Japan Faces 'Growing' Urgency to Reduce Budget Gap, S&P Says. Standard & Poor’s indicated that a fiscal plan scheduled for next month by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s government may be key to whether it will cut the nation’s sovereign credit rating. The proposal will be “an important statement of the government’s commitment” to rein in the deficit, William Hess, director of sovereign ratings for Asia, said in an interview yesterday in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. “Something has to appear to change our assessment for where things could end up.” At stake for Japan is keeping the AA grade after S&P lowered its outlook for the rating in January, and shoring up confidence that it will avoid contagion from a Greek crisis threatening to engulf other sovereign borrowers. Finance Minister Naoto Kan said this week that Greece has shown the need for Japan to take a “very firm” stance toward reducing debt, which is approaching twice the size of Japan’s economy. “There is a growing sense of urgency, even though it’s stated very quietly, that the situation isn’t sustainable,” said Hess, who was in the capital of Uzbekistan to attend an annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank.
Greek Government Workers to Escalate Protests Over Budget Cuts. Greek Government Workers to Escalate Protests Over Budget Cuts. Greek government workers plan to shut down hospitals and schools today and disrupt flights as protests escalate after 30 billion euros ($39.5 billion) of additional wage cuts and tax increases were unveiled this week. ADEDY, which represents more than 500,000 civil servants having their pensions and pay slashed under the new measures announced by Prime Minister George Papandreou on May 2, will begin its protest with a rally at midday joined by striking teachers. A general strike, the third this year, is planned for tomorrow, with the participation of private-sector workers. “Opting for the easy path of cutting wages and pensions can’t be accepted,” said Spyros Papaspyros, the head of ADEDY, the federation of civil-servant unions. “Protests will increase.”
How Investors Can Profit From Break-Up of Euro: Matthew Lynn. When the euro celebrated its 10th anniversary last year, it seemed to be a solid currency. Only a few eccentrics speculated about whether it may break up one day. In the last few weeks, Greece has changed all that. New York-based investment bank Morgan Stanley is among those saying the possibility of a euro collapse has to be considered.
U.S. Discoloses Arsenal of 5,113 Nuclear Warheads. The U.S. nuclear arsenal consists of 5,113 active and inactive warheads, a Pentagon official said, revealing the size of the nation’s stockpile for the first time. The current total of warheads is down from 22,217 in late 1989, the official told reporters at the Pentagon. He asked not to be identified. The U.S. has kept classified the specific nuclear warhead total, which would include strategic weapons mounted on missiles and bombers for longer-range as well as shorter-range tactical arms and those that aren’t deployed. President Barack Obama aims to set an example of U.S. transparency and willingness to pare its nuclear arsenal in hopes of compelling other nations to follow suit.
Fed Ask Appeals Court to Review Bailout-Data Ruling. The Federal Reserve Board asked an appeals court to reconsider a ruling requiring the agency to disclose documents identifying financial firms that might have collapsed without the largest U.S. government bailout ever. Attorneys for the Fed today asked the full U.S. Court of Appeals in New York to reconsider a unanimous ruling by a three- judge panel. If the court refuses, the Fed can appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Nickel Peaking as China Prefers Pig Iron Over 2010's Best Metal. Nickel, this year’s best-performing commodity, is poised to decline as world supplies climb at the fastest pace in a decade and China’s search for lower-cost alternatives slows demand growth. Global output will jump 6.8 percent, the most since 2000, said Bank of America Merrill Lynch. China, the biggest consumer, more than tripled production of the cheaper nickel pig iron in the first quarter, said Wang Chongfeng, a Shanghai Metals Market analyst. Nickel has climbed so much that the 5-cent U.S. coin contains 6 cents worth of metal and prices are 59 percent above mining companies’ breakeven level. The commodity, which beat the other 23 futures in the Standard & Poor’s GSCI Index, will drop 19 percent by the third quarter to $21,250 a ton, according to the median estimate of 17 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News. “The price is way ahead of itself and will serve as nirvana for world nickel producers,” said Nick Moore, head of commodity strategy at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc in London, who has followed metals for more than 25 years. “The higher the price, the more likely a deluge of supply comes to market.” The commodity for three-month delivery advanced 42 percent this year and reached a 23-month high of $27,595 a ton on the London Metal Exchange April 16 after stainless steelmakers boosted output by the most since at least the early 1970s, according to Macquarie Group Ltd. World stainless steel output jumped 55 percent in the first three months to 7.9 million tons from a year earlier, and will increase 20 percent to 31 million tons in 2010, the biggest gain since 1976, Macquarie said.
