Sunday, January 10, 2010

Monday Watch

Weekend Headlines
Bloomberg:

- AIG(AIG) Sees Signs of Housing Bottom, Cuts Markets From Risk List. American International Group Inc.’s mortgage insurance unit removed 45 geographic areas from its riskiest underwriting category, saying housing markets in those regions are improving. “Some markets have begun to show signs of maybe reaching a trough,” Steve Buisson, a senior vice president at United Guaranty, said in an interview. “In general, we will see a very slow recovery, but more importantly, it’s the fact we are reaching the bottom on average. We still have a long way to go in some parts of the country.” United Guaranty, which tracks nearly 400 U.S. markets, joins rival Genworth Financial Inc. in adjusting underwriting guidelines as some areas show signs of improvement. Housing prices in 20 U.S. cities rose 0.4 percent in October, the fifth straight monthly gain, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller Index. Genworth Chief Executive Officer Michael Fraizer said in an October conference call that the company reduced underwriting restrictions in about 200 markets. “As we saw conditions in many housing markets improve in recent months, we took appropriate steps to adjust our guidelines,” Fraizer said. “This change notably broadens where we will pursue new business and we expect it to help drive growth in new insurance written as we move into 2010.”

- The cost to protect against defaults on corporate bonds in North America fell, reversing an earlier increase following an unexpected decline in U.S. payrolls last month. Credit-default swaps on the Markit CDX North America Investment-Grade Index Series 13, which is linked to 125 companies and used to speculate on creditworthiness or to hedge against losses, fell 0.5 basis point to a mid-price of 77.25 basis points as of 4:10 p.m. in New York, according to Barclays Capital. The index, which is trading near a two-year low reached two days ago, has dropped five of the past six weeks as investors that fled the market in 2008 continue to search for higher-yielding assets in an improving economy.

- Orange groves in Florida probably had isolated damage from a weekend freeze as forecasters called for even colder weather tonight and record-low temperatures that may ruin more fruit. Florida, the world’s biggest grower after Brazil, may lose 3 percent to 5 percent of the state’s orange crop as temperatures plunge tonight, according to Dave Samuhel, a meteorologist at AccuWeather Inc. Orange-juice futures surged to a two-year high on Jan. 8 in New York on concern the cold will reduce output already expected to be the lowest in three years. Temperatures in Orlando tonight may fall to a record 25 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 3.9 Celsius), and Tampa’s forecast is for 26 degrees, the lowest ever for that date, Samuhel said today from State College, Pennsylvania. Both cities reached lows of 29 degrees overnight, he said. Oranges can be damaged when temperatures fall below 28 degrees for several hours or more.

- Pandora Media Inc. plans to add its Internet-radio service to more cars and Blu-ray DVD players as the company tries to expand its audience by taking advantage of the growth in Web-enabled devices. The company is in talks to form more partnerships like the one announced this week with Ford Motor Co.(F) to put the service in four of its vehicles, Pandora founder Tim Westergren said yesterday in an interview at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas.

- Intel Corp.(INTC) will finally crack the home-electronics market in 2010 as the chipmaker’s products become central to bringing the Internet to television screens, said Senior Vice President Eric Kim. “It’s going to take off like a rocket,” Kim, who heads Intel’s digital-home unit, said at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. “We have a full solution now.”

- Panasonic Corp., the world’s largest maker of plasma televisions, expects to sell as many as a million 3-D TVs in the next year in the U.S., Europe and Japan. The company will begin shipping in March, Yoshi Yamada, North American chairman and chief executive officer for Osaka, Japan-based Panasonic, said today in an interview. Prices haven’t been set. The U.S. will be the biggest market.

- The suicide bomber who killed seven CIA operatives and a Jordanian officer in Afghanistan Dec. 20 said in a video taped before his death that the attack was revenge for the killing of a Pakistani militant leader. In the video, Hammam Khalil al-Balawi, who blew himself up in a Central Intelligence Agency compound in Khost, said all jihadists who had been sheltered by Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistani leader Baitullah Mehsud had an obligation to strike U.S. targets, according to an e-mailed statement today from Alexandria, Virginia-based IntelCenter, which tracks Islamist videos.

