Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:

• Plosser Opposes More Fed Bond Purchases, Sees 'Little Risk' of Deflation. Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia President Charles Plosser said he opposes more monetary expansion by the U.S. central bank in part because he sees “little risk” of deflation. “Because I see little gain at this point, and some costs, I would prefer not to engage in further asset purchases at this time,” Plosser said in remarks prepared for a speech to the Greater Vineland, New Jersey, Chamber of Commerce today. “Asset purchases in our current economic environment can do little if anything to speed up the return to full employment.” “It is difficult, in my view, to see how additional asset purchases by the Fed, even if they move interest rates on long-term bonds down by 10 or 20 basis points, will have much impact on the near-term outlook for employment.”
• Meredith Whitney Rates California Worst of 15 Biggest States, Fortune Says. Meredith Whitney, the analyst who correctly predicted Citigroup Inc.’s dividend cut in 2008, will release a report rating California’s financial condition as the worst among the 15 largest U.S. states, Fortune said. The report rates the states by four criteria: economy, fiscal health, housing and taxes, Fortune said, citing Whitney. Texas and Virginia are the only two states to receive overall positive ratings, the magazine reported yesterday.
• Paris on Alert After Bomb Threats Empty Eiffel Tower, Stations. France is on “red alert” for a terrorist attack, deploying thousands of police and soldiers to “sensitive” locations after at least four bomb threats at the Eiffel Tower and railway stations in the past two weeks.
• Chinese Government to Speed Up Property Tax Introduction to Cool Market. China will speed up the introduction of a trial property tax in some cities and then expand the levy to the whole country to curb rising real estate prices, the government said, without giving a timetable. The state also asked commercial banks to stop offering loans to buyers of third homes and extended a 30 percent down payment requirement to all first-home buyers, according to a statement posted on the government website. The down payment level previously applied only to homes larger than 90 square meters (969 square feet). The country will also end an income-tax exemption on profits from the sale of real estate reinvested within one year, the ministry said. Banks will be ordered to stop lending to property developers that violate industry regulations, the government said earlier today. Credit Suisse analysts led by Jinsong Du recommended “reducing exposure” to Chinese property stocks in the near term, saying a tax would hurt real-estate market sentiment, according to a note to clients dated yesterday. China may announce property taxes as early as the October National Day holidays, China Business News reported Sept. 21, citing an unidentified person.
• Kocherlakota Says Additional Fed Asset Purchases May Have 'Muted' Impact. Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Narayana Kocherlakota said the Fed may have a tough time aiding the economy and reducing a “deeply troubling” unemployment rate through a second round of Treasury purchases. With financial markets functioning better now than in early 2009, “my own guess is that further uses of QE would have a more muted effect” on narrowing the gap between longer and shorter-term Treasury yields, Kocherlakota said today in a speech in London hosted by the European Economics and Financial Centre, using “quantitative easing” to refer to such purchases. Kocherlakota’s skepticism about how much restarting large- scale purchases of Treasuries would boost growth and inflation signals he may not be in favor of adopting the policy.
• Spain Has First General Strike in Decade as Europe Marches. Spanish workers disrupted transport and television broadcasts in the first general strike in eight years as demonstrators marched in a dozen European cities against government spending cuts.

Wall Street Journal:

• iSuppli Raises Estimate for 2010 Global Silicon Shipments. iSuppli Corp. raised its estimates for 2010 global silicon shipments to year-to-year growth of 24% and sees its rising another 13% in 2011.
• NY Judge Finds Nothing Private About Facebook Postings. Here’s an interesting legal development for those New Yorkers who chronicle their personal lives on Facebook: A Suffolk County judge presiding over a personal-injury lawsuit has ruled that material posted to online social networks — even what people post behind privacy settings — can be used as evidence in court.
• Obama Struggles to Reconnect With Voters. President Barack Obama, meeting swing-state voters in a leafy backyard, struggled again Wednesday to answer the concerns of supporters once buoyed by the excitement of the presidential campaign, but now demoralized by economic struggle.

CNBC:

• Is Government About to Make Mortgage Market Even Worse?
  
• Futures Trades Likely Factor in 'Flash Crash': Regulator.
• Home Loan Demand Down Despite Record Low Rates.
  

