Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:

- Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said the security forces will crush further protests over the disputed presidential vote, as the country’s elections supervisory body acknowledged some balloting discrepancies. “The saboteurs must stop their actions” or face “the decisive and revolutionary action of the children of the nation in the Revolutionary Guards, the Basij, and other security and military forces, to put an end to the chaos,” the state-run Mehr news agency cited the Revolutionary Guards as saying today in a statement.

- French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the country’s National Assembly should debate a ban on the burqa, the Muslim garment that conceals a woman’s face and body, saying it was “not welcome” in France. “The burqa is not a religious sign, it’s a sign of servitude,” Sarkozy said today in a speech to both houses of parliament at the Versailles Palace on the outskirts of Paris. Calling it a violation of women’s “dignity and freedom,” Sarkozy said the burqa “will not be welcome on French soil.” A group of French lawmakers have called for a total burqa ban.

- Russia’s Micex Index tumbled more than 20 percent from its 2009 peak, becoming the world’s first benchmark equity index to enter a bear market since global stocks began rallying in March. The index of ruble-denominated shares slid 5.9 percent to 957.56 as of 5:58 p.m. in Moscow, bringing its decline since June 1 to 20.6 percent, according to data from the Micex exchange’s Web site and Bloomberg.

- Hedge funds should be required to register and disclose data to regulators to guard against their trading destabilizing financial markets, the International Organization of Securities Commissions said today. Financial watchdogs worldwide should be able to demand information on funds’ risk management and have authority to work together and share data to track “globally active” funds and managers, Madrid-based IOSCO said in guidelines that seek to address gaps in oversight that contributed to the global financial crisis.

- Congress will take a second shot at the derivatives industry after its decision nine years ago to forgo regulations led to a $592 trillion market that brought some financial firms to their knees. “We’ve got to bring broad reform to the over-the-counter derivatives marketplace,” Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler told Bloomberg Radio today. “This means regulating both the actors and the stages they use.” “One of the key underlying problems in the whole lead-up to the meltdown was too much leverage, too little capital or too little collateral,” Mark Halverson, a staff director for Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, said in an interview. Trading in credit-default swaps should be banned, Christopher Whalen, managing director of Institutional Risk Analytics in Hawthorne, California, said in prepared testimony for today’s Senate hearing. Regulators are too cozy with the banks in the market to be counted on to make changes, he said. Banks such as JPMorgan are already subject to capital requirements through their federal regulator. Unregulated hedge funds, energy companies and other corporations “whose activities in those markets create large exposures to counterparties” could also be required under Obama’s plan to set aside cash and collateral to back trades. JPMorgan is the largest user of over-the-counter derivatives, with $87.4 trillion in notional value last year, more than the next two largest, Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc., combined, according to the Office for the Comptroller of the Currency.

- Crude oil fell for a second day after the World Bank said the global recession will be deeper than expected, stoking concerns that fuel demand will remain depressed. Oil was also hurt by the strengthening dollar, dulling the need for investors to buy commodities as an inflation hedge. The World Bank projects the global economy will contract 2.9 percent this year, more than its previously forecast decline of 1.7 percent. Speculative long positions, or bets prices will rise, outnumbered short positions by 26,430 contracts on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the Washington-based commission said in its Commitments of Traders report. Net-long positions fell by 21,453 contracts, or 45 percent, from a week earlier.

- India may raise its budget deficit estimate next month to as high as 6.5 percent of gross domestic product, the most in 19 years, as the government increases stimulus spending, Standard & Poor’s said.

- Oil prices moved out of a so-called ascending channel that started in April, signaling crude’s rally may falter. Friday’s close was outside a channel that’s bounded intraday highs and lows during the last two months, Zug, Switzerland-based consultant Petromatrix GmbH said. “The ascending channel was invalidated for the first time and this clearly needs to be taken as a negative,” Petromatrix managing director Olivier Jakob said. Traders will watch today’s close on the more-actively trade August contract to gauge whether prices are set to fall further, Jakob said. A settlement below $70 a barrel would be a bearish signal, he said.

