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Bloomberg:
- Home prices in 20 U.S. cities rose in October for a fifth consecutive month, putting the housing market and economy farther along the path to recovery. The S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index increased 0.4 percent from the prior month on a seasonally adjusted basis, after a 0.2 percent rise in September, the group said today in New York. The gauge was down 7.3 percent from October 2008, the smallest year- over-year decline since October 2007. The median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News anticipated a 7.2 percent drop.
- Confidence among U.S. consumers rose in December for a second month as pessimism over the outlook for jobs diminished. The Conference Board’s confidence index increased to 52.9, in line with the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, from 50.6 in November, the New York-based research group said today. The gauge of expectations for the next six months climbed to 75.6, the highest since the recession began two years ago, from 70.3 the prior month. The share expecting more jobs improved to 16.2 percent from 15.8 percent.
- The cost to protect US corporate bonds from default declined to the lowest in almost two years, trading in a benchmark credit derivatives index shows. Credit-default swaps on the Markit CDX North America Investment Grade Index fell .5 basis point to 81.5 basis points, according to broker Phoenix Partners Group. The index reached its lowest since Jan. 2, 2008, when it ended at 81.04 basis points, according to CMA DataVision.
- A suspected terrorist’s attempt to blow up a U.S. airliner may override privacy concerns and intensify a push for full-body scanning equipment at airports as the U.S. plans to buy more of the machines. Companies such as OSI(OSIS), Smiths Group Plc, Safran SA and L-3 Communications Holdings Inc.(LLL) may benefit from any requirement that airports get more security equipment. London-based Smiths is the world’s biggest maker of airport scanners. Safran, based in Paris, is the world leader in biometric technologies, such as fingerprint scanners. New York-based L-3 also makes scanners for airport use. L-3 has “developed a more sophisticated system that could prevent smuggling of almost anything on the body,” said Howard Rubel, an analyst at Jefferies & Co., who has a “hold” rating on the stock. “Speed and privacy issues have slowed its introduction.”
- Stores, factories and public transportation in Pakistan’s biggest city of Karachi remained closed today after the deadliest bombing in more than two years triggered riots by protesters. Bus operators kept their vehicles off the roads, while traders kept their shop shutters down to protest against the violence that gutted about 3,000 shops in the nation’s commercial capital after the bombing. Smoke still billowed from the city’s biggest wholesale market where protesters set fire to stores and vehicles. “In addition to the 43 dead, five unidentified bodies were also found,” Sagheer Ahmed, provincial health minister said in a telephone interview from Karachi. “Around fifty to sixty injured are undergoing treatment.”
- Apple(AAPL) May Gain on New Products After Reaching Record.
Wall Street Journal:
- Alexis de Tocqueville never met Harry Reid. Had he encountered the Senate Democratic leader—or President Barack Obama or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi—de Tocqueville might have learned about a new twist on his concept of the "tyranny of the majority." The Frenchman toured America in the 1830s and published his conclusions in the classic "Democracy in America." He noted the powerful impact of public opinion. "That is what forms the majority," he wrote. Congress merely "represents the majority and obeys it blindly" and so does the president. They are free to brush aside minority opinion, creating a threat de Tocqueville described as the "tyranny of the majority." Democrats in Washington do have large majorities in Congress. But instead of reflecting popular opinion, they are pursuing wide-ranging initiatives in defiance of the views of the majority of Americans. This stands de Tocqueville's concept on its head. The most striking example is health-care reform. It is intensely unpopular but was approved by the House in November and the Senate on Christmas Eve. Asked in a Rasmussen poll in mid-December if they'd prefer no bill to ObamaCare, 57% said they would. Only 34% said they'd rather ObamaCare be enacted.
- Iran lashed back at the U.S. and Britain Tuesday, accusing the two governments of interfering in its affairs, in the wake of rebukes issued earlier in the week from Washington and London over Tehran's crackdown on protesters. Iranian foreign-ministry spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast also signaled a hardening of resolve in Tehran's response to protesters, who have dogged the regime since June, when large-scale demonstrations erupted amid accusations of vote rigging in presidential elections.
