Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:
- US stocks are climbing after earnings reports from Oracle Corp.(ORCL) and Nike Inc.(NKE) topped analysts’ estimates, sending the market toward its biggest weekly gain since March.
- Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said he’s open to temporarily allowing Fannie Mae(FNM) and Freddie Mac(FRE) to package jumbo mortgages into securities if Congress creates a tougher regulator for government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs.
- Wilbur L. Ross Jr., who helped pioneer investing in bankrupt companies, offered to pay at least $435 million for the servicing unit of American Home Mortgage Investment Corp.(AHM)
- Texas Instruments(TXN) increased its share buyback plan by $5 billion and raised its dividend for the second time this year to reassure investors after two quarters of declining profit.
- Estee Lauder(EL) shares surged the most since January and option trading increased amid speculation the maker of Clinique cosmetics will be taken over.
- Investor confidence in high-risk, high-yield loans improved for a 10^th day amid signs banks are starting to sell debt mandated before the global credit slump, according to traders of credit-default swaps.
- Crude oil is falling $1.00/bbl. on speculation that prices are overvalued because of slowing demand growth and increased OPEC output.

Wall Street Journal:
- After oxygen, raw silicon is the most abundant element on the planet, but a shortage of a highly purified version of the stuff is shaking up the solar-power industry, giving companies that didn’t exist a decade ago a chance to challenge longtime leaders.

Forbes.com:
- Sam Zell On The Credit Crisis: It’s Not That Bad.

NY Post:
- Prices of single-family residences in NY’s affluent Hamptons neighborhoods on eastern Long Island have been boosted by “monster trophy homes,” citing a Suffolk Research Service survey. Median prices have risen at double-digit rates since the start of the year through August.
- Democratic NY Governor Eliot Spitzer is expected to announce a new policy today that will allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses.

CommsDay.com:
- Google(GOOG) plans new undersea “Unity” cable across Pacific.

AP:
- The US $5 banknote has been redesigned for the 21^st century with splashes of purple and gray partly to make the currency more difficult to counterfeit.

Financial Times:
- Mohammad Khatami, the former Iranian president, is considering running in the country’s 2009 presidential election on a platform of détente with the West, citing unnamed allies of Khatami.

Reuters:
- China could become the world’s top wind power market in three to five years but will grow faster if it reforms its subsidy system, executives of major wind turbine maker Vestas said.