- European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said there’s still a risk that renewed financial turmoil could hamper an economic recovery. “We are in uncharted waters, and there are still risks of a sudden emergence of unexpected financial turbulence,” Trichet said at a conference in Madrid today. “While there are first signs that the pace of economic weakening is decelerating, we must remain alert.” The cautious stance suggests the ECB won’t rush to raise interest rates or withdraw the emergency measures it has put in place to help stem Europe’s worst recession in six decades. ECB council member Ewald Nowotny said in an interview published today he expects the bank to hold rates at a record low into 2010.

- Apple Inc.(AAPL) sold more than 1 million iPhone 3G S units in its opening weekend, beating some analysts’ estimates and keeping pace with sales of the previous model. The handset, which sports a video camera and more memory than predecessors, went on sale June 19. Apple also said six million customers have downloaded the new iPhone software since it was introduced, according to a statement today. The successful debut positions Apple as the dominant player in the market for so-called smart phones, said Shannon Cross, an analyst at Cross Research.

- OpenTable Inc.(OPEN), the online reservation service, will grow by gradually adding more restaurants, rather than rushing to make deals with other companies, Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Jordan said.

Wall Street Journal:

- President Barack Obama trumpeted on Monday the pharmaceutical sector's pledge to cut the cost of prescriptions under Medicare Part D as a "significant breakthrough" toward the health-care overhaul he wants to sign into law this year." Today marks a major step forward but it will only be meaningful if we complete the journey," Mr. Obama said in remarks at the White House. Under the deal, which emerged over the weekend, pharmaceutical companies will pay for half of the cost of drugs for people who are in the so-called doughnut hole in the Medicare Part D prescription benefit. That's the gap in coverage under which beneficiaries have to pay for drugs between the cost of $2,700 and $6,154 per year. It's unclear, however, how much of the expected $80 billion in savings over 10 years will go toward paying for the proposed health-care overhaul. Lawmakers in both parties have balked at the price tag, which the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said last week could run as high as $1.6 trillion over 10 years.

- Iran's Guardian Council said it had uncovered some irregularities in the polls, finding the number of votes in 50 districts exceeded the number of voters, while riot police attacked hundreds of protesters in the capital.

- The fate of the leading proposal to curb U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions is in the hands of Rep. Collin Peterson, a Marlboro-smoking free spirit who scoffs at warnings about climate change and says the Environmental Protection Agency is "in bed with" corporations opposed to the ethanol industry. Mr. Peterson -- a Minnesota Democrat whose chairmanship of the House Agriculture Committee gives him sway over Farm Belt lawmakers -- has forced Democratic Party leaders to slow their drive to pass climate legislation and to consider amending it in ways that some environmentalists worry will lessen its effectiveness.

- Obama’s Persian Tutorial. The president has to choose between the regime and the people in the streets.

CNBC:

- Recession-weary consumers may be getting very close to the point where they will change their behavior to cope with rising gasoline prices. A new survey conducted by BigResearch and commissioned by the National Retail Federation finds most consumers will start adjusting their driving habits once prices at the gas pump rise to an average of $2.75 a gallon. Although gas prices remain below last year's record-high levels, prices have risen rapidly in the past two months. The price of a gallon of unleaded gasoline averaged $2.69 on Monday, according to the AAA Daily Fuel Gauge Report. The price is actually down 0.3 cents in the past day, marking the first decline in nearly two months, AAA says. The higher gasoline prices are prompting some consumers to adjust their plans to celebrate the upcoming Fourth of July holiday, according to the NRF survey. About 44.5 percent of the 8,635 consumers polled said they would change their Independence Day plans on account of higher gas prices.