CNBC:
- Investors poured $11.1 billion to U.S. equity funds in the week ending Dec. 23, the highest amount in 79 weeks and slightly offsetting the record outflows from such funds this year, fund tracker EPFR Global said on Tuesday. The outflow from money market funds slowed in the penultimate week of 2009 while emerging market funds remained on track to post a record annual inflow.
- US gross domestic product could grow at an annual rate of as much as 3 percent next year as consumers and businesses start to regain confidence, Peter Cardillo, chief market economist from Avalon Partners, told CNBC Tuesday. “It's all a question of confidence and that confidence is coming back. It's not only coming back among the consumers, but it's also coming back among the businesses," Cardillo said.
Barron’s:
NY Times:
- There is a middle-class tax time bomb ticking in the Senate’s version of President Obama’s effort to reform health care. The bill that passed the Senate with such fanfare on Christmas Eve would impose a confiscatory 40 percent excise tax on so-called Cadillac health plans, which are popularly viewed as over-the-top plans held only by the very wealthy. In fact, it’s a tax that in a few years will hammer millions of middle-class policyholders, forcing them to scale back their access to medical care. Which is exactly what the tax is designed to do. The tax would kick in on plans exceeding $23,000 annually for family coverage and $8,500 for individuals, starting in 2013. In the first year it would affect relatively few people in the middle class. But because of the steadily rising costs of health care in the U.S., more and more plans would reach the taxation threshold each year. Within three years of its implementation, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the tax would apply to nearly 20 percent of all workers with employer-provided health coverage in the country, affecting some 31 million people. Within six years, according to Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation, the tax would reach a fifth of all households earning between $50,000 and $75,000 annually. Those families can hardly be considered very wealthy.
NYPost:
- Greed may be out of style, but risk is still good. That seems to be the lesson big banks like Goldman Sachs(GS) and JPMorgan Chase(JPM) have learned from the credit crisis. The amount of risk they're taking, as measured by their exposure to losses from brokering derivatives, is still significant -- and in some cases has actually risen since the height of the crisis. Goldman Sachs Bank is the biggest risk taker, with almost three times as much credit exposure as the next biggest gambler, JPMorgan, according to a third-quarter report recently released by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The amounts are so large that if the swaps and other derivative contracts the banks broker go bad because the parties on either side of the deal collapse, the banks could be in trouble. Indeed, in 2008 Goldman received billions in rescue dollars that had been loaned to insurer American International Group, because of its huge role in AIG's derivatives program. As of Sept. 30, Goldman posted $42 billion in derivatives and had $115 million in assets. JPMorgan brokered $79 billion in derivatives against $1.7 billion in assets as of Sept. 30. Since the last quarter of 2006, near the peak of the credit boom, JPMorgan has reduced its total credit exposure to risk-based capital by 16 percent. Citibank in the same time period has cut its exposure by 24 percent. Meanwhile, Bank of America has increased its exposure by almost 50 percent, though it is still well below the levels of the other three. Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker earlier this month said credit default swaps had taken the economy to the "brink of disaster" and "proprietary trading should be pushed out of investment banks and to hedge funds where they belong."
The Business Insider:
Detroit Free Press:
- Leaders in metro Detroit's Muslim community are gathering today in Southfield to condemn Al Qaeda's claims of involvement in the foiled Christmas Day airline attack. "No faith or legitimate political ideology could ever justify the injuring or murdering of innocent civilians," Dawud Walid, director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said at a news conference at the center's Southfield offices today. "No cause or grievances can ever justify such wanton violence. "These people are outside the true religion and the true fold of Islam," he said, also condemning racial or ethnic profiling as a reaction to the Christmas Day attack. "They are enemies of peace-loving Muslims throughout the world." Abdulmutallab's failed attempt to blow up Flight 253 from Amsterdam as it landed in Detroit is not "jihad," or "striving in the cause of God," Walid pointed out. Instead, attacks are "irhab," or "terrorism," and "hirabah," or "unlawful warfare," according to Islam's holy book, the Koran, he said. Walid's group is launching its own jihad, an online endeavor to provide legitimate information to young, uneducated Muslims who might fall prey to Internet rhetoric from religious extremists. He expects the online presence to launch by spring.
