Crude Hits $133; Time Warner Spins Off Cable Unit; Boeing Jettisons 750 Workers; UBS Sells Assets to BlackRock; American Airlines’ Desperate Moves; Moody’s Big Mistake; DOJ to Sue OPEC?; BOE Holds on Inflation Fears.

At a time when Europe and the United States are shedding jobs in the financial sector, one financial center is only adding to its ranks: Hong Kong.

At its annual shareholder meeting yesterday (Wednesday), Swiss bank UBS AG (UBS) announced it would cut expenses, raise additional capital and replaced its chairman.

As I said yesterday, UBS has destroyed its reputation as a venerable Swiss bank by acting just like the American banks. For years, UBS has stacked its books with sub-prime mortgage-backed securities. And now, UBS is facing the biggest losses of any bank around the world.

Megabank announces $19bn write-down, a rights issue to shore up its balance sheet and its chairman resigns. What does the stock market think? It marks the shares up 12%.

The short sellers appear to be dwindling. This morning the Financial Times reports that global stock markets continued to rally.

The rally comes despite heavy writedowns from Swiss banking giant UBS.

The uncertainty about the markets’ direction reflected the fact that stocks rose after another round of bank writedowns and capital-raisings – developments that might have been expected to send prices lower.

When recession comes earnings fall and those slippery PE numbers can start making fools out of us. The trick to smart investing, as Mark Slater once commented, was finding those companies where earnings were going up so fast that at some point the company would be re-rated by the market thereby boosting the share price.

Mr Market kicked off the second quarter with a rally, extending gains into a second day. The upswing comes after heavy writedowns by Swiss bank UBS and data showing confidence among manufacturers at a four-year low.

Read on at Dow Jones MarketWatch.

“No matter what you think, now is the time to buy,” says value investor Chris Mayer.

– UBS gets thumped

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 DOA

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…