Bloomberg:
- Hiring by U.S. discount, grocery, restaurant and specialty chains in November rose to the highest level in 2009, signaling that retailers may be anticipating a gradual recovery in consumer spending, a monthly survey found. In November, 3.87 percent of applications resulted in hires, the most this year according to seasonally adjusted figures compiled by software maker Kronos Inc.
- Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he will use Canada’s co-chairmanship of next year’s Group of 20 countries meeting to urge members to put economic recovery before efforts to protect the environment. “Without the wealth that comes from growth, the environmental threats, the developmental challenges and the peace and security issues facing the world will be exponentially more difficult to deal with,” Harper said in an address to South Korea’s National Assembly.
- Gold Can’t Beat Checking Accounts 30 Years After Peak. Gold’s best year in three decades has yet to match the returns of an interest-bearing checking account for anyone who bought the most malleable of metals coveted for at least 5,000 years during the last peak in January, 1980. Investors who paid $850 an ounce back then earned 44 percent as gold reached a record $1,226.56 on Dec. 3 in London. The Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index produced a 22-fold return with dividends reinvested, Treasuries rose 11-fold and cash in the average U.S. checking account rose at least 92 percent. On an inflation-adjusted basis, gold investors are still 79 percent away from getting their money back. “You give up a lot of return for the privilege of sleeping well at night,” said James Paulsen, who oversees about $375 billion as chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management in Minneapolis. “If the world falls into an abyss, gold could be a store of value. There is some merit in that, but you can end up holding too much gold waiting for the world to end. From my experience, the world has not ended yet.”
- Gold may soon go the way of the high-technology stocks, inflated property values and record oil costs as the bubble bursts for bullion prices that surged to a record this year, said Leonard Kaplan at Prospector Asset Management. Gold’s chart is tracing a similar patter to past price bubbles in Nasdaq-traded stocks, real estate and oil. “We’re in a bubble economy,” Kaplan, Prospector Asset’s president, said by telephone. First it was stocks, and then real estate. Last year, oil was in a bubble. Now gold is in a bubble.”
- A tax on breast enhancements and other cosmetic care, similar to one proposed in the U.S. Senate’s health-overhaul legislation, doesn’t generate even a third of the $30 million a year originally projected for it in New Jersey, the only state with such a levy. That program, begun in 2004, grossed about $9 million last year, according to data from the state’s legislative services office. That doesn’t include the cost of administering the 6 percent levy, which the office doesn’t have figures on. The 5 percent U.S. tax pushed by Senate Democrats seeks to gain $6 billion over 10 years to help pay for the health overhaul. The New Jersey tax hasn’t been worth the controversy that followed, said Joseph Cryan, the assemblyman who proposed it. It has spurred sometimes angry debate from doctors over the medical necessity of procedures, and chased customers out of state, he said. It also prompted charges of discrimination against middle- class women, who make up the majority of patients, according to the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery.
- Akamai Technologies Inc.(AKAM), the largest supplier of software to make Web sites load faster, rose to the highest level in 16 months in Nasdaq trading after raising its fourth-quarter revenue forecast. Sales this quarter will be at least $230 million, Akamai said today in a statement. That compares with the $221 million average of analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg . Akamai said it’s getting more sales in its media and commerce businesses than a year earlier and expects that to continue through the end of the year. Companies including Adobe Systems Inc. and groups including the National Basketball Association use Akamai to distribute content such as video over the Internet. Akami rose 82 cents, or 3.3 percent, to $25.80 at 9:55 a.m. in Nasdaq Stock Market trading.
- Daimler AG, the world’s second- largest maker of luxury cars, said the Mercedes-Benz Cars unit’s fourth-quarter sales will rise “significantly” following the biggest gain in monthly deliveries this year. Demand for Mercedes-Benz E- and S-Class sedans boosted sales 16 percent in November to 98,400 cars and sport-utility vehicles from 84,500 a year earlier, the Stuttgart, Germany- based company said today in a statement.
- Opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi protested as Iran’s authorities tried to prevent demonstrations, timed to coincide with the annual Student Day, against the disputed June 12 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “You fight people on the streets, but you are constantly losing your dignity in people’s minds,” Mousavi, a former prime minister, said in a statement on his Kaleme.com Web site. “Even if you silence all the universities, what are you going to do with the society?”
- A Chicago man, arrested in October on charges he planned attacks against a Danish newspaper, conducted surveillance of targets in Mumbai before the 2008 terror attack there that killed about 170 people, the Justice Department said.
- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the U.S. economy faces “formidable headwinds,” including a weak labor market and tight credit that are likely to produce a “moderate” pace of expansion.“ The economy confronts some formidable headwinds that seem likely to keep the pace of expansion moderate,” Bernanke, 55, said today in the text of remarks to the Economic Club of Washington. He said inflation remains “subdued” and might even move lower.
Wall Street Journal:
- One lesson that Democrats learned from the failure of HillaryCare in 1994 is that they had to buy the silence, if not the outright support, of the business class. They've done this brilliantly by peddling the illusion that ObamaCare will "lower costs" for employers. But slowly as the legislative details become clear, it is dawning on executives of businesses large and small that reform is boiling down to a huge tax increase to finance a gigantic new entitlement. The cost and quality of care are afterthoughts that will both suffer, as a growing roll of medical experts have been writing on these pages. The tragedy is that ObamaCare is not inevitable and far better reforms are still possible—but only if the current version is defeated and Democrats are forced back to the drawing board.