LoopRumors:
- China Unicom has reportedly sold over 300,000 iPhones in the country according to iPhonAsia. The mobile operator had reported sales of just 5,000 units during the first weekend of sales at the end of October and reached 100,000 phones sold in early December. This means it took the company 40 days to reach the 100,000 mark and less than 20 days to sell an additional 200,000. This represents an impressive acceleration in sales for the initially struggling Chinese market. The report comes from TechQQ who gathered the information from a China Unicom executive who spoke to the press on December 27. China Unicom is the only
USA Today:
- Diplomats are concerned about an intelligence report that says Iran is trying to import 1,350 tons of purified uranium ore from Kazakhstan in violation of U.N. Security Council sanctions. Such a deal would be significant because Tehran appears to be running out of that material, which it needs to feed its uranium enrichment program. A summary of the report obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday said the deal could be completed within weeks. It said Tehran was willing to pay $450 million, or close to 315 million euros, for the shipment.
Politico:
- There is a sense of déjà vu in the Obama administration’s response to the attempted terrorist attack on Christmas Day. A by-now familiar pattern has been established for dealing with unexpected problems. First, White House aides downplay the notion that something may have gone wrong on their part. While staying out of the spotlight, the president conveys his efforts to address the situation and his feelings about it through administration officials. After a few days, the White House concedes on the issue, and perhaps Barack Obama even steps out to address it. That same scenario unfolded over the summer, when Obama said Sgt. James Crowley, a white Cambridge, Mass., police officer, “acted stupidly” when he arrested Henry Louis Gates Jr., a black Harvard professor, in his own home. It happened in March when the public was outraged over AIG dishing out hefty bonuses. More recently the public witnessed the dynamic after a security breach at President Barack Obama’s first state dinner. But the fact that the issue now is a terrorist incident — albeit an unsuccessful one — makes the stakes much higher, and the White House’s usual approach more questionable. That this test of his leadership comes while he’s on vacation in tropical Hawaii further complicates things.
BGR:
- You know what was so 2009? Television in HD. You know what is so 2010? Television in HD and 3D. HD Guru is reporting that DirecTV is planning to launch an all HD and 3D channel in 2010; with an announcement forthcoming at this years CES show in Las Vegas. The new service will be made possible by a new DirecTV satellite being shot into orbit sometime in the very near future, a satellite slated to be fully operational by March of 2010. The channel will play a variety of movies and sports all conforming to the latest 3D standard. Now before we all get too excited, the new service will work with your current DirecTV HD box, thanks to a firmware update, but you will have to purchase yourself a new 3D compatible HD TV — many of which are to be announced at CES this year. Will 3D be the new buzz word of the 2010 television market? We will see.
- Google(GOOG) Nexus One sold directly and only by Google, officially supported by T-Mobile.
bnet:
- Google(GOOG) Might Get Into Hosted Gaming Via YouTube.
Reuters:
- The Internet made shopping without checkout lines a no-brainer. Now, some Web companies are betting that people are ready to forsake another shopping tradition: tangible products. Virtual goods, which exist as digital bits on computers and cellphones, have grown more popular in the past year as important accoutrements for increasingly Web-oriented lives. Often available for a $1 or less, virtual goods range from video game accessories like extra weapons for shooting games, to electronic birthday cards and flowers for friends on Facebook or dating sites like Zoosk and flirtomatic.com.
