Bloomberg:
- U.S. Corporate Credit Risk Benchmark Declines to the Lowest in Five Weeks. A benchmark indicator of corporate credit risk in the U.S. fell to the lowest since Aug. 4 after a surge in China’s industrial output boosted optimism in the global recovery and regulators gave banks as much as eight years to meet capital requirements. Credit-default swaps on the Markit CDX North America Investment Grade Index, which investors use to hedge against losses on corporate debt or to speculate on creditworthiness, fell 1.2 basis points to a mid-price of 101.6 basis points as of 8:23 a.m. in New York, according to index administrator Markit Group Ltd. The index, which typically falls as investor confidence improves and rises as it deteriorates, has fallen every day except one this month after reaching 114.5 on Aug. 31.
- Corn Rises to 23-Month High as U.S. Reserves Shrink, Global Demand Climbs. Corn futures rose, extending a rally to a 23-month high, on speculation that increasing demand for food and livestock feed will tighten supplies in the U.S., the world’s biggest producer and exporter. U.S. inventories before the 2011 harvest as a percentage of use will fall to a 15-year low, the Department of Agriculture said on Sept. 10.
- Chicago Losing AA Rating as Daley Deals Fail to Offset Deficits. Chicago’s next mayor will take over a city that is almost out of cash after Richard M. Daley spent most of the $3.5 billion gained from leasing parking meters, garages and a 7.8-mile elevated toll road. The third-biggest U.S. city by population projects a $654.7 million deficit in a $3.39 billion budget for 2011, a July 30 report shows. Daley balanced this year’s $3.12 billion budget partly with reserves. If he uses lease funds to fill the 2011 gap, Chicago will be left with $121 million, enough to run the municipality for two weeks, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. “It almost will disappear by the time the mayor leaves office,” said R. Eden Martin, president of the Commercial Club of Chicago, a civic group. “Cutting $600 million is going to be a catastrophe. It is going to be very, very painful.”
- Brazil's Libra May Rival Tupi as Americas Largest Oil Discovery Since 1976. Brazil’s deepwater Libra field may hold as much as 8 billion barrels of oil, rivaling nearby Tupi as the Americas’ biggest crude discovery in three decades, according to an official of the country’s Energy Ministry. Initial estimates for the Santos Basin field off the coast of Brazil are between 7 billion and 8 billion barrels based on seismic and drilling data, Marco Antonio Almeida, head of oil and gas at the ministry, said today in Rio de Janeiro. That would rival the 5-billion-to-8-billion barrel estimate for Tupi. Brazil may possess more than 50 billion barrels of oil reserves in the so-called pre-salt region, which runs 800 kilometers along Brazil’s coast from Espirito Santo to Santa Catarina states, according to the national oil regulator.
- 'Mass Hysteria' Produced Flawed Financial-Reform Law, Bove Says: Tom Keene. Legislators who don’t understand the banking industry and a sense of “mass hysteria” led to the passage of a financial-reform law that will hurt U.S. consumers, said Richard Bove, an analyst at Rochdale Securities. “We went into a period of mass hysteria,” Lutz, Florida- based Bove said in a radio interview today with Tom Keene on “Bloomberg Surveillance.” “Every American will discover over the next 12 months that every service that he receives from banks in the United States now will cost more and there will be fewer services available.”
Wall Street Journal:
- YouTube Launches Streaming Video Trial. Google Inc.'s(GOOG) YouTube has launched a public test of a new live-streaming video service, the site's most ambitious foray into live programming.
- Apple(AAPL) Brings Its iPad to China.
- Sebelius Has a List. 'As a consequence of us getting 30 million additional people health care, at the margins that's going to increase our costs—we knew that," President Obama said at his press conference Friday in response to a question about rising health spending. That wasn't how he sold the plan, but, anyway, that's a truism. Here's another: The White House was always going to blame insurance companies for any cost increases, even when its own policies cause them.
- US Posts $90.53 Billion Budget Deficit in August.
- Oil Should Be Half Its Current Price: Analyst. If the oil market focused on fundamentals, instead of equities and currencies, it would be half the price of what it is now, Peter Beutel, president of energy research firm Cameron Hanover, told CNBC.
- Mutual Fund Cash Levels Hit Record Lows. (graph)
- Jeff Saut: Here's The Chart That's Crushing Hedge Funds, And Fundamentally Changing The Stock Market.
