Bloomberg:
- The US dollar advanced from a 14-month low against the euro as a report showing fewer U.S. housing starts last month than economists forecast sent stocks lower and discouraged demand for higher-yielding assets. Canada’s dollar fell against most of its 16 most-traded counterparts tracked by Bloomberg after the nation’s central bank amplified a warning about the currency’s strength, saying it will “more than fully offset” signs of economic growth. The U.S. currency also gained on speculation its earlier decline to within a half-cent of $1.50 per euro was hard to sustain. “Overall, it feels like a bit of exhaustion,” said Brian Dolan, chief currency strategist at FOREX.com, a unit of the online currency trading firm Gain Capital in Bedminster, New Jersey.
- The cost of protecting European high-yield corporate bonds from default fell for a second day as better-than-expected company earnings stoked optimism the global economy is healthy enough for governments to start unwinding fiscal stimulus. Credit-default swaps on the Markit iTraxx Crossover Index of 50 companies with mostly high-yield credit ratings declined 5 basis points to 500, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. prices at 10:07 a.m. in London. That’s near the lowest level since a new series of the index started trading Sept. 21, and indicates an improvement in perceptions of credit quality.
- Crude oil fell from a one-year high as U.S. equities dropped and the dollar rebounded, reducing the appeal of commodities as an alternative investment. “The oil price going further up from here is perhaps the biggest risk to the global economic recovery,” said Kaha Kiknavelidze, a managing partner at London-based Rioni Capital Partners LLP, a hedge fund that specializes in emerging markets. “When we see that floating storage eliminated it means demand is coming,” El-Badri said. “We are seeing an $80 oil price that is a little bit high.” “There’s still a lot of oil out there,” said Bill O’Grady, chief market strategist at Confluence Investment Management in St. Louis. “Demand in the developed would is still sluggish while what we see in China is impressive. Overall demand is a bit better than last year but that’s faint praise.”
Wall Street Journal:
- Iran's OPEC governor said Tuesday the weak U.S. dollar is driving oil prices above $80 a barrel and the producer group is unlikely to raise output unless demand picks up. "$80 today is equivalent to $45 in 2001," Mohammad Ali Khatibi told Zawya Dow Jones.
- China's Ministry of Commerce has made a preliminary ruling to impose tariffs of as much as 36% on certain nylon imports from the U.S., saying the imports have damaged the domestic industry. The move is the latest in a series of Sino-U.S. trade disputes after the Obama administration said in September that it would impose duties of between 25% and 35% on imports of tires from China for the next three years. China followed that decision with probes of potential antidumping measures on U.S. auto parts and chicken. The preliminary nylon ruling comes a week before senior leaders of China and the U.S. meet at the Joint Commission of Commerce and Trade in Hangzhou, China.
- President Barack Obama is expected to announce a series of initiatives Wednesday aimed at boosting credit to small businesses, an administration official said, as the White House tries to address a complicated issue many think is dragging on the economy. The White House will move to increase the caps on existing Small Business Administration loans. It will also include measures to make it easier for small banks to access funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The Obama administration has struggled to figure out what to do for small businesses and has spent months trying to get their initial program off of the ground.
CNBC:
- Boston Scientific warned on Tuesday that a proposed tax in the U.S. health care reform bill that cleared the Senate Finance Committee last week could have serious consequences for the company, including job losses. "The bill that came out of the committee last week makes absolutely no sense and would be very damaging to Boston Scientific, and the medical device industry as a whole," Boston Scientific(BSX) Chief Executive Ray Elliott said during a post-earnings conference call. "In a nutshell, it would raise costs and lead to significant job losses.
NY Times:
- The Wall Street giants that received a financial lifeline from Washington may have no compunction about paying big bonuses to their dealmakers and traders. But their willingness to deliver “thank you” gifts to President Obama and the Democrats is another question altogether. Mr. Obama will fly to New York on Tuesday for a lavish Democratic Party fund-raising dinner at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel for about 200 big donors. Each donor is paying the legal maximum of $30,400 and is allowed to take a date. Four of the seven “co-chairs” listed on the invitation work in finance, and Democratic Party organizers say they expect that about a third of the attendees will come from the industry. But from the financial giants like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup that received federal bailout money — and whose bankers raised millions of dollars for Mr. Obama’s election — only a half-dozen or fewer are expected to attend (estimated total contribution: $91,200). Part of the reason, several Democratic fund-raisers and executives said, is a fear of getting caught in the public rage over the perception that Wall Street titans profiting from their government bailout may use their winnings to give back to Washington in return. And the timing of the event, as the industry lobbies against proposals for tighter regulations to address the underlying causes of last year’s meltdown on Wall Street, has only added to the worry over public appearances. “There are sensitivities there,” said Scott Talbot, a lobbyist for the industry’s Financial Services Roundtable. Mr. Obama remains a potent fund-raising draw. Plunging into the 2010 midterm campaigns last week, he raised more than $3 million in one night in San Francisco, speaking at a similar $30,400-a-couple dinner and a larger rally with tickets at $1,000 and under. In addition to the big-ticket dinner on Tuesday, Mr. Obama will also address a more small-d democratic event at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom, where roughly 2,500 donors paying $1,000 or less will also make cellphone calls to promote his health care overhaul. Over the next five days he will appear at fund-raisers for Bill Owens, a candidate for a House seat in New York; Gov. Jon Corzine of New Jersey (himself a former Goldman Sachs banker); Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts; and Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut. Current Democratic fund-raisers say their 2008 take from Wall Street may also have benefited from the personal connections of the party’s chief fund-raiser that year, Philip D. Murphy, a former top executive at Goldman Sachs. (He is now ambassador to Germany). And as in recent years, Democrats are raising far more from Wall Street executives than Republicans, according to campaign finance data sorted by the Center for Responsive Politics. The Democrats, including House and Senate party committees and the party itself, have raised about $5.4 million through the first eight months of the year, while the Republicans took in just $2.7 million. Employees associated with the financial firms that received bailout money from the federal government contributed almost $70,000 to the Democratic Party in the first half . Most of that, $60,800, came from one couple who each contributed the legal limit. At the time of the donation, the husband, John M. Noel, had recently retired as head of a unit of the insurance giant AIG called AIG Travel Guard. Mr. Obama still has the loyalty of other powerful friends on Wall Street. Among the other chairmen of the Tuesday dinner in New York is Robert Wolf, head of the American investment banking division of the Swiss giant UBS Group. Mr. Wolf raised more than $500,000 for Mr. Obama’s campaign and sits on a White House panel of outside economic advisers.