De Telegreaaf:
- Al-Qaeda uses its own scanning and x-ray machines to test the concealment of bombs, citing a former Dutch military intelligence official. Al-Qaeda has performed test-runs to mislead scanning machines in European airports, the official said.
Le Figaro:
- Apple Inc.’s(AAPL) 2009 French sales of iPhones will total between 1.8 million and 2 million units. That’s enough to give Apple an 8.5% share of the French mobile-phone market.
Digitimes:
- LG Display (LGD) expects its share of the global e-paper display (EPD) market to reach 20% in 2010, up from 15% in 2009, according to company CEO Kwon Young Soo at the signing of a strategic alliance with Taiwan-based EPD maker Prime View International (PVI) on December 28. Kwon noted that the collaboration with PVI will help LGD secure EPD material supply from E-Ink in the future. PVI has acquired E-Ink. The global e-book reader market is expected to reach 9.3 million units in 2010, up from 3.82 million in 2009, and E-Ink will account for over 90% of the market, according to Digitimes Research.
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Late-Night Headlines
Bloomberg:
- JPMorgan Chase & Co.(JPM) Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon told U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling that his 50 percent tax on banker bonuses would unfairly penalize the U.S. lender, a person close to the firm said. Dimon, 53, mentioned plans to build a 1.5 billion pound ($2.4 billion) European headquarters in London’s Canary Wharf as an example of the New York-based firm’s commitment to the city, the person said. Dimon reiterated that the bank, the second- biggest U.S. lender by assets and deposits, paid British taxes and didn’t take a U.K. taxpayer bailout, the person said, declining to be identified because the conversation was private. The telephone call was made after Darling on Dec. 9 imposed a 50 percent tax on discretionary bonuses greater than 25,000 pounds at all banks operating in the U.K. JPMorgan is considering dropping plans to build its European headquarters at Canary Wharf because of the U.K. bonus tax, the Financial Times newspaper reported, citing an unidentified bank executive. The bonus tax will be a factor in the decision, the executive told the newspaper.
- China executed a British national today, ignoring pleas from the U.K. government for clemency and protests from human rights bodies that the prisoner was suffering from a mental illness and unfit to stand trial. Father of five, Akmal Shaikh, was killed today in Urumqi, the capital of China’s westernmost Xinjiang province. “I condemn the execution of Akmal Shaikh in the strongest terms,” U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in a statement released by the Foreign Office. “No mental health assessment was undertaken.” Shaikh’s execution is the first of a national from a European Union country in China in 50 years, according to the charity Reprieve, which campaigns for death row prisoners globally. China carried out more executions than the rest of the world put together last year, Amnesty International says. Shaikh was caught with 4.03 kilograms of heroin in Urumqi, certified to be 84.2 percent pure, Xinhua reported.
Wall Street Journal:
- Al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen claimed responsibility for the attack on Northwest Flight 253, and U.S. officials said the claim appears valid -- the clearest indication yet that the attempted takedown wasn't just the work of a lone radical inspired by Islamist rhetoric, as some investigators initially believed. The development came as evidence mounted that the U.S. didn't pursue potential leads that might have brought alleged Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to the attention of authorities, according to Congressional investigators and U.S. officials. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano backtracked Monday from comments she made in televised interviews over the weekend, in which she said the U.S.'s security systems had worked. President Barack Obama, in his first public comments about the incident, promised the government would do everything it can to keep travelers secure. "We will not rest until we find all who were involved and hold them accountable," Mr. Obama said in remarks broadcast on television from Hawaii, where he is on vacation.
A statement attributed to the group "al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula" claimed it was retaliating for what it says was the U.S.'s role in a recent Yemeni military offensive on al Qaeda, according to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
- After signing a $787 billion economic stimulus and embracing two annual blowout budgets that will double the national debt over 10 years even before ObamaCare, President Obama is poised to pivot next (election) year and denounce the horrors of deficit spending. So the White House is now floating a bipartisan commission to reduce federal borrowing, and much of the political class is all for it. We only hope Republicans aren't foolish enough to fall down this trap door, though some are already tempted. A budget deficit commission is nothing more than a time-tested ploy to get Republicans to raise taxes.