- Spain's Dire Choice: Flee The Euro or Crush Its Own Wages.
- Goldman's(GS) Jan Hatzius: The Recovery Was Artificial, And There's A "Sizable Risk" Of A Double Dip. Goldman's top economist is on CNBC this afternoon. He says there's a 25-30% chance of a double dip, though the most likely outcome is a sluggish, gradual recovery. The recovery has been artificial -- stimulus spending and inventory restocking -- and thus there's no reason to see a return to robust growth.
- The 15 Top Tech Takeover Targets.
- Up to 67% of Phoenix Homes are Underwater.
- First HFT Casualty as FINRA Fines Trillium $1 Million for Quote Stuffing and General Market Manipulation.
- F.C.C. Likely to Open Airwaves to Wireless. This month, the F.C.C. is likely to approve what could be an even bigger expansion of the unlicensed airwaves, opening the door to supercharged Wi-Fi networks that will do away with the need to find a wireless hot spot and will provide the scaffolding for new applications that are not yet imagined.
- Do Banks Still Play Us for Fools? by Charlie Gasparino. Citigroup, the most bailed out and dysfunctional of the big financial houses, has been acting extra-stupidly lately by barring an influential analyst who had the gall to question the bank’s accounting practices from meeting its senior executives.
- Dems Plan for a Future Without Pelosi. For House Democrats, planning for a future without Nancy Pelosi is neither pleasant nor easy. But as the polls worsen and a Republican-controlled House looks more and more possible, Democrats are beginning to realize they face a top to bottom leadership shakeup if the powerful speaker steps aside in a Democratic minority.
- Public Was Misled About ObamaCare by George Pataki. Opposing view on medical inflation: Repeal and replace. This month, with support for ObamaCare continuing to erode, a Democrat-led group is ramping up a multimillion-dollar national ad campaign to rescue the new law. At the same time, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius wrote the health insurers' national association demanding they stop using "misinformation and scare tactics" to blame 2011 premium increases on ObamaCare. The reality is that this is all part of an orchestrated, well-financed effort to mislead the American people as to the facts on ObamaCare. It's not surprising. The American people have been terribly misled about this bill since before it was passed.
- Wipro, Infosys See Cautious Spending on IT. Two leading Indian IT outsourcing companies said customers were still spending on technology but the mood remained cautious and short-term as firms wait to see how the global recovery plays out.
- China Tells Foreign Businesses 'to stop complaining'. China has told foreign companies to stop complaining about the difficulties of doing business on the mainland, and to cease being so "emotional". In the past year, a number of foreign companies have accused the Chinese government of deliberately tilting the playing field against them in order to help Chinese firms. "I'm not sure they want any of us to be successful," said Jeffrey Immelt, the chief executive of General Electric, recently. In addition, foreign companies have been repeatedly blocked from making acquisitions and investments on the Chinese mainland. "The situation is still getting worse," said Jacques de Boisseson, the head of the European Chamber of Commerce and the chairman of Total, the French oil company, in China.
- Apple(AAPL) to Switch to Qualcomm(QCOM) Chips, Says Paper. Apple reportedly is dropping Infineon solutions from its iPhone devices in favor of those made by Qualcomm, according to a recent report in the Chinese-language Commercial Times. Apple plans to move the fifth-generation iPhone to Qualcomm chips, the paper claimed.
- China's economic growth will reach 9.5% this year and slow to 8% next year, citing Justin Lin, chief economist of the World Bank.
- China's consumer price index may reach 5% this year, citing Cheng Siwei, former vice chairman of the standing committee of the National People's Congress.
- Source: CBRC Plans New Capital Reqs for 2011. China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) plans to set new minimum levels for key banking measures and introduce new performance measures in 2011, China Business News reported on September 13 citing an unnamed source close to the regulator. Banks will have to ensure capital adequacy ratio (CAR) of 10% with a 6% minimum core tier-one capital ratio, and an 8% tier-one capital ratio, with the regulator free to impose an additional 0% to 5% "when necessary," the report said. Banks of "systemic significance" will be required to have a CAR of 11%, the report said. The CBRC also intends to introduce a leverage ratio requirement, with minimum core capital to be 4% above banks' total assets, according to the report.
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