Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:

• German Stocks Decline on November Exports, Factory Orders. German stocks declined as exports from Europe’s largest economy and factory orders fell, while investors awaited the start of the fourth-quarter U.S. earnings season. Lanxess AG (LXS) led chemical makers lower, falling 2.8 percent. Munich Re dropped 1.7 percent after Bank of America Corp. downgraded its recommendation on the stock. “What happened really from July, August 2012 onwards was that weakening of the German economy and you saw that yet again today with the worse-than-expected export numbers,” Bob Parker, senior adviser at Credit Suisse Asset Management in London, said on Bloomberg Television. “Although German industry is super competitive with the euro at 1.30,” recession in southern Europe, mediocre growth in the United States and slower growth in Asia mean that demand, not competitiveness, remains the problem, he said. The volume of shares changing hands on the DAX was 29 percent higher than the average of the last 30 days, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Exports adjusted for working days and seasonal changes fell 3.4 percent from October, the steepest decline in more than a year, the Federal Statistics Office in Wiesbaden said today. Economists had predicted a 0.5 percent drop, according to the median of nine estimates in a Bloomberg survey. 
• Spain to Cut Net Debt Issuance in 2013, Rejects Bailout Now. Spain plans to sell 59 billion euros ($77 billion) of bonds after maturities in 2013 to finance the euro-region’s second-largest budget deficit. Net bond issuance for this year compares with net sales of 62.7 billion euros last year and an initial target of 35.8 billion euros for 2012, Spain’s Treasury chief, Inigo Fernandez de Mesa, told reporters in Madrid today. Gross issuance will reach 215 billion euros to 230 billion euros and include 23 billion euros in financing for Spain’s regions, he said. That compares with 249.6 billion euros in gross issuance last year, he said.
• China Loan Share Seen at Record Low as Data Show Risks. China’s bank loans as a share of funding in the economy may have fallen to a record low, highlighting the growth of alternative financing channels that have prompted warnings of rising credit risks.
• Secret Goldman Team Sidesteps Volcker After Blankfein Vow. Sitting onstage in Washington’s Ronald Reagan Building in July, Lloyd C. Blankfein said Goldman Sachs Group Inc. had stopped using its own money to make bets on the bank’s behalf. “We shut off that activity,” the chief executive officer told more than 400 people at a lunch organized by the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., slicing the air with his hand. The bank no longer had proprietary traders who “just put on risks that they wanted” and didn’t interact with clients, he said. 
• Longtime JPMorgan Chase(JPM) exec Jes Staley leaves. James E. "Jes" Staley, a longtime executive at JPMorgan Chase, is leaving the bank to become a managing partner at BlueMountain Capital Management, the companies said on Tuesday. BlueMountain Capital, a New York-based hedge fund with more than $12 billion under management, announced Staley's appointment, and JPMorgan confirmed his departure from the bank after more than 34 years.
• Gold Rises for First Time in Four Days. Imports by China from Hong Kong almost doubled in November from a month earlier, government data showed today. The U.S. Mint has sold 71,500 ounces of American Eagle gold coins this month, compared with 76,000 ounces for all of December.

Wall Street Journal:

• Euro Eases Ahead of ECB. The euro was unable to hang on to modest gains scored against the dollar after Japan's finance minister said Tokyo would use part of its foreign-exchange reserves to buy bonds issued by the European Stability Mechanism, the euro zone's bailout fund. 
• Boeing(BA) Has Another Dreamliner Mishap. After an electrical fire and battery explosion on a parked Boeing 787 Dreamliner yesterday, another bad headline for the troubled new high-tech jet: today a Dreamliner headed from Boston to Tokyo with 178 passengers on board returned to the terminal due to a fuel leak.

Barron's:

• Is a China “Hard Landing” Still Possible? Yes, says Societe Generale. And to prove it, they’ve released a report that looks at what would happen to all sorts of asset classes–from commodities to currencies to government bonds–if one occurred.

CNBC: 

• GOP Senator Sees No 'Grand Bargain' on Debt Crisis. A Tea Party favorite in the Senate called President Barack Obama's refusal to debate the debt ceiling "jaw-dropping," and insisted in an interview Tuesday on CNBC that spending cuts would have to be part of any discussion to raise the nation's borrowing limit. "Any time the president comes to Congress and wants authorization to increase the debt burden on our children and grandchildren, that's a debate we should have," Sen. Ron Johnson told "Squawk Box."

Zero Hedge: 

• Tax Fraud Investigation Opened Into French Minister Tasked With Battling Tax Fraud.
• How The Fed-Driven Multiple-Expansion "Robs From The Future".

Business Insider: 

• Target(TGT) Unveils Key Measure To Kill 'Showrooming'.
• Thought The Euro Crisis Was Over? These 18 Charts Show The Real Crisis That Lies Ahead. 
• Finally There's A Discrete Way For Posh People To Pawn Things. 
• ROSENBERG: 6 Key Economic Indicators Show That The US Isn't In Great Shape. (graphs)

Reuters: 

• Teachers in Ohio, Texas flock to free gun training classes.
• U.S. gasoline demand down as price rise - MasterCard. U.S. retail gasoline demand dropped over the last two weeks as pump prices rose, MasterCard said in its weekly SpendingPulse report on Tuesday. Demand fell 3.5 percent in the week to Jan 4, following a 9.5 percent drop in the week before, MasterCard data showed. Last week's gasoline consumption was 2.8 percent lower than a year ago.

Financial Times:

• Fears raised over Syria uranium stockpile. Nuclear experts in the US and Middle East have raised concerns about the security of up to 50 tonnes of unenriched uranium in Syria amid fears that civil war could put the stockpile at risk.

Telegraph:

• Comrade Barroso, the existential threat to the euro is mass unemployment.
• Eurozone meltdown 'cannot be discarded' in dangerous mix of global risks, warns World Economic Forum. A dangerous mix of fragile economies and extreme weather has increased global risks, with a meltdown in the eurozone still a threat, the World Economic Forum said.

BBC:

• Eurozone unemployment reaches new high. The unemployment rate across the eurozone hit a new all-time high of 11.8% in November, official figures have shown. This is a slight rise on 11.7% for the 17-nation region in October. The rate for the European Union as a whole in November was unchanged at 10.7%. Spain, which is mired in deep recession, again recorded the highest unemployment rate, coming in at 26.6%. More than 26 million people are now unemployed across the EU.

Kathimerini:

• Greek banks may request more than EU30b in recap funds as a result of rising non-performing loans and the country's sovereign debt buyback.

Xinhua: 

• China is studying measures including cutting costs in logistics to control "overly fast" increase in vegetable prices in some regions, citing NDRC officials.  

China Daily: 

• Fitch issues warning over growth model. China's investment-led development model is facing increasingly serious constraints, a global ratings agency warned, although GDP growth is likely to reach 8 percent in 2013. Rapidly expanding credit, especially debt-financing by local governments, is one of the prime reasons behind the warning, Fitch Ratings said. The agency announced on Tuesday a currency sovereign rating of AA- for China, on a negative outlook, while it kept its stable outlook of A+ for the country's foreign debt holdings. Rapidly expanding credit may risk balance sheets, it said. "China has been avoiding the so-called hard landing. However, rebalancing will be a long-term challenge," Andrew Colquhoun, head of the agency's Asia-Pacific Sovereigns section, said. "Rebalancing is imperative but not optional, because the debt issue is tightening constraints on the old investment-driven growth model," he said. The total amount of credit in China's economy is currently about 190 percent of GDP, up from 124 percent at the end of 2008, Colquhoun said. "So the debt level is increasing substantially."