Bloomberg:
- Hollande Hostility Fuels Charm Offensive to Show He’s No Sarkozy. President Francois Hollande, the most-unpopular French leader in more than 30 years, is struggling to show supporters he’s not dipping into predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy’s playbook to reverse an economic slump. The European debt crisis, which is in its fourth year, and France’s stagnating economy are preventing the Socialist president from veering too far from efforts advocated by Sarkozy and Germany’s Angela Merkel to cap the budget deficit, shrink government spending and push through structural changes.
- Britain Loses to Germany as CDS Rise Most in World: U.K. Credit. Confidence in U.K. credit is declining the most in the global sovereign-debt market on concern the economy will fall into its third recession in five years and force the government to increase borrowing. Credit-default swaps insuring gilts rose 76% from a more than four-year low of 26 basis points on Nov. 1, the most among 67 governments tracked by Bloomberg.
- Europe Gas Carnage Shown by EON Closing 3-Year-Old Plant: Energy. Three years ago, Germany’s largest utility spent 400 million euros ($523 million) building a natural gas-fired power station. Later this month, the company may close the plant because it’s losing so much money.
- Donilon Says China Cyber Attacks Hurt Bid for Better Ties. China is waging a campaign of cyber espionage against U.S. companies that is threatening to derail President Barack Obama’s second-term effort to improve ties, National Security Adviser Thomas Donilon said. The widespread theft of intellectual property and trade secrets through “cyber intrusions emanating from China at a very large scale” has become a point of contention with the Chinese government, Donilon said yesterday in a speech at the Asia Society in New York.
- India Inflation Fight Hampered as Debt Role Hinders RBI. The biggest critic of India’s $100 billion budget deficit is also one of the largest purchasers of the debt that finances it: the central bank. The Reserve Bank of India faults government expenditure for stoking inflation even as its sovereign-bond holdings have risen to $91 billion from negligible amounts in 2008. While it has a mandate for price stability -- like counterparts in the U.S., Europe and Japan -- the RBI has another charge its peers lack: ensuring the government achieves its borrowing program.
- U.S. Calls North Korean Threats Hyperbolic. North Korea’s threats of preemptive nuclear strikes are “hyperbolic,” U.S. National Security Adviser Thomas Donilon said, as the totalitarian state’s leader Kim Jong Un told troops to prepare for war. Kim yesterday told front line units that “every day is a state of war,” official media reported. North Korea shut down a border hot line and declared the 1953 armistice ending the Korean War nullified as the U.S. and South Korea began annual military drills.
- Zinc Declines to 15-Week Low on Chinese Industrial Output. Zinc prices fell to a 15-week low after industrial output posted the weakest start to a year since 2009 in China, the world’s biggest user of industrial metals. Production rose 9.9 percent in the two months ended Feb. 28, trailing estimates by economists, and retail sales fell short of forecasts. Zinc dropped below its 200-day moving average, and aluminum, lead, and tin also declined in London.
- Rebar in Shanghai Declines Amid High Inventories, Property Curbs. Steel reinforcement-bar futures in Shanghai declined as high inventories and property curbs increased concern that demand may wane. Rebar for delivery in October on the Shanghai Futures Exchange fell as much as 0.5 percent to 3,890 yuan ($626) a metric ton and traded at 3,901 yuan at 10:44 a.m. local time.
- CIA Ramps Up Role in Iraq. As al Qaeda Fighters Cross Over From Syria, Agency Fills Void Left by U.S. Military. The Central Intelligence Agency is ramping up support to elite Iraqi antiterrorism units to better fight al Qaeda affiliates, amid alarm in Washington about spillover from the civil war in neighboring Syria, according to U.S. officials. The stepped-up mission expands a covert U.S. presence on the edges of the two-year-old Syrian conflict, at a time of American concerns about the growing power of extremists in the Syrian rebellion.
- Paul Ryan: The GOP Plan to Balance the Budget by 2023. The goal can be reached, with no new taxes, while increasing spending 3.4% annually instead of the current 5%. America's national debt is over $16 trillion. Yet Washington can't figure out how to cut $85 billion—or just 2% of the federal budget—without resorting to arbitrary, across-the-board cuts. Clearly, the budget process is broken. In four of the past five years, the president has missed his budget deadline. Senate Democrats haven't passed a budget in over 1,400 days. By refusing to tackle the drivers of the nation's debt—or simply to write a budget—Washington lurches from crisis to crisis.
- Dozens of WH senior staffers making six-figure salaries amid sequester woes. After closing the doors to public tours in an effort to save money, White House officials haven't yet said if sequester cuts will result in furloughs or layoffs for its senior staffers -- as is happening with rank-and-file in other executive branch agencies. But there are dozens of senior employees and other presidential "assistants" to choose from if the administration were to look at cutting the six-figure salaries from its payroll. In the field of energy and climate change alone, President Obama in 2012 employed three advisers making at least $100,000 -- though one has since left. The president kept on staff a "deputy assistant" for energy and climate change, Heather Zichal, making $140,000; a "special assistant" for energy and environment, Nathaniel Keohane; and a "deputy director" for energy and climate change, Dan Utech. Together, their salaries totaled over $370,000 last year, according to White House records. Climate blogger Steven Goddard said it's unlikely the administration will scale back its circle of advisers, at least on this issue.
