Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:

- Former Federal Reserve Governor Randall Kroszner Says Inflation ‘Subdued,’ Deflation Not Looming. (video)

- KB Home(KBH), the third-best performing U.S. building stock this year, rose in New York trading after reporting a narrower first-quarter loss as orders increased for the first time in three years.

- Crude oil in New York fell the most in two weeks as the dollar’s gain against the euro reduced the appeal of commodities to investors and stock markets declined. Oil dropped as much as 5 percent after the U.S. currency rebounded against the euro on evidence the recession is deepening in Europe. “This correction is long overdue,” said Tom Bentz, a senior energy analyst at BNP Paribas Commodity Futures Inc. in New York. “We were up pretty much all week on the rising stock market and weak dollar. The fundamentals don’t support that kind of a move.” Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said oil’s rally is vulnerable to a correction because near-term demand remains constrained. U.S. oil supplies rose 3.3 million barrels to 356.6 million last week, the highest since July 1993, an Energy Department report on March 25 showed. Daily fuel demand averaged over the past four weeks was 19.1 million barrels, down 3.2 percent from a year earlier, according to the department.

- Gold may extend a decline after failing to breach so-called resistance at $977.41 an ounce, Standard Chartered Bank said, citing trading patterns and forecasting that the metal may drop to less than $900. The resistance level represents a 76.4 percent retracement of the metal’s drop from the near-record high of $1,032 an ounce to the low of $883.90 on March 18, said David Barclay, the bank’s commodity strategist, referring to a number that is part of the Fibonacci sequence. “Spot gold is expected to trade lower over the near term, as a potential top continues to unfold,” London-based Barclay wrote in a report dated yesterday. There is “a sell signal in place for now,” he said.

- Lonmin Plc, the world’s third- largest platinum producer, said the surplus of the metal this year may exceed some analysts’ estimates as production cuts lag behind a drop in demand caused by lower vehicle sales. Chief Executive Officer Ian Farmer, 46, is “cautious” on some projections that suggest a balanced market in 2009, he said yesterday in an interview in London.

- Billionaire investor George Soros’s Soros Fund Management LLC was fined 489 million forint ($2.2 million) for attempting to manipulate the share price of OTP Bank Nyrt., Hungary’s largest bank, the country’s financial regulator said. The Soros fund attempted on Oct. 9 to “send out false or misleading signals about a security’s supply and demand or its share price” and short sold OTP shares, the regulator, known as PSZAF, said in a statement late yesterday. The short selling caused the shares to drop 14 percent in the final 30 minutes of trade, the regulator said. The plunge in OTP shares was part of a “significant and strong attack” against Hungarian money and capital markets, Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany said on Oct. 10.

Wall Street Journal:

- Barack Obama, heading overseas for the first time as president next week, aims to use a combination of summit protocol and campaign flash to corral support for his programs. Facing political headwinds but with a European public still on his side, Mr. Obama will attend three high-profile international events -- the meeting of Group of 20 nations that kicks off Wednesday evening in London, a North Atlantic Treaty Organization meeting at the end of the week, and a European Union-U.S. summit in Prague on April 5. But Mr. Obama also intends to extend his efforts beyond official meetings. He will hold a town hall-style meeting at a sports arena in Strasbourg, France, European diplomatic officials said. And the White House is looking for a site in Prague for the first public foreign-policy speech of Mr. Obama's presidency, according to Petr Kolar, the Czech Republic's ambassador to the U.S. Turkish press reports say Mr. Obama's visit to Istanbul after the Prague summit will include a stop at the Hagia Sophia, a Byzantine-era church converted to a mosque under the Ottomans, and a stop at the national Sultan Ahmed Mosque. The emphasis on including public events, a deliberate nod to Mr. Obama's successful tour through Europe as a presidential candidate, stands in contrast to the divisions that have opened on policy since he took office.

CNBC:

- Barclays said it does not need to raise any fresh capital after Britain's financial regulator subjected it to "a detailed stress test" and was satisfied the bank's balance sheet can withstand more pain.

MarketWatch:
- The dollar was on track for weekly gains against most major rivals Friday, as a budget warning from Germany's finance minister pressured the euro, and a steep downward revision to U.K. gross domestic product data weighed on the pound.

"A shift in market sentiment in Europe overnight prompted a reduction in short U.S. dollar positions against the euro and pound that carried over into the New York session," said Michael Woolfolk, senior currency strategist at the Bank of New York Mellon, in emailed comments.

Boston Globe:

- Jimmy Carter came to Notre Dame in 1977. So did Ronald Reagan in 1981 and George W. Bush in 2001. The University of Notre Dame has a tradition of inviting new presidents to speak at graduation. But this year's selection of President Barack Obama has been met by a barrage of criticism that has left some students fearing their commencement ceremony will turn into a circus. Many Catholics are angered by Obama's planned appearance at the May 17 ceremony because of his decisions to provide federal funding for embryonic stem cell research and international family planning groups that provide abortions or educate about the procedure.