AlterNet:
- “Suck on Our Yachts”: Goldman Sachs Issues Non-Apology for Destroying the World Economy. Anyone else out there find himself doubled over laughing after reading Goldman, Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein's "apology" for his bank's behavior leading up to the financial crisis? Just yesterday I was talking to Guy Cecala at Inside Mortgage Finance, the trade publication that tracks statistics in the mortgage lending industry. He said that at the height of the boom, in 2006, Goldman Sachs underwrote $76.5 billion in mortgage-backed securities, or 7% of the entire market. Of that $76.5 billion, $29.3 billion was subprime, which is bad enough -- but another $29.8 billion was what's called "Alt-A" paper. Alt-A mortgages are characterized, mainly, by crappy documentation and lack of equity: no income verification, no asset verification, little-to-no cash down. So while "only" 38% of the mortgage-backed securities Goldman underwrote were subprime, more than three-fourths of their securities were what is called "non-prime," ie either subprime or Alt-A. "There's a lot of crap in there too," says Cecala. Any way you slice it, Goldman was responsible for putting tens of billions of toxic mortgages on the market, resulting in mass foreclosures, mass depletion of retirement funds, and a monstrously over-leveraged financial system that we will now all be bailing out for the next half-century or so. All of this so that Goldman could make a few billion bucks acting as the middleman in all of these deadly transactions. What is particularly obnoxious about this phrase is that Goldman is bragging about the fact that it actually made money while it was pumping the economy full of explosive leverage. While companies like Lehman and Bear were dumb enough to actually eat their own rat meat, Goldman knew what it was doing and was careful to bet against the same stuff it was selling, which makes its behavior many times worse than that of other banks, not better. Beyond that, Goldman's "risk management" also involved buying massive hedges on its mortgage exposure from...drum roll please... AIG. In fact Goldman was AIGFP's single largest customer; while the bank was busy flooding the world financial system with doomed mortgages, it was also busy piling bets on the back of the insurance behemoth -- $20 billion worth, to be exact. And AIG's death spiral was triggered not so much by its bets going sour, but by companies like Goldman that demanded that AIG put up cash to show its ability to pay. These collateral calls were what killed AIG last September, and Goldman was one of those creditors pulling the trigger: what makes this fact even more obnoxious is that ex-Goldmanite Henry Paulson then stepped in and green-lighted an $80 billion taxpayer bailout. Ultimately another ex-Goldmanite named Ed Liddy was put in charge of AIG, and Goldman ended up getting paid 100 cents on the dollar for its AIG debt.So basically Goldman helped kill AIG, necessitating a federal bailout, after which time it got paid off handsomely for bets that it certainly would not have been paid off completely for had AIG simply been liquidated. And again, AIG probably does not have a market to sell its CDS insurance to firms like Goldman, if firms like Goldman had not cooked up this insane scheme to underwrite billions upon billions of toxic debt and sell it off to secondary buyers as safe investments. Moreover AIG would not have even had this business of selling CDS insurance had not a bunch of ex-Goldman guys, in particular Bob Rubin, quietly pushed to deregulate the derivatives market back at the end of the Clinton administration.

zerohedge:

- Bloomberg out with an article disclosing what every "tinfoil" hat wearer has known for a long time, namely that it was precisely Goldman's(GS) collateral extractions out of AIG that were the cause for the firm's collapse, and the ensuing financial catastrophe that to this day has been propped up only thanks to the US government's backstop of nearly $10 trillion in various worthless assets. The article goes into some juicy details on everyone favorite Joseph Cassano, who singlehandedly created a half a trillion derivative monster, that blew up, essentially to the benefit of Goldman. But the take home message is that Bill Poole believes that by precipitating the biggest financial collapse in history, Goldman was doing an admirable thing, and while making money for itself it put the fate of every other bank at the forced mercy of America's taxpayers. The outcome: first - paying back TARP after orchestrating a 40% bear market rally and second - guaranteeing its employees record bonus payments. Everything on Wall Street is back to normal until the next and potentially final collapse, likely anticipated and once again monetized by Goldman. The only remaining question: what is Goldman Sachs currently shorting in order to make money out of the next collapse, while everyone else has to get bailed out by Team Bailout America. For some recommended names, we suggest readers familiarize themselves with the Goldman Sachs Conviction Buy List.

NY Times:

- On a PC, having to fill out a form and type in a credit card number to buy something is only mildly annoying. On a cellphone, it could make you want to skip the purchase entirely. This is why investors, start-ups and major corporations are pouring money into services that make it easier to use cellphones to buy goods and transfer money. The aim is to turn phones into virtual credit cards or checkbooks, enabling the kind of click-and-buy commerce and online banking that people have come to expect on their PCs. But shrinking down those services to fit onto cellphones presents serious challenges.

- European governments have set aside $5.3 trillion to aid the region’s stricken financial institutions, according to a European Union document obtained by Bloomberg News. That’s more than the annual gross domestic product of Germany, Bloomberg points out.

