G20 largely a non-event…  Pound moves up…  Brazil falls on sell off of emerging markets…  Japan enters recession… And Now… Today’s Pfennig!

Consumer Confidence at All-Time Low; Home Prices Continue Collapse; OPEC Still Not Satisfied; Whirlpool Circles the Drain; Optimistic Wall Street; Banks Balk on Buyout; Stop the Presses?

Since the beginning of the subprime crisis last July, financial companies around the world have fired a total of 83,000 workers, sparking fears that the global recession could be worse than expected. This from Bloomberg:

It’s as if the entire workforce at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley vanished in less than a year.

From Tokyo to London to New York, financial companies announced plans to shed more than 83,000 jobs since last July as revenue and compensation pools evaporated, according to figures compiled by Bloomberg.

Citigroup has slashed its earnings outlook for Wall Street investment banks Goldman Sachs Group, Lehman Brothers Holdings and Morgan Stanley because of a tough operating environment, according to a report by Thomson Reuters.

The second quarter has seen lower client-related trading volumes, little banking activity, losses related to ineffective hedging and reversals of gains on fair valuing liabilities, [Citigroup analyst] Prashant Bhatia wrote in a note dated May 16.

From the Five Minute Forecast, “Citi came clean with another $12.1 billion in write-downs. They announced a $5 billion first-quarter loss this morning, too.

The loss is larger than expected, but a higher-than-expected top-line earnings number has given traders reason to celebrate, apparently. Ticker C rocketed up over 8% in premarket trading. Our best guess: A known loss is better than the great abyss. And there are still plenty of folks willing to time the bottom in any one of these behemoth Wall Street banks.