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Frontrunning: March 16

Tyler Durden's picture




 
  • Tapping oil from the SPR may be trickier than ever (Reuters)
  • Why Quantitative Easing Is The Only Game in Town: Martin Wolf (FT)
  • Lacker Says Fed May Need to Raise Target Interest Rate in 2013 (Bloomberg)
  • Japan Debt-Financing Concern Clouds BOJ’s Bond Buying (Bloomberg) No worries - US will just buy Japan's bonds
  • IMF Approves €28bn Loan to Greece (FT)
  • Banks Want Fed to Iron Out 'Maiden' (WSJ)
  • China 'Wealth Exodus' Underestimated (China Daily)
  • Geithner Calls For Reforms to Boost Growth (FT)
  • China Adds Treasuries For First Time Since July on Europe Woes (Bloomberg)
  • Osborne Weighs 50p Tax Rate Cut To 45p (FT)

Overnight Media Summary

WSJ

* Regulators in the U.S. and European Union are investigating Google for bypassing the privacy settings of millions of users of Apple's Safari Web browser. Google stopped the practice last month after being contacted by The Wall Street Journal.

* A growing appetite for risk is prompting some Wall Street banks and investment firms to show interest in buying the most complex and troubled assets tied to the AIG bailout.

* Coffee growers from Costa Rica to Mexico to Colombia are diversifying to protect themselves from cyclical declines, setting the stage for a rebound in prices over the long term.

* MetLife Inc's Steven Kandarian, 10 months into his tenure as chief executive of the nation's largest life insurer, learned a hard lesson this week: The Fed's math is what matters.

The Federal Reserve on Tuesday stunned MetLife with the news that the company failed for the second time in five months to win approval for its plans to return billions of dollars to shareholders through share buybacks and a hefty dividend increase. The decision, Kandarian conceded in an interview, left him "deeply disappointed."

* Seeking to maintain its credit rating while not angering shareholders, United Technologies Corp changed its financing plans for the $16.5 billion acquisition of aircraft-components maker Goodrich Corp, announcing the sale of several units including its Rocketdyne rocket-engine business.

* Sprint Nextel will terminate a 15-year contract with billionaire Philip Falcone's LightSquared and return $65 million in prepayments to the wireless startup, say people familiar with its plans.

NYT

* The turmoil at Dewey & LeBoeuf highlights the risks of big law firms jettisoning traditional notions of partnership in favor of a star system, legal experts say.

* Complaints about mysterious transactions on Apple Inc's iTunes are undermining the store's reputation as the safest of online shopping environments.

* A federal appeals court dealt a stinging rebuke on Thursday to Judge Jed Rakoff of the Federal District Court in New York, who last year rejected a Securities and Exchange Commission fraud settlement with Citigroup because the deal had allowed the company to avoid admitting any wrongdoing.

* The finance industry's loss of cachet, which started during the financial crisis, is facing a blow following the public resignation of a former Goldman executive.

* As the Chinese government forges ahead on an effort to blanket the country with cameras, Bain Capital, the private equity firm founded by Mitt Romney, stands to profit.

* India, whose once red-hot economy has started to cool, is trying to cope with debt and deficit problems that will put strains on the annual budget to be presented to parliament on Friday.

* MF Global employees at the center of a federal investigation are expected to appear before a Congressional panel this month to shed light on the brokerage firm's misuse of roughly $1 billion in customer money, according to people briefed on the matter.

* Cisco's deal to buy NDS, which is expected to close by the end of the year, will help Cisco expand its video offerings as it works to bolster lagging growth in its core networks business.

* Horst Reichenbach, the head of the European Union's task force on Greece, said the country has made progress but more needs to be done to crack down on tax evasion.

Canadian Press

GLOBE AND MAIL

- Ideological and personal fault lines are growing in the NDP as rivals gang up against the program and leadership skills of front-runner Thomas Mulcair in the final days of the race to find Jack Layton's replacement.

- The man in charge of Elections Canada has broken his silence on the fraudulent robo-calls controversy, divulging that the agency has received 700 specific complaints about phony dialing from the 2011 ballot in the past three weeks.