- U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling said spending cuts will be the “toughest” in 20 years if the Labour Party continues in office, The Times reported today, citing an interview with Darling. “My priority is to get borrowing down,” Darling was quoted as telling the newspaper. “The next spending review will be the toughest we have had for 20 years.”

- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said that businesses have no reason to raise prices following the devaluation of the bolivar and that the government will seize any entity that boosts its prices. Chavez said he’ll create an anti-speculation committee to monitor prices after private businesses said that prices would double and consumers rushed to buy household appliances and televisions. The government is the only authority able to dictate price increases, he said. Chavez devalued the bolivar as much as 50 percent on Jan. 8 for the first time in almost 5 years, as last year’s decline in oil revenue caused the economy to contract an estimated 2.9 percent, its first recession since 2003. The government set a multi-tiered currency system that Chavez says will stimulate national production by making imports more expensive. The devaluation may add to inflation by 3 percent to 5 percent this year, Finance Minister Ali Rodriguez said. The government forecast an inflation rate of 20 percent to 22 percent this year, after consumer prices rose 25 percent, according to the National Consumer Price Index.

- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said a decision by the Palestinians to name a West Bank square after a woman responsible for the deaths of Israeli civilians was threatening peace by “encouraging terror.” “It isn’t only missiles and rockets that endanger security and push peace further off,” Netanyahu said in remarks at the weekly Cabinet meeting broadcast on Israel Army Radio. “Words can also be dangerous. Sadly there has been a retreat in this area in recent months, both within the Palestinian Authority and by its leaders.”


Wall Street Journal:

- Wall Street's Latest Derivative: Goldman(GS) Parodies. Exclusive Club Sends Up a Mighty Bank With Lampoons of Old Tunes. Lloyd Blankfein and Goldman took the brunt of the jokes at the 78th induction ceremony for Kappa Beta Phi, a secretive and exclusive Wall Street fraternity. More than 175 people gathered to induct new members in a ceremony that's a throwback to a chummy world long before television and the Internet. The group dressed up in drag, sang satiric songs and threw dinner rolls at the new members -- known as "Neophytes" -- at a ballroom of Manhattan's St. Regis Hotel.

- Interview with Hank Greenberg: Can AIG Be Saved? The former chairman wonders why Goldman Sachs(GS) got paid in full on its AIG exposure while AIG itself was forced into slow-motion liquidation. Goldman Sachs has a new enemy—as if it needed another one. Hank Greenberg, as we sit in his Park Avenue office, is telling me how to do my job, saying reporters need to get to the bottom of the events that preceded and followed the government bailout of AIG, the insurance company he built into a global giant. In particular, they need to get to the bottom of the part played by the investment bank of Goldman Sachs. He waves a sheaf of press reports from the New York Times, Washington Post and McClatchy papers about the firm's doings before and during the subprime meltdown. "We're dealing with a jigsaw puzzle where all the pieces are not in the box. Bit by bit, we're getting the pieces. The pieces are failing into place and the picture on the face of the puzzle is not a pretty picture." Let me get this straight. Is Mr. Greenberg saying the machinations of Goldman Sachs were responsible for the disastrous failure of AIG amid the recent financial crisis? "Well, it certainly wouldn't be difficult to come to that conclusion."(very good article)

- Google(GOOG) VP of Engineering Andy Rubin: We're Building a Nexus One for Enterprise.

- Banks are boosting their lending to hedge funds and private-equity firms to levels unseen since before the financial crisis, raising their risk levels and adding fuel to the buying power of key players across the stock, debt and buyout markets. Banks and investment banks, including Citigroup Inc., Bank of America Corp., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley are offering levels of borrowing—known as leverage—that they haven't provided in more than two years, according to people familiar with the banks and funds. "You'll see some funds start to crank up leverage this year," says Jon Hitchon, Deutsche Bank's co-head of global prime finance. The bank this year plans to make more leverage available to these investors, he says. It is generally "a pretty straightforward business."

- A growing number of state regulators are urging the Obama administration to slow the rollout of proposed federal rules curbing industrial greenhouse-gas emissions, saying the administration's approach could overwhelm them with paperwork, delay construction projects and undercut their own efforts to fight climate change. The concerns echo some criticisms that business groups -- including the American Petroleum Institute and the National Association of Manufacturers -- have voiced about the potential consequence of new regulations, though the states generally don't challenge the legality of the proposed regulations, as some business groups have. Indeed, many state regulators continue to say they support the Environmental Protection Agency's effort to regulate greenhouse gases. Their concerns, they say, have more to do with how quickly such rules should be phased in, and how to pay for an expansion in regulatory oversight at a time when their budgets are in the red.