- Len Blavatnik, the Russian-American investor, plans to file a lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase(JPM) on Monday that accuses the bank of mismanaging an investment account that held $1 billion in assets owned by his industrial holding company, Access Industries. Writing in The New York Times, Zachery Kouwe reported that in the lawsuit, Mr. Blavatnik’s lawyers blame Ted C. Ufferfilge, a JPMorgan banker advising Access, for losing $98 million of the company’s money betting on risky subprime mortgage securities. The suit contends that Mr. Ufferfilge told Access that its funds were being invested in conservative instruments — not securities that wound up at the center of the American mortgage crisis, according to a draft of the complaint prepared by the law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges. An Access spokesman said that JPMorgan bought the subprime securities for Access “at a time when the bank itself was unwinding its positions in similar investments.”

Dow Jones:

- Iraq, holder of the world’s third-largest oil reserves, has begun producing crude from its Nassiriyah field in southern Iraq. The field is producing at a rate of 10,000 barrels a day and will increase to 20,000 barrels a day in the next “few days,” citing an official from South Oil Co.

Washington Post:

- The likelihood of severe unemployment extending into the 2010 midterm elections and beyond poses a significant political hurdle to President Obama and congressional Democrats, who are already under fire for what critics label profligate spending. Continuing high unemployment rates would undercut the fundamental argument behind much of that spending: the promise that it will create new jobs and improve the prospects of working Americans, which Obama has called the ultimate measure of a healthy economy. Obama has defended his economic approach -- which includes the $787 billion economic stimulus plan and record investments in health care, alternative energy, education and job training -- as necessary to stabilize the shaky economy and point the way to job growth. With many forecasters projecting unemployment to remain above 10 percent next year and not return to pre-recession levels of roughly 5 percent for years after that, Obama is likely to be confronted with defending the effectiveness of his economic policies as the nation endures its worst employment situation in a generation. Before passage of the stimulus bill, the Obama administration had predicted that unemployment would peak at 8 percent before beginning to abate this fall. But unemployment has already reached 9.4 percent, the highest level in a quarter-century, and the situation is not projected to start improving until long after the White House had predicted. "They even predicted that if we passed it quickly, unemployment wouldn't go higher than 8 percent. Well, here we are just a few months later and the unemployment rate is approaching 10 percent," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). "The administration admits that their earlier predictions were a guess -- and that they guessed wrong."

NY Post:

- When it comes to mergers and acquisitions this year, John Mack is the new king. Year-to-date through Friday, Mack's Morgan Stanley(MS) has been the lead adviser on $175 billion worth of US-based M&A deals, surpassing the former top dog, Goldman Sachs, which advised on $158 billion worth of deals, according to an analysis provided by ThomsonReuters for The Post. Goldman had been Wall Street's top-ranked M&A adviser since 2005, but the Lloyd Blankfein-led bank has fallen to second place this year.

LA Times:

- Coal-fired power plants are the largest source of heat-trapping gases that cause global warming, but President Obama's plan to fight climate change would result in the nation burning more coal a decade from now than it does today. The administration's plan, the centerpiece of a 700-page legislative package, proposes strict limits on emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide. But to attract vital support from congressional Democrats representing heavily coal-dependent areas, authors of the legislation, including Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills), have made a series of concessions that substantially soften its effect on coal -- at least over the next decade or so. As a result, the Environmental Protection Agency projects that even if the emissions limits go into effect, the U.S. would use more carbon-dioxide-heavy coal in 2020 than it did in 2005. Environmental groups also say the bill could set off a boom in the construction of new coal plants because of provisions that would restrict legal efforts to block such projects. "This is greens making a deal with the devil," said Ted Nordhaus, chairman of the Breakthrough Institute, an environmentalist think tank that recently completed a detailed critique of the bill’s coal provisions. Obama and House leaders "gave the coal guys everything they wanted," said Michael Shellenberger, the institute's president. "The result is legislation that, when all is said and done, will increase coal generation and make it harder to move away from it."

Politico:

- Eroding confidence in President Barack Obama’s handling of the economy and ability to control on spending have caused his approval ratings to wilt to their lowest levels since taking office, according to a spate of recent polls, a sign of political weakness that comes just as he most needs leverage on Capitol Hill.