- Wall Street has undergone a radical face lift this year, but finance industry recruiters are expected to stick to roughly the same formula when looking to fill entry-level positions with college graduates in the future. Wealth management, investment banking and research are expected to see a hiring surge in the coming years, according to Joseph Logan, founder and managing director of Pinnacle Group International, a New York executive recruiting firm specializing in the financial services industry. "A strong background in accounting plus financial [knowledge in] evaluation is the key—and being well-rounded will help a lot," says David Smith, an associate professor at the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia who specializes in corporate finance and banking. Strong social skills and the ability to think creatively are important to round out more technical and quantitative talents.
- Rep. John Mica (R., Fla.), one of the authors of the law establishing the federal Transportation Security Administration, called the attempted airline bombing last week "a serious wakeup call" and urged the Congress to change its method of choosing TSA administrators. "There has been no TSA administrator for nearly a year and the next one will be the fifth in eight years. Running a security agency with a revolving door is a recipe for failure," Mica said Monday in a press release. He is the ranking Republican of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and chairman of the Subcommittee on Aviation from 2001 to 2007. He also called TSA "an agency that is ineptly led from Washington, D.C., by a top-heavy, well-paid headquarters staff of 3,200 with an average annual salary of $103,000." Mica pointed out that despite being larger than the departments of education and commerce, with more than 60,000 employees, "TSA has failed to compile a reliable watch list after eight years." He suggested cutting the agency's managerial and administrative staff by 25% and transferring these positions overseas and to high-risk locations, "more in line with the Israeli model of aviation security." "With a record number of air marshals at TSA, it is unbelievable that the agency could not deploy at least one to an at-risk international flight with a suspect reportedly on at least one watch list and whose father reportedly had previously warned U.S. embassy officials," Mica added.
- Time Warner Cable Inc. (TWC) is willing to pay News Corp.'s (NWS, NWSA) Fox Broadcasting stations a retransmission consent fee for access to its programming next year, according to two people familiar with the matter, but the companies are negotiating on the size of the fee as the end of their current contract approaches.
Fox, which doesn't receive any retransmission fees from Time Warner Cable, is asking for $1 per subscriber per month--a figure that more than doubles the amount the cable company pays to other broadcast networks, like CBS Corp. (CBS).
- Morgan Stanley(MS) is poised to overhaul the way it pays its most senior executives, deferring more of their compensation over time and benchmarking their pay against rival firms, according to people familiar with the matter. But the investment bank may stop short of the approach taken by Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which said its top executives would receive only stock for 2009 bonuses. Senior Morgan Stanley executives may receive about one quarter of their 2009 pay in cash, with the rest coming as deferred stock, one of the people familiar with the matter said.
- American International Group Inc.(AIG) plans to pay its outgoing general counsel Anastasia Kelly several million dollars in severance benefits after she resigned because of federal pay curbs, according to people familiar with the matter. The move to pay out the benefits to AIG's top in-house lawyer comes amid recent scrutiny of Ms. Kelly's actions in a December pay dispute involving her and four other senior executives.
- The Man Who Wired Silicon Valley. Raj Rajaratnam liked to tell people that his first name meant "king" in Hindi, and, coupled with his last name, that made him "king of kings." He told the story with the broad, toothy smile that had ingratiated him to a generation of Silicon Valley executives. The grin softened the edge of a boss who'd call you an "idiot" or prod you into some humiliating stunt: Would you take $5,000 to be shocked with a stun gun?