Businesses Ask Geithner for More Leeway on Healthcare. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and 12 other business groups asked members of President Obama’s cabinet including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for more leeway in implementing the health-care overhaul. The groups said they’re being forced to make contract, employee-benefit and other decisions without guidance on how to comply with provisions that take effect in September. The letter dated April 30 was sent to Geithner, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis. The groups, which include the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, the National Retail Federation and the American Benefits Council, requested at least six months to comply with the regulations once they are implemented, and a “good-faith” standard for measuring compliance. “We’ve got a lot of existing and new costs to manage and face a lot of uncertainty over whether the health-care law will actually lower health-care costs,” said Neil Trautwein, employee-benefits counsel for the National Retail Federation, in an interview. “It’s not really a good idea to swamp the business community when we’re still struggling to get off the mat from the last recession.”
Schwarzenegger Drops Support for Offshore Oil Wells. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger no longer supports a plan to allow limited drilling for oil off the state’s coast because of the Gulf of Mexico spill, said Aaron McLear, his spokesman.
China Stocks Drop to 7-Month Low as Banks Increase Reserves. China’s stocks fell, sending the benchmark index to the lowest in seven months, after the central bank ordered banks to set aside more deposits as reserves for the third time this year. The Shanghai Composite Index dropped 1.2 percent to 2,836.51 at 9:35 a.m. local time. The CSI 300 slid 1.3 percent to 3,027.77. The Shanghai Composite plunged 7.7 percent last month, the biggest decline since January, as the government unwound monetary stimulus and stepped up measures to prevent a housing bubble inflated by record lending last year. It has slumped 12 percent in 2010, the world’s second-worst performer.
State Street(STT) 'Underweight' China, Brazil Stocks on Valuations. State Street Global Advisors has an “underweight” position on the largest emerging markets including China and Brazil on concern shares are expensive relative to smaller developing nations as economic growth slows. “We’ve been a little cautious on the larger countries in emerging markets, China amongst them, that seem to have reasonably rich valuations,” Richard Lacaille, London-based global chief investment officer at State Street Global Advisors, which oversees $1.9 trillion, said in a Bloomberg Television interview in Hong Kong.
Wall Street Journal:
Bomb Probe Looks Abroad. Investigators Cite Possible Foreign Links to New York Case; Names, Clues Surface. U.S. authorities said they were examining the possibility that there were multiple plotters with foreign links behind Saturday's botched car bombing in New York's Times Square. Officials on Monday said early indications didn't necessarily point to al Qaeda or other terrorist groups, but declined to detail evidence pointing overseas. A person briefed on the case by law enforcement said investigators found forensic evidence belonging to a man of Middle Eastern origin in the bomb-laden SUV left at the crime scene. This person said authorities have identified the man, but weren't releasing that information while they try to locate him. In Washington, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs characterized the attempted bombing as a terrorist act.
Congress Members Bet on Fall in Stocks. Some members of Congress made risky bets with their own money that U.S. stocks or bonds would fall during the financial crisis, a Wall Street Journal analysis of congressional disclosures shows. According to The Journal's analysis of congressional disclosures, investment accounts of 13 members of Congress or their spouses show bearish bets made in 2008 via exchange-traded funds—portfolios that trade like stocks and mirror an index. These funds were leveraged; they used derivatives and other techniques to magnify the daily moves of the index they track.