- If the public has to choose between creating jobs and spending billions to scrub invisible heat-trapping gases from the sky, jobs will win. That's why the campaign to combat climate change is morphing, at least politically, into an economic-development drive with an environmental twist. Many billions of dollars are being spent on clean energy, even amid the recession. One key to combating climate change will be increasing that investment so the economy keeps growing but coughs out less carbon. Most talk focuses on a "cap and trade" system, in which companies would buy and sell permits to emit dwindling amounts of greenhouse gases. But nations gathered at last month's Copenhagen climate summit declined to create a global cap-and-trade scheme. They couldn't agree on which countries should reduce their emissions the most. In Washington, proposals to launch a U.S. cap-and-trade program are crashing into similar fights among regions and industries. So what's the alternative? A grab bag of more granular steps, each sold as creating "green jobs." One example: $2.3 billion in federal clean-energy manufacturing tax credits, whose recipients President Barack Obama announced Friday. One aspect of a cap-and-trade system is emerging as a political liability: the chance for Wall Street traders to profit from the buying and selling of greenhouse-gas emission permits.

- Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak's push for restrictions on abortion funding in the health-care overhaul is anathema to many liberal supporters of the bill. But Mr. Stupak sees them as a natural mix of the economic liberalism and social conservatism that defines his home district, Michigan's economically depressed Upper Peninsula. "You find it wherever you go," said Mr. Stupak, a 57-year-old former state trooper and practicing Roman Catholic. "People say, 'We applaud the amendment, but we don't like the bill.'" Bucking his party leadership, Mr. Stupak led the charge for an amendment bearing his name that prevents women with government-subsidized coverage from enrolling in a plan that covers abortion. The Senate bill lacks the language. That gives Mr. Stupak a critical role as lawmakers hash out the final legislation they plan to send to President Barack Obama as soon as this month.

- The Health Choices Czar. The House and Senate Debate How Much to Limit Insurance Flexibility.

- Bill Clinton will campaign for Ms. Coakley this week, and Mr. Brown can expect an assault linking him to George W. Bush, if not Herbert Hoover. But a sign of their worry is that Democrats are whispering that even if Mr. Brown wins, they'll delay his swearing in long enough to let appointed Senator Paul Kirk vote for ObamaCare. The mere fact that Democrats have to fight so hard to save Ted Kennedy's seat shows how badly they have misjudged America by governing so far to the left.


MarketWatch.com:

- China's exports ended a 13-month-long decline in December, boosted by improving external demand for its goods and services, while imports also improved sharply due to strong industrial demand for commodities, narrowing the country's trade surplus. December exports jumped 17.7% from the year-earlier month, trouncing the 4% rise expected by economists in a Reuters survey and marking a sharp rebound from the 1.2% fall in November.

- 2009 top performer sees V-shaped recovery, housing shortage.

- NBC plans to return talk-show host Jay Leno back to the late-night spot, ending his prime-time show, after protests from local affiliate stations, according to a published report.


CNBC.com:
- Real estate developer Barry Gosin said he thinks commercial real estate prices have hit bottom. "We are calling a bottom," Gosin told CNBC Friday. "Our view is that the rents have priced forward, that values have come down significantly, and that some time this year prices will start to turn." Gosin is CEO of Newmark Knight Frank, one of the largest real estate management firms in the U.S. His firm owns many properties, including the Flatiron Building, in New York. According to Gosin, rents have dropped throughout the country, except for Washington, D.C. and that trend has encouraged new demand. "The guys who run my offices around the country tell me that companies are starting to think about spending money, they are looking, and they are making decisions," Gosin said. However, he cautioned that it doesn't mean it's going to be a robust recovery.

- Biotechnology company Genentech Inc.(DNA) says the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved its new drug to treat rheumatoid arthritis.

- Automaker Honda Motor Co plans to produce 3.59 million units in the world next financial year to start in April, up 6 percent from this financial year's outlook on rising sales, Asahi newspaper reported on Saturday. The world's 7th-biggest automaker expects to see sales grow in emerging nations such as China, as well as a recovery in sales in the United States, Asahi said without citing a source.


