Worries over the economy and corporate earnings weigh… Focus on inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama… S&P 500 futures off 1.5 pct, Dow futures off 1.1 pct, Nasdaq futures off 1.2 pct
The European Commission (EC) said yesterday (Monday) that the Eurozone economy has already slipped into a recession and strong and stable economic growth will not return until 2010. The European Central Bank (ECB), originally charged with the task of maintaining price stability, has now found itself with the added responsibility of encouraging growth and will likely cut interest rates later this week.
As rocky as the global markets have been, the worst is yet to come, the Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC (ADR: RBS) warns.
Banks haven’t exactly been covering themselves in glory recently. The sector has gone from one pratfall to another ever since Northern Rock first warned it was in trouble last summer.
Today’s headlines look pretty horrible. House prices have suffered their biggest annual fall since the early 1990s, says the Nationwide.
‘Read my lips – no new taxes’. That’s the promise, made in 1988, that’s widely credited as having scuppered George Bush Snr’s re-election chances come 1992.
Swiss bank UBS makes front-page news on The Wall Street Journal for its thumping quarterly loss of more than $12 billion on write-downs of $19 billion. The losses have claimed chairman Marc Ospel.
– USA 2008: The Great Depression
Brit newspaper The Independent leads with “dismal projections” that in the fiscal year starting in October, 28 million people in the US will rely on government food stamps to survive, the highest level since the food assistance programme was introduced in the 1960s.
Paulson plan will be “dead on arrival”, according to The New York Times, as “lawmakers and lobbyists from an array of industries” oppose to the plan to create a new financial regulatory system…