Oil Agency Draws Fire. Republican Seeks Scrutiny of Regulator; BP(BP) Tries Well Fix. The Gulf disaster is ratcheting up congressional scrutiny of the Minerals Management Service, the federal agency charged with regulating the nation's offshore oil-and-gas industry. Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), announced Monday that Republicans on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform would investigate whether the MMS has pushed for regulations necessary to ensure the safety of offshore operators in the Gulf of Mexico. Citing a report in The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Issa expressed concern in a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar that the MMS "may have sidelined regulatory efforts that would have brought the U.S. oil industry in line with prevailing industry safety standards."
Democrats at Ramming Speed. The White House wants to pass as much legislation as possible before losing its big majorities, no matter how unpopular its proposals are.
Fox News:
Goldman Sachs(GS) CEO Knows Job Is on Line in Face of Government Probe by Charlie Gasparino. Friends of Lloyd Blankfein say the embattled chief executive of Goldman Sachs knows his job is on the line and that unless he reverses both the negative publicity and the effect it has been having on Goldman’s share price, he will soon be relinquishing power, FOX Business has learned.
NY Times:
The Fight to Be the Next Caymans. With alternative hedge fund managers taking flight from such offshore bases as the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg is looking to be the domicile of choice, The Financial Times reported.
Big Paydays for the Chiefs in the Media. The media industry may be going through some rough times, with the landscape changing day to day, but at least one aspect is business as usual: big paydays for the people at the top. Top executives at the country’s largest media companies continued to reel in multimillion-dollar pay packages in 2009, a year of widespread cost-cutting throughout the industry. In several cases, the packages even increased from the year before. At the top of the list is Leslie Moonves, chief executive of the CBS Corporation(CBS), whose pay package in 2009 totaled almost $43 million, more than twice what he made in 2008, according to an analysis by Equilar, an executive compensation research firm. Not far behind was Viacom’s chief executive, Philippe P. Dauman, who was paid nearly $34 million, a 22 percent increase over 2008. Sumner M. Redstone, who controls CBS and Viacom, was paid more than $33 million from the two companies combined. “Anybody who reads the business section knows the margins are being squeezed at media companies, so the fact that there are these huge packages makes no sense,” said James F. Reda, the founder of James F. Reda & Associates, a compensation consulting firm with offices in New York and Atlanta.
Business Insider:
Guess Who's Paying For The Greece Bailout? That's Right -- YOU. The bailout outrages never stop. Of the 110-billion Euro Greece bailout, 30-billion (approx $40 billion) will be paid for by the IMF. The US supplies almost 20% of the IMF's funding (per quotas). So that means US taxpayers are providing ~$8 billion of the $145 billion going to kick the Greek can down the road. That's the first outrage. (Why is this our problem?) The second outrage is that, as in some of the US bailouts, our bailout money is JUNIOR to Greece's existing debt. That means that, over the next couple of years, the idiot banks that loaned bankrupt Greece money will get their money back. And then, when Greece runs out of cash again, we'll be left holding the bag (along with Germany and the rest of the folks who bailed Greece out).
Suspect Arrested in NYC Bomb Attempt. A U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent, Shahzad Faisal, was arrested Monday night on Long Island, Williams reported. Earlier, an official told The Associated Press that the potential suspect recently traveled to Pakistan.
Washington Post:
Pakistan Native Sought in Times Square Bomb Case. An FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force on Monday took over the investigation into the failed Times Square car bombing amid growing indications that authorities are focusing on a possible international connection, U.S. officials and law enforcement sources said. Authorities were closing in on a man who they said was a naturalized U.S. citizen from Pakistan, according to a senior Obama administration official. The man is believed to have used cash to purchase the Nissan Pathfinder that was set ablaze but failed to detonate Saturday night on a tourist-crowded block in Midtown Manhattan.