- Lawmaker looks to rein in program after free cell phones sent to dead people. That’s the message Rep. Tim Griffin of Arkansas wants to send Congress, after he says a controversial government-backed program that helps provide phones to low-income Americans ended up sending mobiles to the dead relatives of his constituents. Griffin has introduced a bill that targets the phone hand-out program, which has ballooned into a fiscal headache for the government.
- US Sharing Classified Information With Firms to Prevent Hack Attacks. The U.S. intelligence community is using classified information to protect a wider range of companies than ever before thanks to a new effort by the Department of Homeland Security.
- This Could Spark China's Arab Spring. With half a billion and counting registered users on China's Twitter-like micro blogging website Sina Weibo, the country's increasingly vocal army of netizens could be among the biggest challenges facing the world's second largest economy's new leadership, which officially assumes power this month.
Business Insider:
NY Times:
DealBreaker:- On the Brink in Italy. Businesses of all sizes have been going belly up at the rate of 1,000 a day over the last year; especially hard hit among Italy’s estimated six million companies are the small and midsize companies that represent the backbone of Italy’s $2 trillion economy. Economists worry that the pace of business closings may accelerate as long as the country lacks a functioning government.
Reuters:
- Cliffs Natural(CLF) to idle iron ore mine as prices remain weak. Cliffs Natural Resources Inc said it will idle its Wabush Pointe Noire plant in Quebec by the end of the second quarter to reduce costs as iron ore prices remain weak.
- China politics keep central bank hawks at bay, for now. Intense lobbying by central government agencies and debt-laden local governments is keeping People's Bank of China hawks in check after inflation jumped to a 10-month high, forcing the central bank to keep its monetary policy setting in neutral.
- U.S. Congress urged to pass vote changes for IMF. More than 130 academics and global policy pundits urged the U.S. Congress on Monday to enact delayed changes in voting powers in the International Monetary Fund and warned that failure to do so would diminish U.S. influence in the global financial lender.
- Yum(YUM) China sales up in February amid turnaround, shares jump. KFC parent Yum Brands Inc on Monday said February sales at established restaurants in China, its top market, rose an unexpected 2 percent as it works to recover from a steep business decline sparked by a food safety scare there late last year.
- Facebook(FB) reveals secrets you haven’t shared. The increasing amount of personal information that can been gleaned by computer programs that track how people use Facebook has been revealed by an extensive academic study. Such programmes can discern undisclosed private information such as Facebook users’ sexuality, drug-use habits and even whether their parents separated when they were young, according to the study by Cambridge university academics.
- Like the IMF, it's time we showed more realism about debt reduction. Is the International Monetary Fund going soft on fiscal austerity, along with seemingly everyone else?
- Sputtering global economy belies stockmarket boom. Asia's economic recovery is losing momentum and Europe's slump is proving deeper than expected, raising concerns that soaring stock markets globally have jumped ahead of economic reality.
- Italy's economy shrinks as EU leader warns of lost generation. Italy slid deeper into recession during the fourth quarter of last year, official figures showed on Monday, as the European Parliament's president warned that Europe risks losing an entire generation.
- Sales of subprime car-loan securities soar. Sales of risky pools of securities backed by car loans have jumped this year as investors’ search for yield takes them to corners of the market that boomed in the build-up to the financial crisis. Sales of subprime auto asset-backed securities have increased year-to-date to nearly $4-billion (U.S.), almost double the volume during the same period of 2012, according to Deutsche Bank data. Subprime auto sales now account for 34 per cent of all auto ABS issuance, surpassing levels last seen in 2007.
- China's Jiangsu Shagang Group Cuts Steel Prices. Co. cuts prices for its threaded steel products by 250 yuan a ton to 3,800 yuan a ton as construction-use steel product prices dropped substantially after the State Council announced detailed property curbs. The newspaper also cited rising inventories at steel companies.
- None of note
- Asian equity indices are -.50% to unch. on average.
- Asia Ex-Japan Investment Grade CDS Index 100.0 unch.
- Asia Pacific Sovereign CDS Index 79.75 +.5 basis point.
- FTSE-100 futures +.02%.
- S&P 500 futures -.07%.
- NASDAQ 100 futures -.10%.
Earnings of Note
Company/Estimate
- (COST)/1.06
- (DOLE)/-.01
- (SSI)/1.15
7:30 am EST
- The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index for February is estimated to rise to 90.0 versus 88.9 in January.
- JOLTs Job Openings for January are estimated to rise to 3670 versus 3617 in December.
- None of note
- The German CPI report, Greece Industrial Production report, weekly retail sales reported, 3Y T-Note auction, Piper Jaffary Tech/Media/Telecom Conference, Barclays Healthcare Conference, BofA Consumer/Retail Conference and the (CVX) analyst meeting could also impact trading today.
1 comment:
Futures are trading lower, prior to opening.
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