Bloomberg:
- Japan Appeals for International Aid in Fight Against Meltdown. Prime Minister Naoto Kan appealed for international help and workers battled to prevent a nuclear meltdown after a second blast rocked an atomic plant north of Tokyo. Millions remained without electricity or water following Japan’s strongest earthquake, which may have killed 10,000.
- Japanese Sovereign, Corporate Bond Risk Surges After Earthquake. The cost of protecting Japanese sovereign and corporate bonds from default surged after the nation’s most powerful earthquake on record, credit-default swap prices show. Swaps on Japanese government debt rose 7.5 basis points to 86 basis points as of 8:26 a.m. in Tokyo, according to Citigroup Inc. That’s the biggest increase since Nov. 30 and the highest level since Jan. 18, prices from data provider CMA show. The Markit iTraxx Japan index soared 21.5 basis points to 119 basis points as of 8:54 a.m. in Tokyo, the biggest rise since May 25 and the highest level since Aug. 16, according to Deutsche Bank AG and CMA in New York.
- Gulf Council Troops Enter Bahrain to Help Restore Security Amid Protests. Saudi Arabian troops moved into Bahrain as part of a regional force, the first cross-border intervention since a wave of popular uprisings swept through parts of the Arab world. The Bahraini army “urges citizens and residents to cooperate completely and welcome their brothers,” the official Bahrain News Agency said. More than 100 military vehicles crossed into Bahrain, Al Jazeera television said. The United Arab Emirates will also participate in the Gulf Cooperation Council force, the state-run Emirates News Agency reported. Mainly Shiite protesters in Bahrain have been demonstrating since Feb. 14, demanding democracy through free elections from their Sunni monarch, inspired by movements that have swept the region in the past two months and unseated longtime rulers in Tunisia and Egypt. Shiites comprise as much as 70 percent of the population. Khalil al-Marzooq, a member of al-Wefaq, the largest Shiite opposition party, said GCC intervention would “destroy the economy and cause a financial crisis.”
- Crude Falls to Two-Week Low as Japan Quake May Reduce Demand. Crude oil fell in New York to the lowest level in two weeks on speculation demand from Japan may decline after the 8.9-magnitude earthquake devastated the world’s third-largest economy. Prices tumbled 4.9 percent in five days of losses, the longest losing streak in a month, as the quake that hit the country on March 11 shut 29 percent of domestic refining capacity, according to Bloomberg calculations based on Petroleum Association of Japan data. “You are taking demand from the third-largest economy out of the market and oil is responding negatively,” said Tom Bentz, a broker with BNP Paribas Commodity Futures in New York. “The short-term trend still looks to be lower. The next support area is somewhere around $96.” Oil for April delivery fell 86 cents, or 0.9 percent, to $100.30 a barrel at 12:17 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Futures touched $98.47, the lowest intraday price since March 1. Crude is up 23 percent from a year ago.
- Greece Leads Drop in Sovereign Bond Risk on Agreement of Bailout Expansion. Europe’s peripheral governments led a decline in the cost of insuring the region’s debt, after leaders agreed to expand the rescue fund for indebted nations. Credit-default swaps on Greece tumbled 94 basis points to 949, while contracts on Italy fell 19 to 161, Portugal dropped 39 to 484 and Spain declined 23 to 234, according to CMA. The Markit iTraxx SovX Western Europe Index of 15 governments was 11 basis points lower at 177.5, the biggest drop in five weeks.
- China to Build $2 Billion Iran Dam, Power Plant, Press TV Says. Iranian and Chinese officials will sign a $2 billion agreement for the construction of a dam and a power plant in Iran’s western province of Lorestan, Press TV reported. The agreement will be signed between Sinohydro Corp., China’s largest water projects developer, and Iran’s Farab, the state-run news channel said, citing Mohammad Reza Rezazadeh, the managing director of Iran’s Water and Power Resources Development Co. The contract will be completed this week and operations are to start in the next Iranian calendar year, which starts on March 21, according to the report, published on Press TV’s website today. The dam, to be built on the Bakhtiari river in the Zagros mountains, will hold Iran’s largest reservoir, with a capacity of 4.8 billion cubic meters of water, and support a 1,500- megawatt hydroelectric power station, it said.
- Buffett Commits $9 Billion for Lubrizol(LZ) After Auto, Train Bets. Warren Buffett’s $9 billion deal to buy Lubrizol Corp. (LZ), the Wickliffe, Ohio-based maker of engine lubricants, follows bets by his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A) on cars, trucks, freight railroads and luxury jets. Berkshire will pay $135 a share in cash, 28 percent more than Lubrizol’s closing price on March 11, Buffett’s firm, based in Omaha, Nebraska, said in a statement today.