Seeking Alpha:

- The 7 Habits of Highly Suspicious Hedge Funds.

The Detroit News:

- Former Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca has some advice for the people who are running his old company, and those who will lead the new General Motors: Get the government out of your business as soon as possible. Iacocca, a slick pitchman who became an American hero in the early 1980s when he used more than $1 billion in government loan guarantees to rescue the nearly defunct Chrysler, said in a recent interview that government intervention is strong motivation to repay the loan early. "They're on you day and night. Their oversight is just too extreme," said Iacocca, who is promoting a new limited-edition customized Iacocca Ford Mustang. "That's why our 10-year loan, we paid it back in three years. We couldn't stand the government. The bureaucracy kills you." He said he's also impressed with how Ford Motor Co.'s leadership has kept America's No. 2 automaker free of government loans.

Reuters:
- General Electric Co (GE) opposes any regulation that would force it to split off its hefty finance business, the conglomerate's chief executive said in a memo to staff on Monday. Some investors and analysts have said that the Obama administration's proposed revamping of the U.S. financial regulatory system could force GE to sell or exit its GE Capital unit, which has businesses ranging from leasing commercial aircraft to investing in real estate. "One proposal in particular, pertaining to the separation of banking and commerce, has led to some media speculation that, if enacted, could require the separation of GE and GE Capital," GE CEO Jeff Immelt said in the memo. "It is very early in the process, and Congress will now spend months reviewing and drafting legislation. We are certainly opposed to it, since this issue had nothing to do with the financial crisis," said Immelt, who tends to address GE's employees about once a month by memo, according to a spokeswoman. "GE is and will remain committed to GE Capital and we like our strategy." The Fairfield, Connecticut-based company is already working to scale back GE Capital, which had accounted for half of GE's profit in 2007. Immelt has said he plans to downsize the unit so that in the future the world's largest maker of jet engines and electricity-producing turbines would rely on it for just 30 percent of earnings.

Financial Times:
- About half of the top executives of US small and medium-sized manufacturers are optimistic about their companies’ growth prospects for the rest of this year, according to a survey to be published on Monday. The report by RSM McGladrey, the consultancy, lends further weight to the view that the manufacturing sector, which has been hard hit by the global downturn, may be on the verge of a recovery. Respondents in the RSM McGladrey survey were more gloomy, however, when asked about the US economy as a whole. Less than a fifth said they felt optimistic about US growth prospects this year. Among companies making medical devices, for example, almost 90 per cent said they were optimistic about their own growth this year, with only about 13 per cent bullish on the US economy. Forty per cent of respondents also said their companies were “declining”, up from 12 per cent last year, while less than 9 per cent said their businesses were “thriving and growing”. In spite of the recession, half of the manufacturing executives said they were finding it difficult to recruit new skilled staff. “Respondents to the survey continue to struggle to find workers with the skills required by today’s technologically advanced work environment,” the study noted. “Even with unemployment up sharply, these companies still have trouble finding workers to fill key needs.” This echoes a report last month by Manpower, one of the world’s largest recruitment companies, showing 30 per cent of employers around the world struggling to find the right people to fill positions. The biggest need reported in the RSM McGladrey survey was for sales staff: 49 per cent of respondents said they were looking for new salespeople.

Bild-Zeitung:

- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran and Israel could reestablish peaceful relations under a different regime. “There is no conflict between the Iranian and Israeli people,” he said. Netanyahu said that Iran posed a threat to the Jewish state as well as moderate Arab countries. He said the “mask has been torn” from the face of the Iranian regime as it cracks down on protesters following President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed victory.

Globe and Mail:

- Alberta’s oil sands show signs of life.

Economic Daily:

- China’s 2009 export growth will slow while overseas shipments enter a “low-growth” period in the near future, Vice Commerce Minister Zhong Shan wrote.

The Jerusalem Post:
- Only 6 percent of Jewish Israelis consider the views of American President Barack Obama's administration pro-Israel, according to a new Jerusalem Post-sponsored Smith Research poll. The numbers were a stark contrast to the last poll published May 17, on the eve of the meeting between Netanyahu and Obama at the White House. In that poll, 31% labeled the Obama administration pro-Israel, 14% considered it pro-Palestinian and 40% said it was neutral.