- Apparently the fellows in al Qaeda took as a personal insult Secretary of Homeland Anxiety Janet Napolitano's comment Sunday that their role in the foiled Detroit airliner bombing wasn't clear but would be investigated. Yesterday, al Qaeda's ascendant franchise in the Arabian peninsula saved Secretary Napolitano the trouble of plowing through all the layers of the national-security bureaucracy for an answer. The terrorist organization put out a pointed statement not only claiming responsibility but also mocking the U.S.'s ability to stop them. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, they said, "dealt a huge blow to the myth of American and global intelligence services and showed how fragile its structure is." What this means is that we have to think more broadly about jihad and the potential recruitment of terrorists anywhere in the world, including inside the United States. We and our European allies have to revisit the problem of fiery imams using mosques as recruitment depots for airline suicide bombers. The close call in the airspace over Detroit gives "probable cause" new meaning. Al Qaeda has sent a message to the Obama Administration: You are in a war. Someone in our government needs to say clearly that they now understand the message.
- Citi(C), The Can't Lose Trade Of 2010?
CNNMoney.com:
- The chief economist at First Trust Advisors, a Chicago asset manager, Wesbury has one of the most bullish assessments on the economy. His new book trumpets that optimism in its title: "It's Not As Bad As You Think." Wesbury predicts economic growth of 5% or more in the last three months of this year, nearly twice the average forecast, followed by at least 4.5% growth in 2010. He sees job growth returning as soon as December of this year. Unemployment, now at 10%, will fall to about 8.5% by the end of 2010, he believes. That's about a percentage point better than most economists' estimates. In 2011, he says, the rate will drop to about 7%. He's bullish on housing, too: He says things are improving so fast in real estate that by the third quarter of 2010, there could be a seller's market for new homes. Wesbury maintains this rosy view even though he believes government action to rescue the economy hurt more than it helped. He blames the financial meltdown not on lack of government oversight, but on mark-to-market accounting, which required banks and Wall Street firms to value the assets on their balance sheet at current market prices. Those rules, which caused massive losses when the housing bubble burst, were significantly loosened earlier this year. That easing, he argues, was the key to reopening the flow of credit and reviving the economy. Despite his policy worries, he believes the economy can overcome the headwinds caused by government intervention to post solid growth. Here now is a question-and-answer session with Mr. Sunshine, Brian Wesbury.
Business Week:
- The dollar and U.S. stocks may keep rising together as economies improve around the world, reversing the relationship that held between March and November, hedge- fund manager Barton Biggs said. The currency is undervalued against the euro and yen and the economic recovery is “gaining momentum,” he added. Gross domestic product will increase 2.6 percent next year after contracting 2.5 percent in 2009, according to the median economist forecasts in a Bloomberg survey. “After a severe economic shock like we just had, the odds are that we’re going to have a pretty good burst of growth in 2010, 2011,” Biggs, who runs New York-based Traxis Partners LP, said in a Bloomberg Television interview today. “I don’t see any reason why we can’t have a further rally in the dollar and a further rally in stocks. My guess is that the next move in both could be on the order of 10 percent.” Bullish bets that Biggs made during the worst of the credit crisis are giving his six-year-old firm its best returns ever. His view on the dollar echoes the forecast from Marc Faber, publisher of the “Gloom Boom & Doom” newsletter, who told Bloomberg Television today that currency dollar may appreciate 5 percent to 10 percent against the euro in the near term while equities advance.