- Brazil's Debt May Be Under Pressure as Japanese Repatriate Funds on Quake. Debt linked to Brazil’s real may fall as Japanese investors, the largest holders of the bonds, bring funds home to pay for reconstruction following the nation’s earthquake, according to Guggenheim Capital Markets. Japanese investors hold at least $50 billion worth of real- linked debts issued by the World Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction & Development and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., according to Andrew Brenner, managing director at Guggenheim, a New-York based brokerage for institutional investors. “Japanese mutual funds bought a huge amount of the papers,” Brenner said in a telephone interview. “Those bonds will be under pressure. Japanese will look at what they’ve got and put more money in their own country for infrastructure.”
Wall Street Journal:
- Japan Nuclear Plan Troubles Deepen. Japan's unfolding nuclear crisis deepened Monday at a stricken power plant, after overheating in one reactor may have led to a dangerous melting of nuclear fuels and an explosion that hindered efforts to cool two others. Japanese officials said late Monday there is a high possibility that all three of the stricken reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex in northeastern Japan are now experiencing some degree of melting of their reactor cores that contain fuels—a condition that, if it worsens, could lead to dangerous radiation leaks. This suggests that despite various attempts to cool the reactors since Friday's massive earthquake and tsunami, the temperatures inside them remained precariously high.
- Updates on Japan in Real-Time.
- Japan Headwind to Hit Asian Economies. Disruptions to Japan's economy in the aftermath of last week's earthquake and tsunami are expected to ripple across Asia in the coming weeks, further muddling the region's economic picture at a time when countries are already struggling with higher oil and food prices.
- Gadhafi's Push Adds Urgency to Global Plan. Opposition Setbacks in Key Oil Towns Lend Urgency to Arab League Call to U.N. for a No-Fly Zone.
- Fukushima: Fuel Rods at Three Reactors Are Melting.
- Libya Live: America Backs the No-Fly Zone.
- Stunning Photos of Post-Apocalyptic Japan.
- The Companies Exposed to Each Failing Reactor in Japan.
- The SEC Employees Watching Porn at Work Were Making Over $200,000/Year.
- Bank of America(BAC) Unit Tried to Hide Foreclosure Information, Hackers Say. A hacker organization known as Anonymous released a series of e-mails on Monday provided by a former Bank of America employee who claims they show how a division of the bank sought to hide information on foreclosures.
- Nasdaq(NDAQ) is in talks with lenders on financing an NYSE(NYX) bid, citing two industry sources.
- Pfizer(PFE) Could Split Off 40% of Company, Analyst Says. Bernstein Pharmaceuticals analyst Tim Anderson has a note out this morning suggesting that Pfizer could sell, spin off, or otherwise divest divisions accounting for $32 billion of its $67 billion in sales, reinventing itself as a pure pharmaceutical research firm like Eli Lilly, Bristol-Myers Squibb, or AstraZeneca.
Dallas Blog:
- Chinese Premier Talks of Inflation 'Tiger'. At a press conference in Beijing, China, Premier Wen Jiabao spoke about global inflation as a “tiger” and is becoming more problematic nowadays.
- 62% Favor Repeal of Health Care Law. Support for repeal of the national health care law has reached its highest level since May of last year. The number of voters who believe the plan will increase the cost of care has tied its highest level since the law’s passage last March. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Voters shows that 62% favor repeal of the health care law, including 51% who Strongly Favor it. Only 33% of voters oppose repeal, with 24% who are Strongly Opposed.
- Online Readership and Ad Revenue Overtake Newspapers. For the first time, online readership and advertising revenue has surpassed that of print newspapers. Online advertising revenue in the United States is projected to overtake print newspaper ad revenue in 2010, according to the latest report, the State of the News Media, from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. The study also found that more people -- 46 percent of Americans surveyed -- said they get news online at least three times a week, versus 40 percent who said they get their news from newspapers and their companion websites. "The migration to the Web is accelerating," said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. "The quick adoption of the tablet (computer) and the spread of the smartphone is only adding to that."
- India Shipping Corp Sees Adverse Impact on Sector From Japan Quake. Last week's devastating earthquake in Japan is expected to have a negative impact on India's local shipping industry, the country's largest shipping services firm told Reuters on Monday.
- Ireland's Noonan Seek EU Help to Ease Cost of Bank Bailouts. MINISTER FOR Finance Michael Noonan will ask the European authorities today to examine radical new measures to ease the cost of the bank bailouts on the State. Mr Noonan will meet European Central Bank (ECB) chief Jean-Claude Trichet and EU economics commissioner Olli Rehn in Brussels ahead of his first encounter tonight with EU finance ministers. Only two days after a dispute over corporate tax led euro zone leaders to refuse an interest rate cut on Irish bailout loans, he will press the case for a working group to be set up to examine how they might take on a further burden from Ireland’s bank bailout.
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