Washington Times
- KINSTON, N.C. | Voters in this small city decided overwhelmingly last year to do away with the party affiliation of candidates in local elections, but the Obama administration recently overruled the electorate and decided that equal rights for black voters cannot be achieved without the Democratic Party. The Justice Department's ruling, which affects races for City Council and mayor, went so far as to say partisan elections are needed so that black voters can elect their "candidates of choice" - identified by the department as those who are Democrats and almost exclusively black. The department ruled that white voters in Kinston will vote for blacks only if they are Democrats and that therefore the city cannot get rid of party affiliations for local elections because that would violate black voters' right to elect the candidates they want.
Business Insider:
- CNBC has released a solid iPhone app that is slightly better than the competition. It could be a whole lot better if it had live video on it. Of course, that would upset cable companies, which CNBC doesn't want to do. So instead we get an easy to use app with real time stock quotes, a good flow of information and access to CNBC video clips an hour after they've aired.
LA Times:
PCMag.com:
- Apple’s(AAPL) Mac Line Receives Massive Makeover. On Tuesday, Apple updated virtually its entire Mac lineup, including its desktop iMacs, a new unibody MacBook, the Mac mini, and a new wireless Mighty Mouse. The iMac line has been totally reworked with 16:9 widescreens that are significantly larger than the previous 20-inch and 24-inch models. The new Mac mini looks the same, but of course has some new internals. The Mac mini is joined by a new server-based sibling: same case, but dual drives and no optical. Last but not least, the new iMacs come with a new, wireless multi-touch Magic Mouse.
Rassmussen:
Politico:
- For voters, the economy outpaces all other issues by a wide margin, according to a new Public Strategies Inc./POLITICO poll. As the nation struggles to climb out of a recession, 45 percent rated the economy as the most important issue in deciding their vote if the congressional election were held today, followed by 21 percent who said government spending, 20 percent who chose health care reform and 9 percent who said the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Just 4 percent ranked climate change as the top issue. Economic worries also led a majority of Americans to place jump-starting the economy ahead of concerns about the environment. Even as the Obama administration is pushing for climate protection legislation, 62 percent of those polled agreed that “economic growth should be given priority, even if the environment suffers to some extent.”
- A White House attempt to delegitimize Fox News – which in past times would have drawn howls of censorship from the press corps – has instead been greeted by a collective shrug. That’s true even though the motivations of the White House are clear: Fire up a liberal base disillusioned with Obama by attacking the hated Fox. Try to keep a critical news outlet off-balance. Raise doubts about future Fox stories. But most of all, get other journalists to think twice before following the network’s stories in their own coverage. "We're doing what we think is important to make sure news is covered as fairly as possible," a White House official told POLITICO, noting how the recent ACORN scandal story started because Fox covered it “breathlessly for weeks on end.” “And then you had a couple days of breast-beating from The Washington Post and The New York Times about whether or not they were fast enough on the ACORN story,” the official said.
USAToday:
- Turbulent political and economic times roiling the nation are expected to diminish initial participation by households in next year's Census despite a $326 million marketing blitz that far outspends previous Census campaigns. Mounting mistrust of government, rising identity theft and record numbers of foreclosures could discourage people from mailing back Census forms next year, according to the Census Bureau. A Census analysis shows that about 64% of households are likely to mail in their forms without additional prodding from Census workers — down from 67% in 2000.
Reuters:
Financial Times:
Financial Times Deutschland:
- Kenneth Rogoff, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, said there’s risk that some euro-area countries might default as a result of the global crisis, citing an interview. Rogoff said he can imagine state defaults in the 16-member region in about five year’s time. The US and Germany cannot afford to support all endangered states for a prolonged period, the Harvard professor was quoted as saying, adding that the deficit situation in countries like Iceland, Romania and Ukraine, which are being buttressed by the IMF, is extremely strained.
Daily Star:
- The unemployment rate in the Middle East may rise to as high as 11% this year as a result of slowing economic growth, citing an International Labor Organization official.
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