Business Insider:

- This chart from Calculated Risk shows the decline in jobs as a percentage of the work force at the peak. To date in this recession, we've lost more than 8 million jobs. The decline as a percentage of the workforce is the worst since the Great Depression, matching the sharp but short drop in 1948, as the war machine wound down. Equally important, the duration of these job losses, as well as the lack of a sharp recovery (at least so far), suggests that the problem will be with us for a long while. We're now 24 months into this decline, and we're still at the bottom. By this point in most previous recessions, we had already recovered all of the lost jobs.

- Fox News Makes More Money Than CNN, MSNBC, And NBC-ABC-And-CBS News Combined.


NY Times:

- Even before a landmark Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance law expected within days, a series of other court decisions is reshaping the political battlefield by freeing corporations, unions and other interest groups from many of the restrictions on their advertising about issues and candidates. Legal experts and political operatives say the cases roll back campaign spending rules to the years before Watergate. The end of decades-old restrictions could unleash a torrent of negative advertisements, help cash-poor Republicans in a pivotal year and push President Obama to bring in more money for his party.

- From San Diego to Mount Shasta, voters are expressing mounting disgust over California’s fiscal meltdown and deteriorating services, and they are offering scores of voter initiatives that seek to change the way the state does business. Over 30 such initiatives — among over 60 total initiatives so far — are now wending their way toward the ballot box. Every day, it seems another vexed voter adds a proposal to the fray. “The feeling is one of revolt,” said John Grubb, the campaign director for Repair California, a coalition behind a pair of initiatives to call a constitutional convention. “And come January, they will start negotiating the budget again, and there will be more fear and loathing. The feeling here is that California state government is broken, and we need not a little fix, but a big fix.”


NY Post:

- Sen. Charles Schumer "betrayed" Hillary Rodham Clinton by working with other senators to make sure a Democrat would win the White House in 2008 -- actively recruiting Barack Obama to run as an alternative to his New York colleague, an explosive new book claims.

- I try not to overdose on the fear factor, but the shocking intelligence failure in the Christmas airline plot isn't the only national security night mare facing America. While we were all absorbed with the underwear bomber, the Iranian nuke mess took another big turn for the worse. President Obama's end-of-the-year deadline for the mad mullahs to make a deal on uranium enrichment came and went, but not without incident. There were three, none good.

- It must have been a sad holiday season for investor Peter Thiel. The Silicon Valley investor, who turned a $500,000 investment in Facebook five years ago into gold, is having the opposite effect when it comes to running his hedge fund, which lost 10 percent in December and ended 2009 down a whopping 25 percent.


CNNMoney.com:

- Here's an early peek at what automakers will be unveiling next week at the nation's biggest car show.

- Prices at the pump have jumped 14 cents over the past few weeks, working their way closer to the $3 mark, according to a survey published Sunday. The average price nationwide of a gallon of self-serve regular is $2.74, the Lundberg Survey found. That's the highest price since October 2008. "It's very possible" prices will keep jumping in the coming weeks," said publisher Trilby Lundberg.

- 10 of the year's coolest gadgets.


Business Week:
- Endless Oil. Technology, politics, and lower demand will yield a bumper crop of crude.

- If Nvidia(NVDA) Chief Executive Jen-Hsun Huang has his way, tablets will also be a showcase for the graphics chips that are his company's mainstay. "When you look at these things, they're basically screens," Huang says of tablets. "We're really good at making things look good on screens."


Washington Post:

- China's lobbying efforts yield new influence, openness on Capitol Hill. Ten years ago, U.S. lawmakers publicly accused the China Ocean Shipping Co. of being a front for espionage and blocked plans to expand its Long Beach, Calif., port terminal over fears that Chinese spies would use it to snoop on the United States. By last year, Congress was seeing the state-owned Chinese behemoth in a far kinder light. Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) authored a resolution applauding the company for employing thousands of Americans and helping keep the waters of Alaska clean. Rep. Stephen F. Lynch (D-Mass.) hailed the firm on the House floor, calling its chief executive "a people's ambassador" to the United States after it rescued Boston's port -- and thousands of jobs -- when a European shipping line moved out. The congressional about-face illustrates a dramatic increase in China's influence on Capitol Hill, where for years its lobbying muscle never matched its ballooning importance in world affairs. Members of Congress, lobbyists and other observers said China's new prominence is largely the result of Beijing's increasingly sophisticated efforts to influence events at the center of U.S. power -- and a growing realization among U.S. lawmakers that China has become a critical economic player across America.