L.A. Times:
America's Lead Weight. Unions have benefited the country, but changes in the economy have made mainstream unionism itself an impediment to growth. Do you have to love labor unions to be a good Democrat? That was the question raised last year by the unpopular bailouts of unionized Detroit automakers. It's been raised again this year by California's budget crisis, created at least in part by generous pensions for unionized public employees. I think the answer is no. It's time for Democrats, even liberal Democrats, to start looking at unions and unionism with deep skepticism.
Microsoft's(MSFT) Browser Share Dips Below 60%. Microsoft's browser market share continued to fall in April, with Internet Explorer now in use for fewer than three in five Web connections. IE's share of the market in April was 59.95, down from 60.65 percent in March, according to Net Applications. Google's Chrome grabbed the lion's share of that, increasing to 6.73 percent from 6.13 percent, while Firefox also gained nearly a tenth of a percentage point, to finish April with 24.59 percent.
Hedge Funds Donate Big to Democrats. The world’s top-earning hedge fund managers have bankrolled almost exclusively Democratic campaigns. The top 10 highest-paid hedge fund managers in 2009 have dished out campaign contributions almost only to Democrats. Over their lifetimes, those managers have given almost $33 million in campaign contributions to Democrats, according to research by the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and that is based on data maintained by the nonpartisan CQMoneyline. The same managers gave roughly $600,000 to Republicans, according to the research. The contributions went 98 percent to Democrats and two percent to Republicans. The money went to Democratic campaign committees, individual lawmaker’s election bids and other political action committees.
Reuters:
Volcker Says U.S. Should 'Think About' New Taxes. As government spending rises, the United States will need to consider raising money though new taxes, White House economics adviser Paul Volcker said Monday. Government spending is now close to 25 percent of GDP, up from 20 percent, he said. "You would have to be an optimist to believe it will go down to 20 percent again," he said after a talk on financial reform at Washington University in St. Louis. "We have to begin thinking about new taxes." Ideas could include a carbon tax or an energy tax, "and then there's that awful value-added-tax" he said.
California May Vote to Freeze Landmark Climate Law. Organizers of a California ballot measure that would suspend the state's landmark climate change law, possibly for years, said on Monday they had enough signatures to qualify it for the November ballot. The initiative would put the state's Global Warming Solutions Act, signed into law in 2006 by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, on hold until the state's unemployment rate falls below 5.5 percent for four consecutive quarters. Currently the state's unemployment rate is 12.6 percent and hasn't dropped below 5.5 percent since 2007.
Goldman Sachs(GS) Shareholders Pull No Punches. Shareholders hammered the board and top executives of Goldman Sachs for gross mismanagement of the beleaguered bank, accusing them of lying about damaging fraud charges and unjustly enriching themselves at investors’ expense, in a series of legal actions revealed yesterday.
Beijing Property Sales Plunge Over Holiday Weekend. Property average recorded sales in Beijing tumbled abruptly over the long May Day holiday, with the daily sales of second-hand property dropping by more than 80 percent compared with the last month, according to an official real estate website. Analysts say the abrupt cooling down of the property market in Beijing is a result of a raft of tough measures issued by the central and local governments recently to curb run-away prices. The moves include the recent limiting of homebuyers to one new apartment, but analysts also warned that the measures could deflate the property bubble in the long run, depending on their implementation. The latest figures from the Beijing Real Estate Management Network show that the daily sales of second-hand property in Beijing dropped to 211 over the weekend, against average daily sales of 1,164 last month - an 82 percent decline. "The significant drop in housing sales is inevitable, as both consumers and developers are taking a look-and-see attitude after a series of regulations since last December aimed at cooling down the red-hot real estate market," said Yin Bocheng, former director of the Real Estate Research Center at Fudan University. "The drop is expected to continue over the next few months. The market performance depends on whether housing prices will stay at a level accept-able to consumers and developers," Yin said.
Xinhua:
China needs to rein in credit to keep price increases in control even after the government raised the deposit reserve requirement ratio for financial institutions, the China Daily said today in an editorial.