- The ouster of a high-ranking Chinese official has cost Canada a major link with China's leadership just as Prime Minister Stephen Harper works to deepen relations between the two countries.

Reports in the business section:

- Two of the country's biggest agriculture companies are working with Switzerland's Glencore International PLC on a takeover bid for Viterra Inc, a plan that would further build the businesses of Calgary's Agrium Inc and Winnipeg's Richardson family.

NATIONAL POST

- Canada's new federal spending watchdog is set to deliver a scathing report on the F-35 fighter jet program early next month that will make distinctly unpleasant reading for the conservative government.

- Police in Montreal made more than 150 arrests Thursday when an annual anti-police brutality march turned violent.

Reports in the Business Section

- Rogers Communications Inc may have to collaborate with a competing wireless operator to deliver mobile broadband services outside major cities or be left at a disadvantage to rivals BCE Inc and Telus Corp, sources said Thursday.

European Economic Summary:

  • Italy Trade Balance (Total). EUR -4350m. Previous EUR1150m.
  • Eurozone Trade Balance (sa) EUR5.9B – lower than expected. Consensus EUR6.0B. Previous EUR7.4B.
 

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Fri, 03/16/2012 - 07:36 | 2261188 EscapeKey
EscapeKey's picture

Futures are predictably up. Because equities - much like house prices - only ever go up.

This is a Bernanke approved announcement.

Fri, 03/16/2012 - 07:45 | 2261194 Pretorian
Pretorian's picture

Ukraine wants same condition like Greece in re-paying loans to IMF lol it is starting all over again . http://english.capital.gr/News.asp?id=1441447

Fri, 03/16/2012 - 08:06 | 2261226 LongSoupLine
LongSoupLine's picture

a new baseline has been set.

Fri, 03/16/2012 - 08:02 | 2261212 chistletoe
chistletoe's picture

Here is the most important sentence from the EIA's wednesday oil inventory report:

 

"Total products suppliedover the last four-week period have averaged 18.3 million barrels per day, down 5.4% from the comparable period last year."

 

There is your "recovery" right there, where it cannot be denied ... less energy means less work done, its Physics 101 ... by the way, in the comparable period in 2008, the average was closer to 20.4 million barrels ... down 12% since then ... and still falling ....

Fri, 03/16/2012 - 09:51 | 2261505 boiltherich
boiltherich's picture

IMF approves $36.7 billion for Greece, and the US share of that to taxpayers here is our 17% contribution to the IMF or $6.239 billion. 

The USA had said a couple months back that it would not contribute to any EU bailouts through the IMF, but the only nation member of the IMF not to back the bailout was Brazil. 

So, you are paying to support internal politics in a failed currency union.  Of course compared to Fed swap lines this is not even a drop in the ocean, but for some reason this just wrankles me to no end. 

Fri, 03/16/2012 - 10:13 | 2261541 Jessica6
Jessica6's picture

Every Canadian or anyone invested in Canadian banks needs to read that China Daily article. Holy f***. 

..the Canadian [Investor immigration] program is particular favored by Chinese investors for its safety. Unlike the US program, which requires investment before permanent residency is granted, applicants to Canada invest their funds only after permanent residency is approved. The C$800,000 seed capital is returned to the applicants five years after residency is granted.

Applicants can even invest just C$220,000 and obtain a loan of C$580,000 from Canadian banks to bridge the gap. The C$220,000 will be transferred to the bank that issued the loan as interest five years later.

I should add that the average house prices given are wrong or seriously out of date though - try nearly double for each city. A crack shack in Vancouver has gone for around a million for a few years now and Toronto is getting close to that number too. Toronto RE prices seem to be reaching some sort of blow-off top right now...

 

 

Fri, 03/16/2012 - 13:30 | 2262435 RollinsArline3
RollinsArline3's picture

my roomate's mom makes $83/hr on the computer. She has been fired from work for 9 months but last month her pay check was $18339 just working on the computer for a few hours. Read more on this web site .....  http://bit.ly/FPPP3j

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