- With property prices soaring in key cities, many investors and bankers worry that China has the next great real estate bubble waiting to be popped. The Chinese government is worried, too. On Sunday, the nation's cabinet, citing "excessively rising house prices" in some cities, said it will monitor capital flows to "stop overseas speculative funds from jeopardizing China's property market." It also said that any Chinese family buying a second home must make a down payment of at least 40 percent. For investors, many of the usual bubble warning signs are flashing.


CNN:

- In addition to diplomacy and sanctions, the United States has developed contingency plans in dealing with Iran's nuclear facilities, a top U.S. military commander told CNN's Christiane Amanpour. Gen. David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, did not elaborate on the plans in the interview, to be aired Sunday. But he said the military has considered the impacts of any action taken there. "It would be almost literally irresponsible if CENTCOM were not to have been thinking about the various 'what ifs' and to make plans for a whole variety of different contingencies," Petraeus told Amanpour at the command's headquarters in Tampa.


9to5Mac:

- During his stay in the hospital, Steve Jobs had to have seen what an absurd nightmare of a bureaucracy the US health care system was and at the same time what benefit a tablet could bring to the whole operation. Doctors often use bulky, three pound tablets to do their work. Can you imagine Jobs in the hospital seeing people running around with an unreliable Windows Vista tablet. "So let me get this straight. You pay $3000/apiece for that and there are 10,000 employees here and there are thousands of hospitals like this all over the world? And it runs Windows?" This isn't just conjecture according to Jason Wilk at TinyComb. Apple has spent the last 6 weeks courting doctors at Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles...


DailyFinance:

- Another day, another new product from Google (GOOG), the sprawling technology giant that has been on a tear lately. Now comes "Near Me Now," a service that makes it fast and easy to learn about your immediate vicinity with a much simpler interface than other local search applications use. It launched last week on the mobile version of Google.com. When an Apple (AAPL) iPhone or Android phone lets Google.com grab its user's exact location via these phones' GPS capabilities, Google adds a "Near Me Now" button to its Web search interface, automatically making it very easy to find local information.


Politico:

- Republicans have a very real chance at orchestrating a Massachusetts miracle in this month’s special Senate election to determine Ted Kennedy’s successor, at least according to a new Democratic poll out tonight. The shocking poll from Public Policy Polling shows Republican state Sen. Scott Brown leading Democratic Attorney General Martha Coakley by 1 point, 48 percent to 47 percent, which would mean the race is effectively tied. Among independents, who make up 51 percent of the electorate in the Bay State, Brown leads Coakley 63 percent to 31 percent. Just 50 percent of voters view Coakley favorably, while 42 percent viewing her unfavorably. Brown, who began an advertising blitz this month, sports a strong 57 percent favorability rating, with just 25 percent viewing him unfavorably — very strong numbers for a Republican in the heavily Democratic state. On the issue of health care, which Brown has emphasized that he would be the deciding vote against, 47 percent said they opposed the plan in Congress, while 41 percent supported it. “The Massachusetts Senate race is shaping up as a potential disaster for Democrats,” said PPP pollster Dean Debnam.. “Martha Coakley’s complacent campaign has put Scott Brown in a surprisingly strong position and she will need to step it up in the final week to win a victory once thought inevitable.”

- Democrats worried about protecting the homeland in wake of the Christmas Day terror plot are also working to protect one of their own: Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. With at least seven congressional committees investigating the failures behind the terror plot, Democrats are carefully gaming out the testimony of Napolitano to spare her from the worst of the GOP criticism. First, they may shield her from the Senate Judiciary Committee, keeping conservative senators like Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and others from bashing her in a major public forum. She may instead appear before the Senate Commerce Committee, where some expect her to receive gentler treatment.

