DAVOS - INDIAN politicians expressed optimism on Saturday that India will achieve seven percent growth this year, saying the economy would resist the global downturn better than fellow Asian giant China.
'The IMF is pessimistic about 2009. We're not,' Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of India's Planning Commission, told the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Jos. A. Bank promotes Thorne to executive VP
Jos. A. Bank Clothiers Inc. announced yesterday that it promoted James W. Thorne to executive vice president for merchandising and chief merchandising officer, effective tomorrow. He was most recently senior vice president for merchandising and head of planning and allocation. Thorne will continue to lead the company's merchandising department, overseeing product design, manufacturing and sourcing.
India not doing much for its UN top post nominee
Bizarre it may seem, but India is virtually allowing its official nominee for the presidency of an UN arm, IFAD, to suffer a defeat. Job-cuts: A blessing in disguise
Dear concedes that he faces both "a challenge and an opportunity" in helping the giant pension fund stabilize its value and try to recoup a stunning loss of $62.4 billion, or 26%, since July 1, as financial markets worldwide plummeted.
ABC News’ Daniel Arnall reports: The first month of 2009 ended with the Dow at 8000, down 8.84 percent for the month. We’ve had worse months recently (see October’s miserable performance), but this particular red arrow month is worrying some of the folks on Wall Street more than a sour October.
It gets even worse. In the past 30 years, the Dow’s January performance has been an even greater predictor, matching 26 years, or 87 percent, of the time.
But jawboning hasn’t counted for much on this issue. If the Dems are as outraged as they’re saying, the public may wonder why they aren't trying to claw back the money, at least from senior Wall Street executives.
ABC News’ Bianna Golodryga reports: It's official. Ostentatiousness is out, and humility is in. That's how many people gathered at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, are describing the mood this year.
There had been speculation that Lewis could be ousted after the bank, in a surprise, went back to the federal government for financial help early this month.BofA?s need for additional assistance stemmed from Lewis? deal in September to purchase Merrill Lynch Co. The brokerage suffered fourth-quarter losses of $15 billion, far exceeding anticipateations, as it wrote down bad assets.Lewis fired Merrill?s chief, John Thain, last week. Now, New York Atty. Gen. Andrew Cuomo is investigating Thain?s decision to speed up bonus payments to Merrill employees in December.Amid the Merrill mess, it may have helped Lewis that BofA?s stock has rebounded somewhat from its multiyear lows reached earlier this month.The stock, which plunged from $14.08 on Dec. 31 to $5.10 on Jan. 20, gained 89 cents, or 13.7%, to $7.39 today amid a broad rally in financial shares. The price still is down 47% this year, compared with a 26% drop in the average bank stock.-- Tom PetrunoPhoto: John Thain, left, and Ken Lewis in September, after Bank of America agreed to purchase Merrill Lynch Co. Credit: Bebeto Matthews / Associate Press
It tells you everybody?s still looking for safety, said John Canavan, a fixed-income analyst at Stone McCarthy Research in Skillman, N.J.Investors put in $107 billion in bids for the two-year notes, compared with bids totaling $81 billion when the Treasury offered $38 billion in two-year securities for sale last month.The annualized yield on the new two-year T-notes was 0.925%, just slightly above the yield at the December auction.Still, shorter-term securities typically are easier for the government to sell than longer-term issues. Yields have rebounded on 10-year and 30-year Treasuries in recent weeks from last month?s record lows, suggesting that investors were startning to pull back.Today, however, longer-term yields eased a bit. The 10-year T-note fell to 2.53% from 2.64% on Monday.The Treasury anticipates to borrow record sums this year to fund the financial-system bailout program and President Obama?s proposed economic-stimulus spending plan.Next up: The Treasury will auction $30 billion in five-year notes on Thursday.-- Tom PetrunoPhoto: Vice President Joe Biden swears in Timothy Geithner as Treasury secretary on Monday. Geithner's wife, Carole, is holding the Bible. Credit: Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press
All of the 15 were U.S. companies except for one: Canadian telecom giant Nortel Networks.Junk bond values crumbled last fall, driving yields sky-high, as investors began to anticipate a sharp increase in defaults because of the sinking economy and the credit crunch.A total of 126 companies worldwide defaulted last year, up from just 22 in 2007. U.S. companies accounted for three-quarters of last year?s deadbeats, and most of the defaults occurred in the second half of the year.Diane Vazza, who tracks corporate defaults for SP, says the firm?s baseline projection is for 209 U.S. bond defaults this year, or an average of 17 a month.As a percentage of the total U.S. junk market, that would mean 13.9% of the market would be in default in 12 months -- surpassing the previous peak rate of 12.5% in July 1991. (SP?s data on the junk market go back to 1981.)Still, some investors have rushed to purchase junk issues since mid-December, pushing bond prices up and yields down. The average annualized yield on an index of 100 junk issues tracked by KDP Investment Advisors has tumbled to about 13.7% now from a peak of 17.7% on Dec. 12. The average junk bond mutual fund was up 3.7% year to date, through Friday, counting principal change and interest earnings.The junk market, like the stock market, tends to rally before the fundamentals start improving. For example, yields were declining in 1991 leading up to the default-rate peak in July of that year.The question for investors this time around is whether a 13.7% average junk bond yield amply compensates for the default risks yet to come. So far this year, the junk market seems to be taking the view that the recession may get worse, but that economic (and default-rate) catastrophe'sn?t on the horizon.-- Tom PetrunoPhoto credit: Wolfgang Eilmes / Los Angeles Times
Producing a quality electric car, she said, isn?t enough to win hearts and minds. To start with, you need effective charging systems and smart public policy. Suddenly you?re also up against cheaper gasoline.I got the sense that Gross feels she?s in a bind, and not just because of GM?s financial straits. If there?s no mechanism but the market place at work, the entrenched advantages of the petro-driven status quo -- cost, familiarity, convenience -- will be difficult to overcome.Jason Wolf of Better Place offered his view of the solution, or at least a piece of it. His Palo Alto company proposes to own the EV battery, taking a massive chunk out of the price of the car. That becomes a subscription fee instead. The motorist pays to use the battery, rejuicing it at perhaps one-day-ubiquitous Better Place charging stations. During a trip longer than 100 miles, you swap it out for a fresh one. Said Wolf: We enable mass adoption.Investing in natural chooseionJanine Benyus, an eloquent proponent of biomimicry, was billed as the inspirational talker of the day, and she delivered. Benyus came to tell the venture investors that plants and creatures that live well on very little are inspiring product design. Think about it, she said -- life on Earth, guided by natural chooseion, put in 3.8 billion years of RD before humans even started tinkering. 
