Doesn’t sound to me like the Federal Reserve has been doing a very good job. Perhaps the market doesn’t care what they think about 2009. Most of their semi-annual reports reflect backwards on the past. And it is only conjecture as to what the future holds. I am not sure why we allow 12 men to control our monetary policy, especially when we see the recent failures which require taxpayer bailouts.

Source from Wikipedia

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Technorati Tags: 12 Men, Banking Institutions, Conjecture, Depository Institutions, Federal Reserve, Federal Reserve System, Financial Markets, Good Job, Liquidity, Maximum Employment, Monetary Policy, Money Supply, Panics, Payments System, Private Interests, Stable Prices, Systemic Risk, Term Interest, Wikipedia, World Economy

The bonds launched carrying a risk premium of 400 basis points over Treasurys,
which would give them a yield of approximately 7.07%.

On Monday, GECC, the financing arm of General Electric Co. (GE), sold $10 billion
of bonds backed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Some of those bonds
carried yields of just 1.66% and 2.22%. Since December, GECC has sold $16.5
billion in U.S. dollar-denominated bonds and EUR1.75 billion under the FDIC’s
temporary program that expires in June.

“GECC needs to raise capital, and if the market is willing to accept it, they are
content to issue,” said Scott MacDonald, director of research at Aladdin Capital
Holdings in Stamford, Conn.

GECC’s offering was expected to price later Tuesday.

This combined with other deals in the market brought total issuance to nearly $10
billion Tuesday.

Other corporate bond deals include $2 billion in 10- and 30-year notes from
TransCanada Pipelines and a $1.2 billion offering in five- and 10-year notes from
Devon Energy Corp. (DVN). Anheuser-Busch Inbev NV (ABI.BT), the world’s biggest
brewer, is also in the market with a three-part benchmark deal. Generally, use of
the proceeds was listed as going toward corporate purposes.

The fact that companies can access both the corporate market and the FDIC-backed
sector shows conditions are easing, said Daniel Sheppard, director at Deutsche
Bank Private Wealth Management.

“Anything that can be brought to market at reasonable rates can be considered a
victory,” he said. “It means funding is being made available to these firms.”

Corporate bonds, with yields ranging from 7% to 10%, are appealing to a “broad
swath of the investor universe” from pension funds to funds that buy several
kinds of assets such as stocks, said Wilmer Stith, vice president and portfolio
manager at MTB Funds in Baltimore.

But risk premiums, or spreads, will drop as more investors weary of low Treasury
yields jump in and as sentiment improves, he said.

“Once the new administration comes in, once we get the stimulus package going,
investors will be more aggressive in adding risk to their portfolios,” said
Stith.

Already, option-adjusted spreads on a benchmark Merrill Lynch corporate bond
index have tightened to 596 basis points as of Monday, compared with a peak of
656 basis points Dec. 5.

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In a three-page letter sent to the SEC chairman, Senate Banking Committee
Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., and Ranking Member Richard Shelby, R-Ala.,
requested a list of documents that they hope will help the committee examine the
“regulatory performance” of the SEC and the Financial Industry Regulatory
Authority, or FINRA. FINRA is a non-governmental regulator for securities firms
that do business in the U.S.

“The Banking Committee is examining this case to determine how so many people
could have been deceived and how such a massive fraud could have gone undetected
for so long,” said Dodd in a statement. “American investors deserve an
explanation and the responsible parties must be held accountable.”

Among the documents requested include any complaint letters that market
participants may have submitted regarding Madoff and his business practices and
all documents pertaining to the various FINRA and SEC examinations of the Madoff
firm over the years.

The committee also wants internal e-mails from the SEC and FINRA that pertain to
Madoff, e-mails between SEC staff and Madoff’s firm and a list of positions that
Madoff employees held on SEC or FINRA-appointed advisory boards, among other
things.

The SEC came under withering criticism Monday as House Financial Services
Committee members sat through a five-hour hearing and blasted the agency for
failing to uncover the alleged fraud.

The agency’s inspector general, H. David Kotz, told lawmakers he is investigating
why the agency never uncovered the truth about Madoff, and hopes to issue reports
on his findings on a rolling basis to keep them informed. He also said he had
broadened his investigation by looking at whether or not the agency’s enforcement
and examination divisions are effective.

The kinds of documents Kotz said he is reviewing as part of his internal
investigation are the same types of documents requested Monday by the Senate
Banking Committee.

The committee asked the SEC to provide the documents by Jan. 22.

“It is critical that the Banking Committee fully understand what happened in the
Madoff affair,” Shelby said in a statement.

“Why was this not caught sooner? Who is responsible? Could the massive harm that
investors suffered have been prevented? The documents we are requesting will help
us get to the bottom of this and inform our efforts at regulatory restructuring
going forward. The American people expect accountability, and that is exactly
what they should get,” he said.

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BEIJING, Jan. 6 (Xinhua) — Amid waves of job cuts worldwide, China has embarked on active measures to minimize job cuts and has pledged to boost employment this year.

The financial crisis continues to hurt the fourth largest economy and pushed many enterprises to cut their headcounts.

The following provinces are among the many in the country that have striven to stabilize their job markets.

South China’s Yangtze River Delta, a major manufacturing center, has been hit unexpectedly hard. Job vacancies in the manufacturing sector stood at 41.43 percent of the total in the eastern Zhejiang Province in the third quarter, a record low in recent years.

The same situation occurred to manufacturers in the eastern Jiangsu Province with job vacancies in the sector accounting for 50.15 percent of the total, down 0.94 percent over the same period last year, and down 4.16 percent from the second quarter.

To cushion the regions from the effects of the global crisis, the Yangtze Delta has set up an early warning system to conduct monitoring of the job situation. At present, six cities including Nanjing, Hangzhou and Ningbo are the trial areas.

The system is designed for regional labor and social security offices to collect employment information, such as the possible job cuts and the planned new recruits in the following week and the actual cuts.

Zhejiang Province will do this in 11 cities this year.

At the end of November, Zhejiang also cut back enterprises’ payments of social security funds for employees to mitigate their burden.

Another focus of most cities in the region is to encourage people to start businesses. Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces pledge to kick in favorable measures including free skill training for laid-off workers.

Officials and experts said the region expects a tougher job picture in the first quarter of this year as the global financial turmoil continued to spread.

Shanghai has launched programs to provide graduates and migrant workers with subsidies for skill training. On Dec. 30, the first employment service base was set up in Shanghai for graduates to gain internship experiences.

The Shanghai government also encouraged business start-ups to increase jobs. The city pledged to limit the registered unemployment rate to below 4.5 percent.

Hong Kong posted its registered unemployment rate at 3.8 percent between September to November, up from 3.5 percent between August and October, an extra 4,600 jobless.

Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, chief executive of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, said the current government work aimed at guaranteeing stability of job markets.

In early December last year, the Hong Kong government took a series of steps to create more than 60,000 posts in 2009. For example, the spending on infrastructure would be raised to about 40 billion Hong Kong Dollars, which would provide 55,000 jobs, 12,000 more than last year. The government would also add 7,700 public servant jobs.

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