NY Post:

- There was high drama at CNBC yesterday as "Fast Money" anchor Dylan Ratigan quit -- sources say today will be his last day on-air -- and an insider is blaming his battles with network big Susan Krakower. Krakower -- the VP for strategic programming and development who co-created "Fast Money" with Ratigan -- "is partially responsible for this. She's been ignoring him for months and he couldn't get the attention he deserved," the insider said.

Washington Times:

- Hezbollah is using the same southern narcotics routes that Mexican drug kingpins do to smuggle drugs and people into the United States, reaping money to finance its operations and threatening U.S. national security, current and former U.S. law enforcement, defense and counterterrorism officials say. The Iran-backed Lebanese group has long been involved in narcotics and human trafficking in South America's tri-border region of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil. Increasingly, however, it is relying on Mexican narcotics syndicates that control access to transit routes into the U.S.

- President Obama continued collecting money for his 2010 Senate re-election campaign even after he resigned his seat from Illinois, including a maximum $2,300 donation the day after Christmas from a top executive of a Wall Street firm that had received a government bailout. Four contributions - $4,800 in all - were donated to the Obama 2010 fund on Dec. 26, according to Federal Election Commission reports. The money came from some of Mr. Obama's top presidential fundraisers: Bruce A. Heyman, managing director at Goldman Sachs, which received a $10 billion bailout last year; Steven Koch, vice chairman at Credit Suisse First Boston; and John Levi, a lawyer at the law and lobbying firm of Sidley Austin LLP. The donations are legal, but the timing is unusual because Mr. Obama formally left the Senate on Nov. 16 and already had a surplus in his Senate campaign treasury.

Miami Herald:

- Europeans, who have long chafed at California wineries using geographic terms like Champagne and Chablis to describe their wines, have banned the importation of some U.S. wines using such terms as ''clos'' and ''chateau'' on wine labels. Those French words, along with other terms like ''classic,'' ''tawny,'' ''noble,'' ''ruby'' and ''vintage,'' are all strictly regulated wine terms in Europe, with specific rules for who gets to use them and when. Now, the European Union is contending that U.S. vintners must adhere to the same EU rules for wines using terms regarded as ''traditional expressions'' in order to avoid confusion. The wine trade spat could affect a number of California wine brands including one of Sonoma County's signature wines, Clos du Bois.

Reuters:
- U.S. consumer spending rose for a second consecutive month in February and sentiment edged up in March, according to reports on Friday that backed views that the worst of the recession may be over.

- Technology companies like Sybase (SY) and VeriSign (VRSN) are looking to tap robust growth in the nascent U.S. mobile banking market as text message use rises and banks aggressively explore ways to save.

- Web entrepreneurs are increasingly embracing new technologies from "cloud" computing to new computer languages to try and slash costs as investors disappear because of the recession. Investors and entrepreneurs say cloud computing, new -- and free -- programming languages, open-source software, and use of the Internet to distribute and publicize products have made starting a company relatively inexpensive and will allow startups to ride out the credit crunch and recession.

Financial Times:
- Increased regulation of hedge funds will drive some out of business and lead to a shrinkage of the industry, according to the chief executive of Man Group, the UK’s biggest listed hedge fund manager. Peter Clarke said smaller managers who did not have the resources to cope with additional demands from watchdogs would be hit hardest. “It will undoubtedly cause continued acceleration of the reduction of the size of the industry,” Mr Clarke added. “It means a difficult life for some of the underlying hedge fund models.”

Eurostat newsrealease:

- European Consumer Summit. Nearly one third of individuals in the EU27 shopped on the internet in 2008. Travel and clothes most popular purchases.

Bilanz:

- Google’s(GOOG) co-founder Larry Page predicts the company will keep growing despite the current economic slowdown and plans investments for its phone and Web browser offering. Page is “still very optimistic” about the company’s product and market position, he said, according to the magazine. Google welcomes European Union regulators investigating Microsoft’s(MSFT) integration of the Explorer browser in the Windows operating system, Page said. One solution could be to separate the products, he said.

ThisDay:

- Nigeria is worried that US President Barack Obama’s policy of seeking energy alternatives to hydrocarbons will hurt its oil exports, citing Petroleum Minister of State Odein Ajumogobia.

Digitimes:

- Samsung Electronics, Hynix Semiconductor and Elpida Memory may raise DRAM quotes as demand from major memory module makers is increasing significantly, industry sources have speculated. Spot prices for mainstream 1Gb DDR2 soared over 13% to US$1 on March 26, quotes gathered by DRAMeXchange show. Frank Huang, chairman of Taiwan's Powerchip Semiconductor Corporation (PSC), earlier this week predicted that DRAM supply would become tight in the third quarter of 2009. Hynix CEO Kim Jong-kap was recently quoted by the Wall Street Journal as saying that the global semiconductor industry is likely to have hit the bottom in the fourth quarter of 2008, and the DRAM and NAND flash segments will show signs of recovery this year. DRAM contract prices are expected to increase in April, some memory module makers have commented.