iPhones Carry Apple Past Wall Street Estimates; Coca-Cola Beats Estimates of Overseas Sales; CIT May Still Face Bankruptcy; TARP Czar Calls for Transparency; Caterpillar Stock Jumps on Brighter Outlook; BlackRock Beats Estimates, State Street Falls Short; Merck Considering Partner For Schering-Plough Consumer Health Operations; Yahoo Sales Down, Profit Up

Just when you thought “too big to fail” was going out of style

In the currency market, the dollar fell off against the euro. Late Tuesday, the euro was trading at $1.4089 vs. $1.3883 on Monday.

Like most investors, Harvard University’s billion-dollar endowment fund took a beating during the global financial crisis. Many investors cashed out, opting for the safety of the sidelines. But Harvard called a new play. During the first quarter, Harvard engineered a dramatic shift in its endowment-fund investment strategy – boosting its stakes in some of the most prominent emerging market exchange traded funds (ETFs).

With every proposed financial fix-up plan for the U.S. banking system, there’s always been one major sticking point: The logjam of hard-to-price – and even “toxic” – assets clogging the balance sheets of banks, investment houses or any other type of company with an involvement in the financial-services sector.

The economic calendar wastes no time getting off to a busy start in the first full week of 2009.  The Construction Spending report for November this morning leads off the week, and carrying over from last year, it should show a continued slowdown. Until the housing market stabilizes, and the credit markets unfreeze, money simply won’t be spent on new construction. Since neither of those options looks likely to occur anytime soon, 2009 could be another long year for the construction industry.

Two major U.S. banking deals were completed yesterday (Thursday), enabling the suitors to finalize the deals before 2008 came to a close. Bank of America Corp. (BAC) completed its purchase of Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. (MER), creating the largest U.S. bank – as well as the biggest challenge yet for longtime BofA Chief Executive Officer Kenneth D. Lewis.

South Africa Cuts Interest Rates; BlackRock Cans 500; Empire Co. Posts 13% Profit; KB Toys Files for Bankruptcy; Citi and UBS to Buy Back $30 Billion in Securities; Bank of America to Cut 35,000 Jobs

After watching its shares plunge more than 20% over the past month, International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) decided to embrace a different strategy with regards to its looming third-quarter profit report: It opted to get out in front of the flood of corporate earnings reports that are headed this way by providing Wall Street with a preview of its third-quarter results.