MarketWatch:

• Goldman(GS) Selling Part of Stake in ICBC. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. hopes to raise up to $2.05 billion from the sale of part of its stake in Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., a person familiar with the situation said Wednesday.
• Gold Soars to Record High as Dollar Falls. Gold for December delivery, the most active contract, rose $3.90, or 0.3%, to $1,312.20 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. It hit a record at $1,314.80 an ounce earlier in electronic trading.

Business Insider:

• Fitch Turns Up The Heat On Australia's Banks, Plans Housing Bubble Stress Test.
• To Avoid a Crash - China Must Screw Either Exporters, Banks, Or The Government.
• The Next Step In The Currency War: Capital Controls And Tariffs. This is getting serious. The currency war between the world's powers is expanding beyond the typical Japanese intervention, Chinese yuan pegging, and aggressive U.S. quantitative easing to include, "Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Korea, Taiwan, South Africa, Russia and even Poland," according to Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. But what does this mean, and why is it happening?
• Bill Gross: Stimulus Is a Disaster, But Dividend Stocks Will Still Beat Bonds.
  
  Bill Gross has said that the most likely consequence of the government's stimulative policy will be a declining dollar and lower standard of living in his latest investment outlook. Pretty dark stuff.
  

Boston Herald:

• Google(GOOG) Official: Company's Future in China Uncertain.

TradeWinds:

• An expanding supertanker fleet will prevent charter rates from rallying to levels seen in the first half of this year, Steve Christy, head of research at E.A. Gibson Shipbrokers Ltd., told TradeWinds.

Politico:

• Boehner Backs Issa on Subpoena Promises. House Minority Leader John Boehner threw his full support behind Rep. Darrell Issa’s (R-Calif.) plan to bombard the Obama administration with subpoenas if Republicans take back the House in November. “I think Congress has an appropriate role under the Constitution to provide oversight of the executive branch. And I would pledge that it’s going to happen,” he told reporters Wednesday.
• John Thune: Washington is Killing Jobs. Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, says his party will use its increased muscle after the midterm elections to “provide some predictability and some certainty to small-business owners that their taxes aren’t going up.” “Almost everything that Washington is doing right now kills jobs because it increases the cost of doing business,” Thune said Tuesday in an interview for the POLITICO video series “The Jobs Report.”
• Distrust of Media Hits Record High. Fifty-seven percent of Americans do not trust the news media to accurately and fairly report the news, a new high according to a Gallup poll out Wednesday. The percentage of Americans who distrust the media has been steadily climbing since the mid 1990s, when distrusts in the news media rated hovered around 45 percent.

Reuters:

• UN Gets Backing for Sovereign Debt Project. The United Nations has won backing from a range of governments and financial institutions for a plan to draw up guidelines governing sovereign debt, a U.N. debt official said on Wednesday. The project, run by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), aims to establish principles for both lenders and government borrowers to reduce the severity and frequency of sovereign debt crises.
• Mexico Finance Minister Says Still Eyeing Oil Hedge.
• China Criticizes Weak U.S. Dollar Policy. China said the United States should take action to stabilise the dollar, criticising Washington's expansionary monetary policy for weakening the currency despite its key role in the global financial system. The comments by a Chinese official at a meeting of the World Trade Organization came as the U.S. House of Representatives was set to pass a bill putting pressure on China to let the yuan rise faster. "We are very much concerned about how the U.S. would take practical and responsible measures to prevent the dollar glut and maintain the stability of the currency," Sun said.

Globe and Mail:

• The Fed's Second Bubble. At the recent Federal Open Market Committee meeting, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke signalled that he plans to keep interest rates effectively at zero for as long as possible, and that he’s ready to stand by with more quantitative easing (i.e. printing money) if necessary. But if the Fed’s blaming the last recession on the financial meltdown from the subprime mortgage market, why is it so committed to recreating those same credit conditions that spawned Wall Street’s worst-ever post-Depression crash?

Telegraph:

• Man Group Profits Fall as Investors Withdraw Money. Man Group, the London-listed hedge fund manager, saw first-half profits fall significantly as investors continued to pull their money.
• Capital Controls Eyed as Global Currency Wars Escalate. Stimulus leaking out of the West's stagnant economies is flooding into emerging markets, playing havoc with their currencies and economies.

ABC:

• Workers Arrive in Belgium for Spending Cuts Protest. Thousands of protesters from across Europe are arriving in Belgium for a mass demonstration against spending cuts by European governments. Trade unions hope that some 100,000 will march on European Union institution buildings in the capital, Brussels.