Bloomberg is reporting that last quarter investors withdrew $152 billion from hedge funds. While i have read about 10 different version of this number (anywhere from $100 to $300 billion) this is amazing considering that virtually every hedge funds has gated redemptions.

The Donald managed to convince his bondholders and senior lenders that he is worthy of yet another temporary reprieve, and announced a two week forbearance extension early today. At this point February 4 is the D-Day at which point the $53 million unpaid interest on the $1.25 billion 8.5% Notes due 2015 become fully due.

S&P, which lately seems to be paying its credit "analysts" at a rate of $1/word and has imposed a minimum quota of 10 downgrades a week, whacked LBO titan Freescale late on Friday with a downgrade of its corporate rating from B+ to B-, its secured loans from BB to B- and bonds from B- to CCC.

After yesterday's bungled swearing in ceremony, Obama was sworn in repeatedly in the privacy of the White House today at 7:35 pm due to a misplaced adverb. At yesterday’s inauguration ceremony Roberts misstated the oath as “execute the office of president of the United States faithfully” and Obama followed suit.

Everyone knows there is something very screwy about LIBOR, with opinion ranging from it's way too high to the opposite. We also have been quite vocal in our opinion of the TED Spread but that's irrelevant for the time being. Lately we have been looking at the most recent BBA data for the 3 month LIBOR submission by bank and while the average is 1.122%, the range is quite wide: 1.04% at the tight end to 1.204% at the wide.

The entire airline space today was getting whacked in early trading. Delta was down over 10%, United was down roughly 9%, and American was down over 20% after the last two announced weak earnings with the major culprits given were a sharp drop in capacity and load factors on the revenue side, and bad fuel hedging on the cost side. American is being punished the most as it noted it still has 45% of its Q1 fuel hedged at $2.58/gallon or $108/barrel.

The Brits are scared... very scared