- Top Republicans called for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to step aside Sunday — and accused the Democrats and the media of holding the GOP to a double standard on matters of race. In an interview with POLITICO, National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn (R-Texas) said it would be "entirely appropriate" for the Nevada Democrat to relinquish his leadership post over comments about Barack Obama's skin color and lack of a "Negro dialect." And like Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele and Senate GOP Whip Jon Kyl — both of whom also called for Reid's resignation Sunday — Cornyn suggested that any Republican who said what Reid said would be under attack from Democrats, leading African-Americans and the media. “There’s a big double standard here,” Steele said during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “What’s interesting here, is when Democrats get caught saying racist things, an apology is enough. If that had been [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) saying that about an African-American candidate for president of the president of the United States, trust me, this chairman and the [Democratic National Committee] would be screaming for his head, very much as they were with Trent Lott.”


Rasmussen Reports:

- The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 25% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-three percent (43%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -18 (see trends).


Real Clear Politics:

- California, a laboratory of liberalism, is spiraling downward, driven by a huge budget deficit.


LA Times:

- In the worst economic storm in decades, a Beverly Hills company has an ambitious plan to build a $1.1-billion cruise ship, set to cast off in 2013. But instead of offering four or five-day excursions like typical cruise lines, the business plans to sell half the cabins as floating homes. Opulent cabins aboard the ship Utopia now range in price from about $3.7 million to $26 million. But even at these prices, a key draw will be location.


SeekingAlpha:

- US Regulators Wishing for the Derivatives Fairy. Overall, the Europeans are quite dismayed at the trajectory of regulatory and legislative initiatives here in the US.


InvestmentNews:

- The Managed Funds Association is jumping into the data collection business with an effort to build the most comprehensive hedge fund industry database available. Similar to the way the Investment Company Institute maintains a detailed database of the mutual fund industry, the MFA is seeking to become the foremost depository of hedge fund data.

The ultimate objective, according to MFA representatives, is not to compete with existing hedge fund databases, but to strengthen and fine-tune the association’s ability to lobby lawmakers.


Benzinga:

- 2010 Could Be A Harbinger of An Explosive M&A.


mocoNews.net:

- Qualcomm's(QCOM) Brew Platform Gains Speed With Commitments From AT&T(T) and Sprint(S).


USAToday:

- Probe finds toxic metal in children's jewelry. Barred from using lead in children's jewelry because of its toxicity, some Chinese manufacturers have been substituting the more dangerous heavy metal cadmium in sparkling charm bracelets and shiny pendants being sold throughout the United States, an Associated Press investigation shows. The most contaminated piece analyzed in lab testing performed for the AP contained a startling 91% cadmium by weight. The cadmium content of other contaminated trinkets, all purchased at national and regional chains or franchises, tested at 89%, 86% and 84% by weight. The testing also showed that some items easily shed the heavy metal, raising additional concerns about the levels of exposure to children. Cadmium is a known carcinogen. Like lead, it can hinder brain development in the very young, according to recent research.


Reuters:

- A senior U.S. Federal Reserve official said the pace of job loss had slowed even though unemployment remains high and the challenge for policy makers will be to adjust extensive securities purchases. "Forces driving the U.S. economic recovery include stronger-than-expected global growth, especially in Asia," said James Bullard, the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank president, in a statement describing remarks prepared for delivery in Shanghai on Monday. "Other forces include recovering consumption expenditures, less stress in financial markets and stabilization in the housing sector," said Bullard, who is a voter on the Fed's interest-rate setting panel.


Financial Times:

- Goldman Sachs(GS), JPMorgan Chase(JPM) and other big banks are bracing for a renewed public and political backlash against their compensation plans as they prepare to unveil multi-billion dollar bonus packages. The prospects of near-record paydays so soon after the financial services industry appeared to be heading for collapse without government aid has ignited a public furor, emboldened politicians and agonized top bank executives, who concede that this year’s compensation plans will leave critics outraged and employees underwhelmed.

- Portugal has been warned that it faces a credit rating downgrade unless the government takes firm measures to reduce its swollen budget deficit. “If Portugal wants to avoid a downgrade, it is going to have to take meaningful, credible steps to get the deficit under control,” said Anthony Thomas, a senior sovereign risk analyst with Moody’s credit rating agency.