Evening Recommendations Citigroup:
Reiterated Buy on (MET), added to Top Picks Live list, target $55.
Night Trading
Asian indices are -.75% to +.25% on average.
Asia Ex-Japan Investment Grade CDS Index 100.5 -1.5 basis points.
Factory Orders for March are estimated to fall -.1% versus a +.6% gain in February.
Pending Home Sales for March are estimated to rise +5.0% versus a +8.2% gain in February.
Upcoming Splits
None of note
Other Potential Market Movers
The weekly retail sales reports, Geithner's testimony before the Senate Finance Committee on Bank Fee, ABC consumer confidence report, (SONC) analyst day, RBC Capital Markets Financial Institutions Conference, Deutsche Bank Health Care Conference and the FinTech Investor Conference could also impact trading today.
BOTTOM LINE: Asian indices are mostly lower, weighed down by commodity and real estate shares in the region. I expect US stocks to open modestly higher and to weaken into the afternoon, finishing mixed. The Portfolio is 75% net long heading into the day.
North American Investment Grade CDS Index 90.36 bps +.1%
European Financial Sector CDS Index 103.96 bps +4.21%
Western Europe Sovereign Debt CDS Index 114.66 bps -1.15%
Emerging Market CDS Index 211.54 bps -4.56%
2-Year Swap Spread 25.0 +1 bp
TED Spread 19.0 unch.
Economic Gauges:
3-Month T-Bill Yield .16% unch.
Yield Curve 269.0 -1 b
China Import Iron Ore Spot $172.90/Metric Tonne unch.
Citi US Economic Surprise Index +20.30 unch.
10-Year TIPS Spread 2.40% unch.
Overseas Futures:
Nikkei Futures: Indicating +83 open in Japan
DAX Futures: Indicating +25 open in Germany
Portfolio:
Higher: On Gains in my Financial, Retail, Biotech and Tech long positions
Disclosed Trades: None
Market Exposure: 75% Net Long
BOTTOM LINE: Today's overall market action is very bullish as equities trade near session highs despite mounting headwinds. On the positive side, Oil Tanker, REIT, Disk Drive, Road & Rail and Gaming stocks are especially strong, rising 2.5%+. (IYR) has traded very well throughout the day. The euro remains heavy despite the Greece bailout. On the negative side, Coal, Oil Service, Gold and Steel shares are down on the day. Despite the rally in equities, the major CDS indices aren't falling much and the euro financial sector cds is rising meaningfully. As well, most commodities are trading poorly today. The market's resilience to recent negative developments remains very impressive. We have been stuck in a relatively volatile, but tight range over the last few weeks. I want to see the S&P 500 break free from this range before getting more aggressive on the long side. I expect US stocks to trade modestly higher into the close from current levels on short-covering, less financial sector pessimism and declining economic fear.
Greek Anger Rises as Papandreou Calls for Sacrifices. Prime Minister George Papandreou’s call for Greeks to accept more sacrifices in return for staving off default was rejected by opposition leaders and unions, which are already organizing more protests. Unions representing more than 500,000 civil servants called a 48-hour strike starting May 4. Local government workers called a snap strike for today. Teachers are also on strike from tomorrow and a general strike, the third this year, is planned for May 5. Members of the opposition party Syriza plan to encircle the Finance Ministry in central Athens today. “Protests will increase, given we also have the pension issue before us,” said Spyros Papaspyros, the head of the federation of civil servant unions, ADEDY. “Opting for the easy path of cutting wages and pensions can’t be accepted.”
Goldman Sachs's(GS) Senior Management Should Be Replaced, Bove Says. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. should replace its top executives because they failed to understand the politics of the financial crisis and mishandled regulators’ claims of fraud against the firm, according to Richard Bove, an analyst at Rochdale Securities. “Goldman is going to have to pay a high price for its ineptitude,” Bove wrote in a note to investors yesterday. “Its shareholders already have.”
