Markets stage end-of-week recovery
After another steep loss on Wall Street yesterday, Asian stocks recovered overnight, pushing US futures up. The S&P 500 dropped 6.7 per cent yesterday to its lowest level for 11 years on economic concerns, but after a 3.2 per cent improvement in the MSCI Asia Pacific Index today, US futures rose three per cent. Speculation that Asian governments will step up stimulus efforts and the Wall Street Journal's report that Citigroup might be sold to avert a collapse cheered investors in the region. In London the FTSE 100 was up more than one per cent in early trading.
Alexander Cockburn: economic woes pile up for Barack Obama 
City job losses to top 350,000
The "bloodletting" in the financial services industry will "accelerate" in coming months, with job cuts rising to about 350,000 worldwide by mid-2009, said Bloomberg.com. Brian Sullivan, chief executive of the world's sixth-biggest executive search firm CTPartners, believes that reductions on that scale are equivalent to 20 per cent of the global financial workforce before its problems started. So far banks, brokers and fund managers have cut 170,000 positions, a development Sullivan calls "a seismic shift in the population of banking".
All bets are on with recession gambling
Jump in borrowing to push up tax
Public borrowing is set to "rocket" towards £120bn over the next two years, "far higher" than forecasts, reported the Financial Times. The leap will force chancellor Alistair Darling to announce plans for deferred tax rises and public spending reductions in his pre-Budget report next week, it said. Officials at the Treasury say that the "mammoth shock" to the economy will mean tax revenues are far lower below official forecasts, meaning the budget deficit will reach eight or nine per cent of gross domestic product in the next three years.
We still don't know if private finance initatives work
Citigroup looks at its options
The crisis at Citigroup "deepened" yesterday as its shares slid 26 per cent, prompting it to look at "strategic options" for its future, reported the Financial Times. These options include selling off part or all of the bank, despite the planned investment of $250m by its biggest individual shareholder Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal. The discussions are said to be "preliminary", however, with the preferred option for chief executive Vikram Pandit being to remain independent. A board meeting is scheduled to take place on Friday.
The biggest bank heist ever
Investors rush into Treasuries
Investors "stampeded" into US Treasuries yesterday, as a safe haven amid plunges in global stock and bond markets, said the Independent. "Unprecedented" demand sent interest rates to record low levels in a flight to quality worse even than September's panic. There were growing concerns that there could be more defaults affecting the bond market, and the S&P 500 fell to its lowest level for 11 years. Traders were said to express "astonishment" at the extent of the moves in the Treasuries market.
Cash was king, now gold is God in the US
One of US carmakers to fail
Wall Street was anticipating that "at least one" of America’s Big Three carmakers will file for bankruptcy "within weeks" after bail-out plans failed, reported the Times. General Motors shares fell to their lowest level since 1938 at one point yesterday as politicians "bickered" over the terms and conditions of a possible $25bn emergency loan to the industry. GM and Ford have said they need immediate aid to survive after a collapse in sales, but lack of agreement on Capitol Hill means bankruptcy is drawing ever nearer.
Are GM, Ford and Chrysler too big to fail?
...in brief..................
BoJ keeps rates on hold and Woolworths rescue close to collapse
The Bank of Japan kept interest rates at 0.3 per cent, but said it was considering ways to pump more money into the financial system. Governor Shirakawa is looking at methods such as using corporate debt as collateral, the central bank said in a statement today…………
Japan's return from financial oblivion
Computer-maker Dell was hit hard by the economic downturn in the last quarter, it revealed yesterday, with corporate demand for equipment hit especially severely. Revenues fell three per cent, however profit margins rose as cost-cutting fed through…………
Hedge fund investors withdrew a record $40bn from the industry in October, according to data from Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research. This is the biggest cumulative redemption since the company started compiling figures in 1990, and is set to get even worse…………
How Porsche took the hedge funds to the cleaners
£3bn of taxpayers' money has been "put at risk" in Northern Rock after the lender's funding vehicle Granite was put in to "run-off" yesterday. That means the money has been seized by Granite and will only be released once all the bondholders are repayed…………
"Superbank" European Investment Bank has seen its arrears rate "surge" in recent weeks, prompting concerns over its ability to fulfil its spending role, said the Daily Telegraph. The bank said its non-performing loan ratio has "rocketed" from around zero earlier this year to near one per cent…………
"Last-ditch" talks to rescue troubled retailer Woolworths are "close to collapsing" as the store's lenders refused to sign to the deal, said the Independent. The syndicate, including Bank of Ireland unit Burdale Financial and GMAC Commercial, were last night still holding out…………
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