- The beleaguered US commercial real estate sector has been attracting a new wave of money from sources including foreign banks, US private equity firms, and a leading Chinese sovereign wealth fund. The growing interest from investors is a sign of stabilization, making it less likely that worsening commercial real estate conditions will sink banks and choke off a US recovery. "We believe the real story is that capital is ready to buy, even though it may not be so visible today," said Bob Steers, co-chairman of Cohen & Steers, a real estate investment firm. Recently, state-owned China Investment Corporation has enlisted Cohen & Steers, Angelo Gordon and Morgan Stanley to identify commercial real estate opportunities, people familiar with the matter say. A public sign of such activity came on Friday when Colony Capital won a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation auction for $1bn of commercial property loans formerly held by failed banks in states hit hard by the real estate downturn.


TimesOnline:
- Brrrr, the thinking on climate is frozen solid. A period of humility and even silence would be particularly welcome from the Met Office, our leading institutional advocate of the perils of man-made global warming, which had promised a “barbecue summer” in 2009 and one of the “warmest winters on record”. In fact, the Met still asserts we are in the midst of an unusually warm winter — as one of its staffers sniffily protested in an internet posting to a newspaper last week: “This will be the warmest winter in living memory, the data has already been recorded. For your information, we take the highest 15 readings between November and March and then produce an average. As November was a very seasonally warm month, then all the data will come from those readings.” After reading this I printed it off and ran out into the snow to show it to my wife, who for some minutes had been unavailingly pounding up and down on our animals’ trough to break the ice. She seemed a bit miserable and, I thought, needed cheering up. “Darling,” I said, “the Met Office still insists that we are enjoying an unseasonably warm winter.” “Well, why don’t you tell the animals, too?” she said. “Because that would mean they are drinking water instead of staring at a block of ice and I am not jumping up and down on it in front of them like an idiot.”

- BYD, the Chinese carmaker part-owned by Warren Buffett, is launching an audacious assault on the market in the United States. The company, whose motto is “build your dreams”, will use next week’s North American International Auto Show in Detroit — widely considered to be the most important on the world motor show circuit — to unveil plans to bring its e6 vehicle to America.


Telegraph:

- Barack Obama receives race apology after book tells all about 2008 election campaign. Harry Reid, the senior Democrat in the US Senate, has apologized for saying that Barack Obama's electoral chances had been improved because he was "light skinned" and spoke "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one". In a rapid damage limitation exercise, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada telephoned America's first black president as well as several black colleagues in Congress and civil rights leaders after his remark was reported in a new book on the 2008 campaign. His gaffe is one of its many behind-the-scenes claims, none of which have yet been denied, that may prove uncomfortable to almost every major player in the race. According to advanced excerpts, Game Change, which is published tomorrow [tues], throws new light on the bitterness of the battle for the Democratic nomination and could prove especially embarrassing for Bill Clinton. It alleges that when efforts to persuade the late Edward Kennedy to endorse his wife's presidential bid fell flat when the former president reportedly told his old friend that just a few years ago Mr Obama would have been serving them coffee. The revered senator later announced his pivotal endorsement of Mr Obama. With Mr Reid facing an uphill challenge to be re-elected in November's mid-term elections, in a state with diverse racial groups, it is his blunder however that could prove most costly. According to the book: "He [Reid] was wowed by Obama's oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama - a 'light-skinned' African American 'with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,' as he later put it privately." Mr Reid said in a statement: "I deeply regret using such a poor choice of words. I sincerely apologize for offending any and all Americans, especially African-Americans for my improper comments." The book, by Mark Halperin of Time magazine and New York [CORR] magazine's John Heilemann, is based on 300 mostly anonymous interviews. It also claims that Mrs Clinton was initially pleased when her New Hampshire campaign chairman publicly mentioned Mr Obama's self-confessed previous drug use. She wanted to continue the line of attack but aides persuaded her it would be a public relations disaster. It claims that Mrs Clinton had a "war room within a war room" to deal with the issue of Bill's alleged womanizing, and that aides became convinced in 2006 that he was having a long-standing affair. Vice President Joe Biden is portrayed as a major irritant to Mr Obama and his aides. The young senator showed a rare outburst of anger after a string of Biden gaffes, culminating in the assertion that as president Mr Obama would face an international crisis within six months. "How many times is Biden gonna say something stupid?" Mr Obama reportedly demanded of his advisers on a conference call. As running mates, they barely spoke and seldom campaigned together.


El Mercurio:

- Codelco, Chile's state-owned mining company, produced a record 1.7 million metric tons of copper in 2009, citing the company's president. Codelco President Jose Pablo Arellano said production rose by about 15% over 2008.