Her presentation brought to light emerging companies that study the quiet, efficient, low-impact processes of nature and adapt them for industry and sustainability. Among them is Aquaporin of Denmark, whose pure-water technology was modeled on the workings of kidneys and blood cells. Another, Canada?s Regen Energy, based its approach on the teamwork observed in bee colonies: With its software and devices, energy-hogging machines within a building can coordinate, and cut, their consumption -- a smart grid on a small scale.Benyus has more credits than can be counted in a blog, but if you?re interested, visit the websites of her consulting firm, the Biomimicry Guild, and the non-profit Biomimicry Institute. She and Paul Hawken, the entrepreneur and noted author of Natural Capitalism, recently launched the Biomimicry Venture Group, presumably to fund these ideas.Liquidity crisisWater and fossil fuels have more in common than we?d like to think. Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, noted that they permeate the ways we make things and consume things. But growing long-term demand and competition for both threaten us with scarcity and environmental harm. 
America?s huge Ogallala acquifer is one among many sources feeling the pressure. Overpumping, Gleick warned, will raise the cost of tapping ground water, and some sites around the globe could run dry. We see something like that in the diminishing returns from mature oil fields like Mexico?s Cantarell. Climate change jeopardizes water supplies, too. But few resource planners have worked that into their models for the future.Gleick also pointed to vital differences between these resources: Oil is much more valuable in dollars and cents. Yet we've substitutes for oil, however imperfect, and if push comes to shove, we could live without it. For water, there are none, and we can?t.Gleick told his audience that China has banned new operations in water-intensive industries around parched Beijing. If the wet stuff becomes dear, businesses like semiconductors and agriculture will feel it, while conservation technology and desalination could catch the wave. Top pic: Chevy Volt. Credit: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg NewsBottom pic: The California Aqueduct. Credit: Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times
There?s been a lack of accountability and transparency in how we're managing some of these programs to stabilize the financial system, Obama said before a meeting with congressional leaders at the White House. Obama cited the reports that we?ve seen over the last couple of days about companies that have received taxpayer assistance then going out and renovating bathrooms or offices or in other ways not managing those dollars appropriately. While Obama didn?t mention any individuals or companies, his comments followed reports that John Thain, the former Merrill Lynch Co. chief executive officer ousted yesterday, spent $1.2 million redecorating his downtown Manhattan office last year as the company was firing employees.But Thain's spending apparently was early in 2008, well before Merrill got government help.
More to Obama's point, Thain sped up bonus payments to Merrill employees in December, even as the brokerage?s finances deteriorated and the firm's soon-to-be parent company, Bank of America Corp., was negotiating another capital infusion from the government.Obama?s top aides, including economic advisor Larry Summers, had previously made clear that the new administration would demand more concessions from banks in return for new federal aid.The revelations about Thain, however, remind me of the sequence of corporate scandals after the Enron Corp. accounting debacle broke open late in 2001. Each new scandal in 2002 (WorldCom, Tyco, Adelphia, etc.) emboldened those in Congress who wanted to bring the hammer down on corporate executives.From Bloomberg:Obama?s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said the president has directed his economic team to come up with new restrictions on the second half of the $700 billion financial-rescue plan, saying the money won?t go to line the pockets of people who?ve gotten financial assistance. The American people need to be greatly assured that their hard-earned money isn't going to the bonuses or the remodeling of an office at a bank that?s in trouble, Gibbs said at a briefing. For banks, the handwriting is on the remodeled wall.-- Tom PetrunoTop pic: President Obama meeting with congressional leaders today. Credit: Charles Dharapak/Associated PressBottom pic: John Thain. Credit: Bebeto Matthews / Associated Press
Moody?s indicated it?s running out of patience with the say as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature fail to agree on a plan to plug California?s huge projected budget shortfalls -- $15 billion in 2009 and $25 billion in 2010.
"Many errors in personal finance can be prevented," Shiller wrote. "But first, people need to understand what they ought to do. The government?s various bailout plans need to take this into account -- by starting a major program to subsidize personal financial advice for everyone.
Milken, who served almost two years in prison after his guilty pleas, is barred from the securities industry. He has spent the last 15 years on philanthropic efforts and his Milken Institute think tank in Santa Monica.
Milken, who served almost two years in prison after his guilty pleas, is barred from the securities industry. He has spent the last 15 years on philanthropic efforts and his Milken Institute think tank in Santa Monica.
-- The Treasury will inject $20 billion of fresh capital into the bank, on top of the combined $25 billion infusion the company and Merrill received in the fall as part of the first wave of the government?s financial-system bailout.
But the government said that "a factor taken into account for consideration of consent is the ability to complete a common stock offering of appropriate size."
The average yield on one-year CDs eased to 2.03% this week from 2.09% last week and 2.42% in mid-December.