Copper Slumps to Seven-Week Low as China Metal Demand May Slow. Copper dropped to a seven-week low in New York after China ordered banks to set aside more deposits as reserves, fueling concern that the lending curbs by the world’s biggest metals consumer will damp demand. Stockpiles of copper tracked by the Shanghai Futures Exchange increased 0.8 percent to 189,441 metric tons last week, the highest level since at least 2003.
US. Economy: Manufacturing Expands by Most Since June 2004. Manufacturing in the U.S. expanded in April at the fastest pace since June 2004, indicating the world’s largest economy accelerated as it entered the second quarter. The Institute for Supply Management’s factory index rose to 60.4, exceeding the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of economists, from a March reading of 59.6. Americans’ spending increased in March by the most in five months, according to the Commerce Department.
Ahmadinejad Slams U.S. Nuclear Policy. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in a speech Monday before the U.N., called for a vast remaking of the global institutions guarding the development of nuclear technologies, while denying his nation was seeking atomic weapons. Mr. Ahmadinejad demanded during his 35-minute address that the world's nuclear-weapons states agree to a clear timetable for the disbandment of their the arsenals, as well as to accept an independent body to oversee this process.
BP(BP) Says Crews Make Progress Stemming Oil Leaks. Bill Salvin, a company spokesman, said that crews had finished building a containment dome, a 4-story, 70-ton structure that the company plans to lower into place over one of the three leaks to catch the escaping oil and allow it to be pumped to the surface. The other two domes would be completed on Tuesday, Mr. Salvin said, and crews hoped to install all three domes by the weekend. “That will essentially eliminate most of the issues you have with oil in the water,” he said. The company was also preparing on Monday to try to install a shutoff valve at the site of one of the three leaks.
How Goldman(GS) Derivatives Amplified Crisis. The Senate investigation into Goldman Sachs offered concrete evidence last week of how defaults on subprime mortgage loans became so costly that they brought the financial system to its knees, The Wall Street Journal reported. After all, even at its height, subprime lending never represented more than a small percentage of the overall mortgage system — something more is needed to explain just why the fall was so drastic when it came. Documents released by the Senate investigation demonstrate that high-risk subprime mortgage bonds were effectively being replicated over and over again in the form of synthetic collateralized debt obligations. In one case, highlighted by The Wall Street Journal, a single $38 million subprime bond found its way into 30 debt pools, resulting in overall losses of $280 million to investors when the bond’s principal was lost. And that is why, in a Senate panel memo last week, Goldman was slammed for the replicating practice, which “magnified the impact of toxic mortgages.”
Apple(AAPL) On Track For $1 Billion of iPad Revenue in the First Quarter. Apple announced this morning that it sold its 1 millionth iPad last Friday. That is impressive as it sounds, and Apple's iPad is performing ahead of expectations. While there was obviously pent-up demand for the Apple tablet, selling a million of anything in a month -- let alone a $500+ gadget in April -- is an impressive feat.
Zero Hedge:
Market-Neutral Wipe Out, Likely Next on the Bailout Bandwagon as Liquidity Disappears Again.The Highbridge HSKAX index just suffered its biggest drop since March 2009. Market Neutral players are getting carted out feet first as liquidity is now totally gone and 100k SPY blocks move the market. Nobody but the upward biased and risk-free primary dealers want to participate in this market. MNs are deleveraging massively as the index hits lows not seen since mid-2008.
