- China’s Largest Banks Post Biggest Surge in Bad Loans Since 2010. China’s top four banks posted their biggest increase in soured loans since at least 2010 as a five-year credit spree left companies with excess manufacturing capacity and slower profit growth amid an economic slowdown. The rise in defaults adds to concerns bank profitability may decline as policy makers seek to trim production at cement makers to paper manufacturers that have gorged on credit since 2008, while urging lenders to build buffers to cover loan losses. China’s biggest state-run banks are trading near record-low valuations as investors brace for a surge in bad debts and slower credit growth. “Against the backdrop of a slowing economy and overcapacity problems in some industries, some loans are gradually going bad,” said May Yan, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Barclays Plc. “We will see more bad loans forming because of the legacy of over expansion."
- Batista’s OGX Said to Plan Bankruptcy Protection Filing. OGX Petroleo (OGXP3) & Gas Participacoes SA, the oil company controlled by former billionaire Eike Batista, could file for bankruptcy protection as soon as today, said a person with direct knowledge of the plans.
- European Stocks Are Little Changed as Volkswagen Advances. European stocks were little changed at a one-week high as companies from Eni SpA (ENI) to Volkswagen AG posted profit that exceeded estimates, while a gauge of telecommunications companies retreated. Eni, Italy’s biggest oil company, climbed 1.3 percent. Volkswagen posted its biggest gain in 15 months as Europe’s largest carmaker said cost cutting contributed to higher earnings. TomTom NV added 3.4 percent after the Dutch maker of navigation systems raised its forecast for 2013. Belgacom SA dropped 5.3 percent as a competitor cut the price of its mobile-phone plans. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index added less than 0.1 percent to 320.8 at the close of trading, after earlier climbing as much as 0.7 percent.
- WTI Crude Decreases as U.S. Stockpiles Climb. WTI for December delivery declined $1.18, or 1.2 percent, to $97.02 a barrel at 1:31 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The volume of all futures traded was 5.2 percent lower than the 100-day average. Prices are down 5.2 percent this month after losing 4.9 percent in September.
- Obama Health Vow Won’t Shield Millions From Cancellation. Obama administration officials knew by June 2010 that as many as 10 million people with individual insurance probably would be thrown off existing plans. That didn’t stop Obama from coming back to the line over and over, saying as recently as June 2012, “If you’re one of the more than 250 million Americans who already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance.” Republican congressional leaders yesterday seized on reports that hundreds of thousands of Americans received insurance cancellation notices, questioning the president’s credibility and renewing calls to delay provisions of the health-care law. As many as 80 percent of people currently on individual health plans may have to find new health insurance for next year, said Robert Laszewski, an insurance-industry consultant in Arlington, Virginia. He estimates that 19 million people currently hold such policies. “If the president knew that these letters were coming and still indicated that you could keep your health care plan if you liked it, now that raises some serious questions about the sales job of Obamacare,” Cantor said as he emerged from a party leadership meeting. Obama has been using the line about people keeping their insurance for years, dating back to his 2008 campaign for president, including at a presidential debate with Republican John McCain, an Arizona senator.
- Options Market Hit With Data Disruptions as VIX Lurches. Data transmission was snarled in parts of the options market today as one of the biggest U.S. venues, International Securities Exchange LLC, reported issues disseminating prices and the industry’s benchmark gauge twice swung erratically.
- Federal Reserve Holds Bond Purchases Steady. The Federal Reserve on Wednesday held steady on its signature $85 billion per-month bond-buying program and gave very few new signals on when officials expect to pull back on the program or how they see the economic outlook changing. The Fed's policy-making committee showed itself to be effectively in a wait-and-see mode on the bond program, leaving investors in a continued guessing game about the path of a Fed policy which has been an important driver of asset prices and interest rates. In June Fed chairman Ben Bernanke said he expected the Fed to start pulling back this year, but with only one more Fed policy meeting in December before year-end, that now looks less certain. "[T]he Committee decided to await more evidence that progress will be sustained before adjusting the pace of its purchases," the Fed said in its statement Wednesday, repeating language it used in September. The Fed made very few changes to its description of current economic conditions. It said that the economy "continued to expand at a moderate pace," and labor markets "have shown some further improvement." The Fed acknowledged that the "recovery in the housing sector slowed somewhat in recent months," one of the most notables change it made in its statement.
- Three Takeaways on the Fed’s Policy Statement – December Taper Not Off the Table by Jon Hilsenrath.
- Facebook(FB) Tests Software to Track Your Cursor on Screen. Facebook Inc. is testing technology that would greatly expand the scope of data that it collects about its users, the head of the company’s analytics group said Tuesday.
- The Outrage Arrives. You can't keep your insurance because Democrats don't want you to control your own health-care spending. The White House has issued a clarification. When the president said if you like your insurance plan you can keep it, what he meant was you can keep it if he likes it. Hundreds of thousands of Americans who are getting policy cancellation notices this month can't be as surprised as they pretend to be. President Obama made it clear at his 2010 health care summit what he thought of their taste in insurance. "It's the equivalent of Acme Insurance that I had for my car. . . . It's basically not health insurance," he explained. "It's house insurance. . . .
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- NSA has hacked into Yahoo, Google accounts: WaPo. The U.S. National Security Agency has hacked into main communication links that connect accounts at Google and Yahoo worldwide, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.
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- China GDP figures wrong by US$610bil: report. China's economy would be at least 3.7 trillion yuan (US$610bil) bigger than Beijing thinks if the country's local government statistics were to be believed, state media reported Wednesday. The Economic Information Daily tallied up gross domestic product (GDP) data from 28 of mainland China's 31 provincial-level authorities, and arrived at 42.4 trillion yuan for the first nine months of the year. But the figure for the whole country, already announced by Beijing, is 3.7 trillion yuan lower. The discrepancy – which has been in place for more than two decades – has been widening rapidly in recent years, the Economic Information Daily said. The reliability of Chinese economic data has long been in doubt as local officials tend to massage the figures upwards in pursuit of promotion and the newspaper, which is run by the official Xinhua news agency, pointed to the same problem. "Some regions may have inflated the statistics due to their distorted perception of achievements, given the fact that the performance assessment of local governments is often linked with GDP growth," the report quoted an unnamed National Bureau of Statistics official as saying.
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