- 'Poor Al Gore. Global warming completely debunked via the very Internet you invented. Oh, oh, the irony!" This quip by comedian Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show" last week was a welcome break from the steady disclosures of science gone bad. So too was the instantly viral online video called "Hide the Decline," a mocking send-up of the scientists who tried to suppress data showing global cooling. It was viewed hundreds of thousands of times on YouTube. Climategate began with the disclosure of emails and other documents showing how leading global-warming scientists had evaded peer review and refused to disclose data. Over the past week, there have been resignations and investigations of top scientists in England and the U.S. The British government is recalculating its historic weather findings in light of the now-suspect data from the Climate Research Unit in East Anglia. Even the United Nations, which had claimed "unequivocal" evidence for man-made global warming, pledges that it will review the evidence. More details will come out as the leaked documents get fully parsed, but already one certainty is the end of certainty. The one-sidedness of the views of the most influential scientists had led many to believe in the gospel of global warming.
MarketWatch.com
- Shares traded in Dubai fell sharply on Monday, led by a 10% drop in shares of Emaar, the property developer behind Burj Dubai, the world's tallest tower, which is scheduled to open next month. The DFM index, the benchmark for the Dubai Financial Market, closed 5.84% lower at 1,744.83.
The Business Insider:
- 15 Financial Firms That Bought Off The US Congress. Looming reform from Washington has the financial industry nervous. Draft rules, lots of money and skittishness means one thing: lobbying. Securities and investment players -- banks, hedge funds, industry associates, etc. -- are showering money on federal candidates and parties via employees and political action committees. OpenSecrets has the numbers. So far, more than $22 million has been donated for the 2010 election cycle, 67% to Democrats and 33% to Republicans, a record imbalance. The firms don't give it directly; instead, 86% came from individual employees and 14% from political action committees. See the huge donors here >>
- 10 Law Firms That Are Loving The Financial Crisis.
DailyBeast:
- Goldman’s(GS) PR Chief on the Hot Seat by Charlie Gasparino.
NJ.com:
- The doctor will see you now. Or at least in the few seconds it takes AT&T(T) to relay your vital signs over its broadband network. The telecommunications giant has big plans to establish a foothold in the "telehealth" industry, an emerging field that links patients and physicians across the country via video and medical-information technology. "These days, everybody is talking about medical care: Who gets it? Who pays for it? Who decides?" said Robert Miller, executive director of technical research at AT&T and a 40-year veteran at the company’s Florham Park research labs. "But few people are working on a technology solution that would lower costs and make medical care better at the same time." AT&T scientist have spent the past year working on prototypes of products aimed at the home health care market. The idea is to make everyday household items "part of the network cloud," said Miller, holding up a pair of fuzzy bedroom slippers. They look perfectly ordinary, but they are actually one of many telehealth products in the pipeline at AT&T.
LATimes:
- If you're thinking about applying for the new $6,500 home buyer federal tax credit or the extended $8,000 version, the Internal Revenue Service has just issued its first formal guidelines for you. Tops on the agency's list of advice: Cool it for a couple of weeks. Even if you qualify for one of the credits, don't send in any requests to the IRS quite yet. Wait until later this month when the agency publishes its revised Form 5405 with the key instructions needed to get you a check from the government. The forthcoming version of the form will incorporate the major changes to the tax credit program made by Congress in legislation signed by President Obama on Nov. 6. These include expanded income limits, a cap on home prices, additional documentation requirements and prohibitions against claims by dependents.
Rassmussen:
Politico:
- Senate Democrats in search of a health reform compromise Sunday zeroed in on a new alternative to a government-run insurance plan — signaling that the chances a final bill will include a pure public option are diminishing. The new idea — for the government to create a national health insurance plan similar to the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan — seemed to gather momentum as the weekend went on, and the differences between liberals and moderates on the public option became even clearer. The proposal would take the place of a new government insurance plan currently included in the Senate version of the bill, according to officials involved with the negotiations.
WebProNews:
- Google(GOOG) Ready To Advance In Russia With New Search Deal. About three months ago, Google Russia lost its CTO to Mail.ru as she became the company's deputy CTO. Now, it looks like a reunion of sorts may take place, as reports indicate that Google Russia and Mail.ru have reached a search deal. Yandex, the dominant search engine in Russia, has been Mail.ru's default search provider since January of 2006. However, that deal will soon expire, and apparently Google convinced Yandex that it provides a better search experience.
Reuters:
- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was due to leave for a trade summit in Uruguay on Monday hopeful he dispelled public panic at home and gained political ground in an ongoing purge of the nation's financial sector. Chavez sacrificed one of his closest political allies -- Science Minister Jesse Chacon -- over the weekend after his brother was implicated in mismanagement at one of seven banks the government has closed in the last eight days. The resignation of Chacon, a fellow retired military officer who took part in failed 1992 coup aimed at bringing Chavez to power, was the biggest political casualty in a cleanup of banks that initially spooked investors and panicked depositors.
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung:
- SAP AG Chief Executive Officer Leo Apotheker said the information technology industry will “take off” because of a “new wave” of technologies, citing an interview. The software business will also grow, Apotheker said. The IT sector will create more jobs in Germany than “traditional industry,” the SAP CEO said.
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