inventory liquidation continues to recede, economic recovery continues to broaden and employment levels are reduced at a slower pace, the need for CP should continue to increase validating, for now, the turn in economic output,” Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak & Co. in New York, wrote today in a note to clients.
Wall Street Journal:
- German semiconductor maker Infineon Technologies AG (IFX.XE) is raising production capacity at its Dresden plant in response to growing demand, a company spokesman said Thursday.
- Iraq hopes to award the licenses for its West Qurna-1 and Zubair oil fields in the south of the country by the end of October or early November, a senior Iraqi Oil Ministry official said Thursday. Abdul Mahdy al-Ameedi said several of the international oil companies that bid for the two fields during the country's first bidding round in June had recently accepted the ministry's payment offers.
- French telecoms and media company Vivendi SA would like to sell its 20% stake in NBC Universal this year, according to people familiar with the matter. But a final decision won't be made until at least mid-November and will depend on whether Vivendi can get a good price, the people say, leaving the fate of the movie and television company in limbo.
- The Senate Finance Committee will vote next Tuesday on an $829 billion health-care bill, after months of efforts to gain consensus on the broad-ranging overhaul measure. The bill has been shepherded by Finance Chairman Max Baucus through lengthy negotiations since early spring, and the Montana Democrat himself has been working intensively on the issue for more than a year. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the vote on the bill would take place Tuesday, which Senate aides confirmed.
- Richard Fisher is the outspoken president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and part of the hawkish wing of the central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee. We caught up with him recently and asked him to size up the global economy and the atmosphere at the Fed.
Washington Post:
- In the coming year's military spending bill, members of a House panel continue to steer lucrative defense contracts to companies represented by their former staffers, who in turn steer generous campaign donations to those lawmakers, a new analysis has found. The Center for Public Integrity found that 10 of the 16 members of the House subcommittee on defense appropriations obtained 30 earmarks in the bill worth $103 million for contractors currently or recently employing former staffers who have become lobbyists. The analysis by the Washington watchdog group found that earmarks still often hinge on a web of connections, despite at least three criminal investigations of the practice that became public in the past year. Those probes focus on a handful of defense contractors and a powerful lobbying firm that together won hundreds of millions of dollars in work from the House panel and are closely tied to its chairman, Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.).
AP:
- A federal grand jury has indicted a Jordanian teen accused of trying to blow up a Dallas skyscraper with what he thought was a car bomb, federal prosecutors said Thursday. Hosam Maher Smadi, 19, was indicted Wednesday on one count of attempting to use of a weapon of mass destruction and one count of bombing a public place, but the charges were not made public until Thursday. Each count carries a maximum sentence of life in prison, the U.S. Attorney's Office said. Smadi was arrested on Sept. 24 after he allegedly parked a truck in a garage beneath the 60-story Fountain Place office building in downtown Dallas, authorities said. Once he was at a safe distance, Smadi dialed a cell phone he thought would ignite a bomb in the vehicle — but the device was actually a decoy provided by FBI agents posing as al-Qaida operatives, according to the FBI.
Rassmussen:
- 72% Expect Tax Hikes For Those Who Make Less Than $250,000. (video)
- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi floated the idea of a national sales tax in a recent television interview, but a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 67% oppose a national sales tax on all goods and services. Twenty percent (20%) favor such a tax.
Politico:
- The U.S. Chamber of Commerce fired back at critics on Thursday, after a series of defections by member companies angry over the business lobby’s opposition to climate change legislation. “The only regrets we have is that we maybe have not always used the right language,” Chamber CEO Tom Donohue told reporters. “We don’t have regrets about our position and we don’t intend to change it.” He blamed the resignations on an “orchestrated pressure campaign” by environmental groups, refusing to name specific organizations at fault. Progressive investor groups and others have been encouraging companies that support a cap and trade system to leave the business lobby. The chamber says it supports “federal legislation to control and reduce greenhouse gas emissions” and could support a cap and trade system – just not the one passed by the House earlier this year. And they’ve threatened to sue the Environmental Protection Agency, if the agency doesn’t hold a public debate on a plan to regulate greenhouse gases.
- For American officials, the possibility of the dollar losing its long-term dominance in global commerce is a nightmare scenario, because it would likely mean sharply higher interest rates at home, and a declining ability to finance the U.S. debt. No one believes it could really happen right now, but stories like the British report this week make it seem incrementally more likely.
Washington Times:
- Cities and states are spending near-record amounts to retain their expensive cadres of Washington lobbyists, even as the worst economic recession in a generation prompts layoffs, mounting deficits and falling property-tax revenues. States and localities are on track to spend a combined $83.1 million in taxpayer money this year on Washington lobbyists, the second straight recession year to top the previously unbroached $80 million barrier, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. By comparison, officials spent less than half that much - $38.5 million - lobbying Washington in 2001.
USAToday:
- The Federal Reserve is likely this month to introduce guidelines to curb reckless pay packages in banking. The Fed will look beyond the executive suite and peer deep inside big banks, to the trading floors where individual traders place huge bets and into the cubicles where loan officers are paid for the quantity, not the quality, of mortgages they generate. "Incentive problems may have been more severe a few levels down the management structure than for chief executive officers and other top managers," Scott Alvarez, the Fed's general counsel, told Congress this year. "Poorly designed compensation arrangements for business-line employees, such as mortgage brokers, investment bankers and traders, may create substantial risks." The Fed's guidance to the banks "will apply not only to the top five or 10 executives but way down into the organization — to traders or anybody whose activities can affect the risk profile of the company," Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress last week.
Reuters:
- U.S. Democrats are looking at the possibility of a windfall profits tax on insurance companies as part of healthcare reform, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday. Pelosi said she had asked House Ways and Means Committee chairman Charles Rangel to examine the possibility and report back to her.
- Morgan Stanley (MS) likely broke a string of three straight losses in the third quarter, while chief rival Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS) extended its dominance. The growing mismatch between the last two big names on Wall Street is illustrated by analysts' forecasts: Goldman earnings are expected to more than double, while Morgan Stanley is seen just eking out a profit, lagging far behind its year-earlier results.
- The U.S. government sold $12 billion worth of 30-year debt on Thursday, the Treasury said, in an auction that attracted soft demand and ended a $78 billion week of coupon securities offerings on a weak note. The auction was a reopening of securities originally issued on August 17. Overall demand was weak based on the bid-to-cover ratio of 2.37 times the amount on offer, below the average of 2.49 at the five reopenings that took place within the past year.
Telegraph:
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