Bloomberg:
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 14 percent between Barack Obama’s election and Inauguration Day, the biggest decline ever. The second-biggest drop gave way to a 75 percent rally in 1933.
- U.S. bank stocks plunged, led by Bank of America Corp.(BAC), on concern that mounting losses will force companies to slash dividends, raise more money and face further government oversight.
- Kingdom Holding Co., the investment company controlled by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, reported a fourth-quarter loss of almost 31 billion riyals ($8.26 billion) after Citigroup Inc. shares plunged in the credit crisis. Kingdom Holding fell 6.8 percent in Riyadh. The company reported its latest results on the Saudi bourse Web site today after the market closed. “The loss is phenomenal,” John Sfakianakis, chief economist at Saudi British Bank, said in an interview today by telephone from Riyadh. “This is the biggest corporate story for Saudi Arabia in many years.”
- Chrysler LLC, rescued last month with $4 billion in federal loans, is trading a 35 percent stake to Italy’s Fiat SpA as the two companies work to create viable carmaking operations. Cerberus Capital Management LP’s Chrysler, the third- largest U.S. automaker, would get access to Fiat’s small-car lineup and global sales network to wean itself from dependence on trucks and the North American market, while Fiat would expand a U.S. foothold now limited to its luxury brands.
- At least one-quarter of House Democrats’ proposed $825 billion economic stimulus plan wouldn’t be spent until at least 2011, according to a report that suggests the package may take longer than expected to boost the economy. A Congressional Budget Office analysis said most of the plan’s $355 billion in appropriations for programs such as highway construction wouldn’t be spent until after 2010. The government would spend about $26 billion of that money this year and $110 billion more next year, the report estimated.
- The Bank of New York Mellon(BK) has rescheduled its fourth-quarter 2008 financial results conference call to 5 p.m. EST today (Tuesday, January 20, 2009).
- The Bank of Canada slashed its key interest rate to the lowest since the institution was founded in 1934 and signaled that more cuts may be needed to jolt the economy out of recession and stabilize credit markets. Governor Mark Carney cut the target rate on overnight loans between commercial banks by half a point to 1 percent, lower than the previous record of 1.12 percent in 1958 when the rate was based on treasury-bill yields.
- Greenwich, Connecticut, home prices dropped the most in three decades last year and the number of houses sold plunged by more than a third as cutbacks in the financial industry spurred declines in residential real estate. The median home price in America’s hedge-fund capital dropped 7 percent to $1.95 million in 2007, and the number of single-family houses sold fell to 460 from 726 a year earlier, broker Prudential Connecticut Realty said.
- Options traders increased bets that General Electric Co.(GE), which reports quarterly results this week, will tumble by half before next month’s contracts expire. About 56,000 GE puts traded when an investor used a “butterfly” spread strategy to wager that the stock will fall to $7.50 by Feb. 20, according to Andrew Wilkinson, the senior market analyst at Greenwich, Connecticut-based Interactive Brokers Group Inc. GE, the finance and industrial company that’s fallen 61 percent in the past year on the New York Stock Exchange, lost 5.3 percent to $13.23 at 1:07 p.m. in New York.
Wall Street Journal:
- Barack Obama was sworn in Tuesday as the 44th president under sunny skies and before an ocean of humanity, calling on the nation to put aside greed, irresponsibility and "our collective failure to make hard choices" -- and turn back the "raging storms" of war and recession. In an ambitious, 20-minute address, Mr. Obama sought to obliterate the divisions of conservatism and liberalism and remake American politics. "Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations," Mr. Obama said.
NY Times:
- A new national report on childbirth suggests that some long-term trends may be reversing themselves. The report, published Jan. 7 by the National Center for Health Statistics, found that more babies were born in 2006 than in any year since 1961.