Weekly Standard:
American Oligarchy. Don't Expect Real Reform from the Wall Street Democrats. "Now, the Senate Republican leader, he paid a visit to Wall Street a week or two ago,” said President Obama at a California fundraiser for Barbara Boxer in mid-April, putting on a mocking, homespun voice. “He took along the chairman of their campaign committee. He met with some of the movers and shakers up there. I don’t know exactly what was discussed. All I can tell you is when he came back, he promptly announced he would oppose the financial regulatory reform.” To judge from the guffawing that followed, few in attendance realized that Obama is more dependent on “movers and shakers” in the financial sector than any president of our time, although the files of the Federal Election Commission make this clear as day. The movers at Goldman Sachs, whose top employees were grilled before the Senate Banking Committee last week, gave Obama’s party three times as much money in the last cycle ($4.5 million) as they gave to Mitch McConnell’s ($1.5 million). The shakers at Citicorp gave Democrats almost twice as much ($3.1 million) as they gave Republicans ($1.8 million). So every time the president accuses Republicans of trying to “block progress” or of defying “common sense,” as he did that night, he is executing a dangerous tightrope walk. His party’s electoral fortunes depend on his making forceful calls for reform of our banking laws. His party’s fundraising fortunes depend on his ensuring that no serious reform—of the kind that endangers the big banks’ size and power—ever happens. That may be why the Democrats’ strategy of painting the Republicans as obstructionists on finance reform has gained little traction. By the same token, if Republicans ever did get serious about reforming the banks—and even about breaking up an industry that has turned into a Democratic war chest—they would put Democrats in mortal peril.
Rasmussen Reports:
55% Rate U.S. Health Care System Good or Excellent, Just 13% Poor. Americans have felt little, if any, impact yet from the newly-passed plan to reform health care, and the majority of U.S. voters continue to give the current system positive ratings. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 55% of Likely Voters rate the current health care system as good or excellent. That’s up from 44% in February and 35% when the President first proposed his reform ideas last May. In July 2008, just 29% rated the health care system as good or excellent. The latest finding includes 17% who rate the current system as excellent. Just 13% of voters currently give the health care system a poor rating, down from 28% two months ago.
Politico:
Hedge Funds Get 'Free Ride'. Wall Street has taken its lumps in Washington recently and Goldman Sachs has become everyone’s whipping boy, but hedge funds and private equity firms have escaped relatively unscathed. “There’s no question they’ve gotten a free ride,” said Robert Weissman, president of the consumer group Public Citizen. And one reason for that, according to Weissman, is a particularly well-connected group of lobbyists. More than half the 83 lobbyists registered last year to work for the industries’ two trade groups, the Private Equity Council and the Managed Funds Association, have served in government — from Capitol Hill to the Treasury Department. While the revolving door is nothing new, the roster is nonetheless impressive — it has included three former members of Congress (Republican Richard Baker and Democrats Vic Fazio and Martin Frost) and about a half-dozen top staffers with ties to members of the Senate Banking Committee, including its chairman, Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).
N.Y. Lawmakers Blast Ahmadinejad at U.N. Summit. Members of New York's congressional delegation criticized Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presence at this week's United Nations nuclear non-proliferation summit as a "sham,” and Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) went one step further, calling for Ahmadinejad’s arrest. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, along with a handful of New York representatives, dismissed Ahmadinejad's speech at the United Nations, while calling for Senate hearings to investigate corporations engaging in business with Iran. “There are no other words to say it: Iran’s presence at this conference is a sham,” Gillibrand said in a release
Reuters:
Poll Shows Late Surge for Conservatives in Swing Seats. The Conservatives are making a late surge in key swing seats, suggesting it could be on course for a narrow but outright win in Thursday's parliamentary election, a poll published on Monday showed.
Ford(F) April U.S. Sales Rise 25%. Ford Motor Co posted a 25 percent increase in its April U.S. sales from a year earlier, propelled by record sales of its Fusion midsize sedan and robust demand for trucks led by the F-series pickup.
Independent:
Britain Faces Years of Austerity, Stephen King Says. After three leadership debates, we may have a better idea of who is likely to win (or, more accurately, who is likely to lose) on 6 May. But what happens thereafter remains a mystery. It's a mystery not so much because the leaders have offered little candour on where the public spending axe will fall. The great British public surely knows by now that the victor in next Thursday's general election will have to give us many spoonfuls of unpleasant medicine to make sure the budgetary figures add up, whether in the form of public-sector pay freezes, job cuts or tax increases (of which higher VAT is surely one of the more obvious candidates).
