Bloomberg:
- Governments would need to take over all the assets of a bank and take charge of daily operations for a nationalization to trigger payouts on credit-default swaps, according to Bank of America analysts. Simple nationalization wouldn’t be enough to settle the derivatives, which protect investors against a company defaulting on debt repayments, NY-based strategist Glen Taksler wrote today.
- Michael Smith moved 2,500 miles across Australia in July to earn A$120,000 ($80,000) as a blaster. Now the 30-year-old explosives expert is a motorcycle courier making half his former wage. Smith’s woes mirror those of Western Australia, his new home, where a mining boom that drove 17 years of economic growth in the southern continent has collapsed.
- Crude oil tumbled and gasoline futures dropped 10 percent after a U.S. government report showed a bigger-than-forecast increase in crude and fuel inventories as the recession curbed demand. Supplies of crude oil rose 6.1 million barrels to 332.7 million last week, the highest since August 2007, an Energy Department report showed today. “The crude increase was significant and the gasoline number was huge. We saw product supplies increase despite a significant decrease in refinery runs and lower prices.” U.S. fuel consumption during the four weeks ended Jan. 16 averaged 19.4 million barrels a day, down 4.7 percent from a year earlier, the Energy Department report showed. Supplies at Cushing, Oklahoma, where oil traded on Nymex is stored, climbed 0.7 percent to 33.2 million barrels last week, the highest since at least April 2004, when the department began keeping records for the location. Stockpiles in the Mid-Continent, known as PADD 2, increased 1.7 percent to 82.2 million barrels, the highest since the week ended June 26, 1998, when oil was trading at about $14 a barrel. Refineries operated at 83.3 percent of capacity last week, the report showed, the lowest for the week since 1991. “We had a build in distillate supplies even though it’s January and freezing outside,” said Rick Mueller, director of oil markets at Energy Security Analysis Inc. in Wakefield, Massachusetts. “Any distillate build is very bearish at this time of year.”
- U.S. motorists drove less in November, extending a drop in road travel into a second year and resulting in the longest continuous decline on record. Vehicle-miles traveled fell by 12.9 billion miles, or 5.3 percent, from a year earlier, the Federal Highway Administration said in a report today.
- President Barack Obama ordered the U.S. prison camp for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, closed within a year and banned intelligence agencies from using the harshest interrogation techniques. The president also formed an interagency task force to recommend options for the detention and questioning of enemy combatants, and he ordered the Central Intelligence Agency to close any secret prisons that may still be operating.
- The Senate Finance Committee approved the nomination of Timothy Geithner, President Barack Obama’s nominee for Treasury secretary. The vote today was 18-5. Geithner’s nomination next goes before the full Senate for a confirmation vote. In a confirmation hearing yesterday, Geithner was grilled on his failure to pay almost $50,000 in taxes. He accepted responsibility, saying his errors were “careless” and unintentional. He also apologized to the committee for the toll the issue has taken on his confirmation, which has left the administration without its top economic official since taking office Jan. 20.
Wall Street Journal:
- Some lawyers want a bigger piece of Merck & Co.'s (MRK) Vioxx settlement pie. A group of attorneys for about 2,000 participants in Merck's $4.85 billion Vioxx settlement fund is unhappy with the 32% cap on contingent fees imposed by a federal judge last year. They say they have binding contracts with plaintiffs that entitle them to as much as 40% of their clients' payments from Merck, and they want the judge to reconsider the cap.
CNBC.com:
FINalternatives:
- A second key member of President Barack Obama’s economic team is calling for a reconsideration of hedge fund registration. Timothy Geithner, Obama’s pick to be the next Treasury secretary, told the Senate Finance Committee that requiring registration would shine a light on the secretive industry. “The financial crisis has highlighted the urgent need to overhaul the oversight of our financial system,” Geithner, current president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said in written testimony. “With an objective of bringing greater transparency and oversight, I believe that we should consider requiring registration of hedge funds.”
TechCrunch:
- Exclusive: YouTube Will Soon Let Big Content Partners Bring Their Own Ads. Big media companies have always had a love-hate relationship with YouTube. They don’t know whether to sue YouTube for abetting copyright infringement or get in bed with it because it is the biggest Web video game in town. YouTube is trying to convince them that love is better than war by giving them a cut of advertising revenues from their videos that appear on YouTube, regardless of who put them there.
Tex Report:
- Japanese steelmakers are seeking a 45% reduction in prices of iron ore in talks with suppliers.
Time:
- Let's face it — there are lots of reasons to hate McDonald's(MCD): calories, cholesterol and, for me at least, that queasy feeling after munching on McNuggets. Then there's always that kid at the drive-through who forgets the ketchup. Well, add one more reason to spite Ronald: as the global economy spirals downward, McDonald's is minting money.
Reuters:
A prominent leader of al Qaeda called for attacks in Western countries particularly Britain in retaliation for Israel's offensive in Gaza, arguing that London was behind the creation of the Jewish state. "It's high time that this criminal country, I mean Britain, paid the price of its historic crime," Abu Yahya al-Libi said in a video posted on an Islamist website. "There is no child who dies in Palestine ... without this being the outcome of the (country) that handed Palestine to the Jews ... Britain."
- Rich nations could raise $200 billion in climate funds through a levy on their greenhouse gases from 2013-2020 to help poor countries prepare for global warming, the European Union will say next week. The plan is set out in an EU paper outlining the bloc's position ahead of U.N.-led climate talks in Copenhagen in December, meant to agree a new, global climate treaty.
Financial Times:
The UK government has no wish to nationalize the country’s banks, since it’s convinced that they’re “best managed and owned commercially,” said Paul Myners, the financial services secretary to the Treasury. Myners said “soundly managed banks and markets” can support wealth-generation in the economy in a way that “could never be matched by the public sector.” "All developed countries will need to contribute to financial resources for adaptation and mitigation in developing countries via public funding and the use of carbon crediting mechanisms," it said. If widely agreed the plan could encourage the world's top carbon emitter, China, to agree to internationally binding climate measures. That in turn could satisfy a general pre-condition made by the second biggest emitter, the United States, for signing up to a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. The United States did not ratify Kyoto because the pact contained no concrete commitments by developing countries, a position the new Obama administration is likely to maintain regarding a successor pact after 2012.
Guardian:
- The British government is lobbying to weaken a proposed European Union directive that would impose more stringent emissions limits on power stations, citing a paper that was leaked to green campaigners. The government claims electricity prices will rise 20% and security of UK supplies will be threatened unless the draft legislation is changed.
Handelsblatt: The proposal is based on a model used to restructure East German lenders after unification in 1990, citing Steffen Kampeter, the budget spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party.
Kommersant:
- Russian rail shipments fall 36% as output drops.
RIA Novosti:
- The number of officially registered unemployed people in Russia may rise 47% to 2.2 million this year, citing Yury Gertsy, head of the Federal Labor and Employment Service.
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