- They also put him in rare concert with his campaign opponent, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, who just announced her own wind, geothermal, tidal and wave energy push. Momentarily parting ways with “drill, baby, drill,” the pro-oil refrain made popular during the Republican presidential campaign, the oil- and gas-producing state will endeavor to get half its electricity from renewables by 2025, Governor Palin said last week, as she unveiled a state energy plan.
FINalternatives:
- Today’s inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States will be the most expensive in history. And despite their troubles, hedge fund managers and employees are helping to foot the bill. The bill for Obama’s swearing-in may hit $150 million—more than $100 million of which is for security costs. And among those giving the maximum $50,000 per individual are Soros Fund Management’s George Soros and D.E. Shaw Group’s David Shaw, leading a large number of hedge fund industry professionals to pay for the inauguration. The Presidential Inauguration Committee has raised more than $27 million, of which $7.1 million came from those involved in finance, according to the Centre for Responsive Politics. The Soros family alone gave $200,000. Other hedgies (or former hedgies) giving the max include Grosvenor Capital Management’s Stephen Malkin and Michael Sacks (and Sacks’ wife, Cari), Paloma Partners CEO Donald Sussman and Oaktree Capital Management Chairman Howard Marks. Also giving $50,000 was CNBC personality Ron Insana, who recently shuttered his hedge fund, Insana Capital Partners, and Howard Kagan, late of activist shop Harbinger Capital Partners. Howard Gottlieb, a retired partner at Glenwood Financial Group, now owned by Man Group, gave $50,000, as did his wife, Anne. Marsha Laufer, the wife of Renaissance Technologies chief scientist Henry Laufer, also gave as much as she could, along with Naomi Aberly, the wife of HBK Capital Management’s Lawrence Lebowitz. Chess Capital Partners founder Shonda Warner, Fletcher Asset Management deputy CEO Denis Kiely, GEM Investors senior managing partner Barry Malkin, McGarr Capital’s Cappy McGarr, Seminole Capital Partners founder Michael Messner, Taconic Capital Advisors founder Frank Brosens, and Willow Creek Capital Management founder Aaron Braun each gave the maximum. The CRP said that 118 people with Wall Street ties gave a total of $3.6 million to fund the festivities, followed by lawyers ($2.5 million) and people with ties to the entertainment business ($1.7 million).
Politico:
- Allies of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi call her a grand master at “three-level chess” — a skilled politician who games out her complex relationships with the White House, the Senate and her own fractious, heterodox House Democratic Caucus. Two days before Barack Obama’s Inauguration, the speaker showed off a new move — using the media to keep even a Democratic president from wandering onto her turf. Pelosi used a Fox News appearance Sunday to break with the president-elect on two key issues: the fate of President George W. Bush’s tax cuts for families earning $250,000 or more and the possibility of congressional investigations into the actions of Bush administration officials. While Pelosi’s words showed that she and Obama don’t always agree on matters of policy, the signal they sent was more important: Yes, you can use the media to speak straight to the public. But so can I — and I will when you’re invading my turf.
Reuters:
Barclays on Tuesday upgraded the U.S. real estate investment trust (REIT)sector to positive from neutral, saying the group will report better quarterly results than what is priced into current valuation, "as they should be relatively less impacted than private players" by the economic environment. The firm added that the group's sell-off from September 2008 through November "was overdone, resulting in attractive valuation levels, even after the subsequent recovery."
Financial Times:
Any attempt by Barack Obama to get European Union members of Nato to send more troops to Afghanistan will be strongly rebuffed by EU voters, according to a new opinion poll for the Financial Times. As Mr Obama prepares to be sworn in as US president on Tuesday, a Harris poll for the FT shows that clear majorities of people in the UK, France, Italy and Germany believe that their governments must not send more forces to Afghanistan, irrespective of demands that the new American head of state might make.
El Nacional:
Sarmayeh:
Etemade Meli:
- Iran’s economy has been caught by the global financial turmoil and faces a “vast crisis,” citing head of Tehran’s chamber of commerce Yahya Ale Eshagh.
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