Merry Christmas

Dollar index

Baltic Dry Index

Down 95%

The index provides "an assessment of the price of moving the major raw materials by sea. Taking in 26 shipping routes measured on a timecharter and voyage basis, the index covers Supramax, Panamax, and Capesize dry bulk carriers carrying a range of commodities including coal, iron ore and grain.

Bernie Madoff arrested in a $50 billion fraud;

Madoff, 70, head of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, was arrested today at 8:30 a.m. by the FBI and appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Douglas Eaton in Manhattan federal court. Charged in a criminal complaint with a single count of securities fraud, he was released on $10 million bond guaranteed by his wife and secured by his apartment. Madoff, wearing a white-striped shirt, dark-colored pants and no tie, looked down as he left the courtroom with his wife, declining to comment. “It’s all just one big lie,” Madoff told his employees on Dec. 10, according to the government. The firm, Madoff allegedly said to them, is “basically, a giant Ponzi scheme.”
Madoff faces as much as 20 years in prison and a $5 million fine if convicted. His New York-based firm was the 23rd largest market maker on Nasdaq in October, handling a daily average of about 50 million shares a day, exchange data show. It specialized in handling orders from online brokers in some of the largest U.S. companies, including General Electric Co. and Citigroup Inc

Goldman Says European Stocks may Fall Another 20% Before Rally

Dec. 5 (Bloomberg) -- European stocks may fall another 20 percent in the “short term” as investors grasp the possibility of deflation, before a rebound in the second half of next year, Goldman, Sachs & Co. strategists said.

The brokerage advised as part of its 2009 European equity strategy holding shares in industries less affected by an economic slowdown, including phone, healthcare and retail companies.
“While it is tempting to believe that a New Year will bring an entirely different set of market prospects the reality is often different,” Goldman wrote in a note to investors distributed today. “The start of 2009 is unlikely to bring a change in the dynamic of growth and the unlocking of credit that is required for risky assets to re-rate.”

The Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index may drop 20 percent on a “downside risk” possibility, they wrote. A six-to 12-month rally may follow only after the first half, they wrote, lifting the European benchmark between 30 and 50 percent.
Retailers were upgraded to “overweight” from “underweight” in Goldman’s recommended allocation. The industry is dominated by food companies that are relatively less “cyclical,” it said.
The team of London-based strategists, including Jessica Binder, Peter Oppenheimer, Sharon Bell and Gerald Moser, downgraded household-goods shares to “underweight” from “neutral,” citing weaker consumer demand and cut utilities in the same way because of “high leverage and refinancing needs.”

“We expect an inflection point in economic activity and the pricing of markets in 2009, but it is likely to be from lower levels and later in the year,” they wrote. “We stay defensive in our portfolio and would underweight most cyclical sectors.”

Financial-services stocks were upgraded to “neutral” from “underweight.”

Goldman may post $2 billion loss

Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs may report a quarterly net loss of as much as $2 billion, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
The newspaper, citing industry insiders, said the loss of $5 a share for the quarter ended Nov. 28 would be five times the current analyst projection.
The expected loss would be Goldman's (GS, Fortune 500) first quarterly loss since it went public in 1999, the Journal said.

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