Xinhua:

- The most severe icing situation in the past 30 years in the coast off east China's Shandong Province continued to worsen amid cold snaps, oceanic officials said Sunday. Sea ice appeared last week along the coastline of the Bohai Sea and northern Yellow Sea as cold fronts pushed the temperature down to minus 10 degrees Celsius, said Guo Kecai, deputy general engineer of the North China Sea Branch (NCSB) of the State Oceanic Administration. The outer edge of the ice sheets in the Liaodong Bay, Bohai Bayand northern Yellow Sea extended 60 nautical miles, 15.5 nautical miles and 20 nautical miles, respectively, according to the NCSB. With another cold front expected Monday, the sea ice along the coastline would further develop, experts said. More than 200 fishing boats were frozen at a port in Dongying Village in the Jiaozhou Bay. Fishermen said the ice sheet could be20 cm to 30 cm thick. In the waters near Liaodong Bay and Laizhou Bay, floating ice was reported in an area of 65 to 75 nautical miles, with ice measured more than 50 cm thick, threatening ship navigation, anchoring and operations at ports, Transport Minister Li Shenglin said Saturday.


PerthNow:

- Chinese banks are creating a "growing pool of hidden credit risk" through financial moves that shift loans off balance sheets, Fitch Ratings has warned. The ratings agency said in a report the practice could lead to conditions similar to those that triggered the US subprime crisis, in which banks suffered big losses on mortgage-backed securities when housing prices fell. "These transactions, which free up space to extend new loans and lessen the pressure on capital and liquidity, can lead to a noticeable reduction in a bank's outstanding loans," analysts Charlene Chu and Wen Chunling said. Fitch said banks were selling loans to financial institutions or repackaging them into wealth-management products in largely unreported transactions.


ynetnews.com:

- Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz on Sunday lashed back at US special envoy George Mitchell for threatening to freeze loan guarantees given to Israel if the Jewish state failed to make progress in the peace process with the Palestinians. "We don't have to use those guarantees. We are doing very well without them," Steinitz said. He added that "only several months ago we agreed with the American Treasury Department and State Department on the guarantees for 2010 and 2011, and there were no conditions."


Weekend Recommendations
Barron's:
- Made positive comments on (GOOG), (CELG), (BLK), (HUGH), (TWC) and (ABAX).

- Made negative comments on (AXP).


Citigroup:

- Reiterated Buy on (CVG), Added to Top Picks Live list, target $14.50.

- Upgraded (CVX) to Buy, target $97.


Night Trading
Asian indices are +.50% to +1.25% on avg.

Asia Ex-Japan Inv Grade CDS Index 86.0 -4.0 basis points.
S&P 500 futures +.48%.
NASDAQ 100 futures +.48%.


Morning Preview
BNO Breaking Global News of Note

Google Top Stories

Bloomberg Breaking News

Yahoo Most Popular Biz Stories

MarketWatch News Viewer

Asian Financial News

European Financial News

Latin American Financial News

MarketWatch Pre-market Commentary

U.S. Equity Preview

TradeTheNews Morning Report

Briefing.com In Play

SeekingAlpha Market Currents

Briefing.com Bond Ticker

US AM Market Call
NASDAQ 100 Pre-Market Indicator/Heat Map
Pre-market Stock Quote/Chart
WSJ Intl Markets Performance
Commodity Futures
IBD New America
Economic Preview/Calendar
Earnings Calendar

Conference Calendar

Who’s Speaking?
Upgrades/Downgrades

Politico Headlines
Rasmussen Reports Polling


Earnings of Note
Company/Estimate
- (MDRX)/.15

- (AA)/.05


Upcoming Splits

- None of note


Economic Releases

- None of note


Other Potential Market Movers
- The Fed's Lockhart speaking, Treasury's 10-Year TIPS auction, Cowen Consumer Conference, JPMorgan Healthcare Conference, Jeffries Healthcare Conference, (TFX) Outlook and the (CRDN) analyst meeting
could also impact trading today.


BOTTOM LINE: Asian indices are higher, boosted by technology and commodity stocks in the region. I expect US stocks to open mixed and to rally into the afternoon, finishing modestly higher. The Portfolio is 100% net long heading into the week.

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