Washington Post:
- A dangerous explosive allegedly concealed by Nigerian student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in his underwear could have blown a hole in the side of his Detroit-bound aircraft if it had been detonated, according to two federal sources briefed on the investigation. Authorities said they are still analyzing a badly damaged syringe that Abdulmutallab allegedly employed as a detonating device on Christmas Day. But preliminary conclusions indicate that he used 80 grams of PETN -- almost twice as much of the highly explosive material used by convicted shoe bomber Richard C. Reid. A day after Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said there was "no indication" the incident was connected to a larger plot, there were increasing signs that the failed bombing may have represented one of the most serious terrorist threats in the United States since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Chicago Tribune:
- Heart specialists on Monday filed suit against Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius in an effort to stave off steep Medicare fee cuts for routine office-based procedures such as nuclear stress tests and echocardiograms. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, charges that the government's planned cutbacks will deal a major blow to medical care in the USA, forcing thousands of cardiologists to shutter their offices, sell diagnostic equipment and work for hospitals, which charge more for the same procedures. "What they've done is basically killed the private practice of cardiology," says Jack Lewin, CEO of the American College of Cardiology (ACC), which represents 90% of the roughly 40,000 heart specialists in the USA. George Moutsatsos, a managing partner in Cardiology Consultants of Delaware, a group of 32 heart specialists that serves half of the heart patients in the state, says heart attack patients in rural areas are likely to suffer. Moutsatsos says the money doctors make for providing imaging services helps compensate them for their round-the-clock availability to treat heart attacks with balloon angioplasty. "In rural areas, we get very little money to do this work," he says. "Those are the areas where we're going to consider cutting." Scott Smith, a cardiologist who works in rural Silver City, N.M., not far from the Mexican border, says, "The closest cardiologist to me is 150 miles away. With all these cuts coming, it will make it impossible for me to break even seeing 40 patients a day. "It's so absurd, it's kind of funny," he says. "I know ACC doesn't think it's funny. It's an efficient way of getting rid of cardiology."
- Texas' now-strong banks hold lessons for rest of US.
Politico:
Real Clear Politics:
- Why Regular Americans Are Turning Away From Democrats.
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:
- As I'm writing this, they're in a panic in Congress, voting in the wee hours, bribing reluctant senators with millions in slush funds for their respective states, all to ram through a health reform bill that few if any of the lawmakers have even read, let alone intellectually reflected upon or debated. They've already lost the public. In the most recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, support for the Democrats' health reform bills has dropped to 32 percent. In the latest CNN poll, the public is opposed to the Democrats' health reforms by a margin of nearly 2 to 1. "Democrats are on a political suicide mission," notes Megan McArdle, economics writer at The Atlantic magazine's blog. "At this point, the thing is more than a little inexplicable," McArdle asserts, speaking of the unpopularity of the legislation and the subsequent likelihood that Democrats will lose seats in both the House and Senate in next year's elections. "No bill this large has ever passed on a straight party-line vote or even anything close to a straight party-line vote," writes McArdle. "No bill this unpopular has ever passed on a straight party-line vote." The Democrats' suicide mission is the result of their defining America's health care system as "broken," a system in such "crisis" that nothing short of an immediate and complete overhaul is required -- a task, unfortunately, that's beyond the skill levels of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, described the strategy for power grabbing early on: "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."
Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal:
- Retailers saw traffic on their Web sites surge in November, with Target Corp. ranking second behind Wal-Mart Stores Inc.(WMT) in the department store category, according to research released Monday. Visits to sites in the toy, consumer electronics and department store categories all jumped by more than 30 percent in November compared to the prior month, Reston, Va.-based digital media tracking company ComScore(SCOR) reported. Minneapolis-based Target's (TGT) traffic jumped 43 percent to 38.8 million unique visitors in November. Wal-Mart, meanwhile, reported 46.2 million visitors, up 62 percent compared to October. Overall, online department stores saw visits to their sites grow 33 percent in November to roughly 81 million.
Reuters:
- Speculators ditched bets against the dollar in the latest week and were long the U.S. currency for the first time since May, according to Commodity Futures Trading Commission data released on Monday. The value of the dollar's net long position was around $700 million in the week ending Dec. 22, up from a net short position of $1.98 billion the prior week, according to Reuters calculations.
Financial Times:
Der Spiegel:
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- S&P/CaseShiller Home Price Index for October is estimated to rise to 147.0 versus 146.51 in September.
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- Consumer Confidence for December is estimated to rise to 53.0 versus a reading of 49.5 in November.
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- The Treasury's 5-Year Note auction, API energy inventory data, ABC Consumer Confidence reading and weekly retail sales reports could also impact trading today.