Opening Bell: 4.8.08

As Price of Lead Soars, British Churches Find Holes in Roof (NYT) Pretty wild story that's been making the rounds lately, about how soaring commodity prices have led to commodity-related petty theft and vandalism. It's an old story, really. Back in 2005, stories about theft of copper wire and tubing were fairly common and at the time we wondered how long that could possibly last (ha!). Anyway, the hook here is a church in England, where thieves have been tearing out holes in the roof because there's lead in them thar roofs. Heathens.

Lost your luggage? RFID tags could help (News.com) Wow, was this story written in 2002? The hopes and dreams, that RFID tags could end lost luggage has been around for awhile, and for the most part hasn't really gone anywhere. Part of the problem: it's expensive. Good luck finding someone to shell out for the tags right now, when they're not even going to spring for in-flight almonds. And, even high tech tags have a hard time compensating for extreme human error, which is often a big problem.

Intel Capital Bets on China Growth (WSJ) Intel Capital, the famed VC arm of the big chip company, has raised a $500 million China fund, which will be invested in the country over the next several years. It will support a range of investment themes, including alt energy. The main point for us: see, we can invest over their too.

America's Mortgage Problem And Sarbanes-Oxley (Alan Meckler) I been impressed with the blog of Jupitermedia CEO Alan Meckler. For one thing, there aren't a lot of CEOs who blog (that's probably a good thing, because by and large, it could be argued, it's a waste of time). But Meckler's post come off as fairly unvarnished and, well, dashed out in a couple seconds -- which is exactly how I like my blog posts: quick and dirty. Anyway, this entry is particularly relevant, cause he's bashing SarbOx, which, as a public company CEO, is cool.

U.K. House Prices Fall the Most Since 1992, HBOS Says (Bloomberg)House prices fell 2.5 percent from February to March in the UK, the worst monthly drop since 1992. They ain't seen nothing yet.

Opening Bell: 4.7.08

Washington Mutual to Get $5 Billion (WSJ) Will the markets rally today, because WaMu is set to raise $5 billion? That would seem to be the pattern. The thrift, which apparently hasn't been so thrifty, will get a $5 billion cash infusion from PE firm TPG and other investors, reports WSJ. The investement would cause a massive dilution for WaMu shareholders, since their market cap is only $9 billion -- shares are off 74 percent in the last year. Of course, while they'd be diluted, they'd also have another $5 billion in cash on the books.

Novartis Buys Alcon Stake, Eyes Majority (AP) Swiss drug firm Novartis plans to buy its countrymate's stake in US eyecare firm Alcon for a cool $39 billion. First Novartis will just by a 25 percent stake, with an eye towards acquiring another 52 percent down the road. Those Swiss: pretty soon they're going to own the whole damn country.

Yahoo!'s Board of Directors Responds to Latest Microsoft Letter Microsoft sent a threatening letter to Yahoo's board on Saturday, saying that if Yahoo didn't start talking, it'd go hostile. Yahoo has responded, basically saying "no". Seriously, that's about it.

Buffett Pressed To Dump Chief Of General Re (WSJ) Berkshire Hathaway's re-insurance arm, General Re, continues to be a thorn. After four top execs were found guilty of some sort of fraud, Warren Buffett is being pressured by the Feds to dump the unit's CEO, Joseph P. Brandon. But basically, at this point, nobody has really accused of Brandon of doing anything wrong. It mainly looks like guilt by association, and rather than take matters into its own hands, prosecutors would rather have Buffett do their job for 'em.

Will Earnings Dampen Stocks Next Week?

There is almost no doubt the US is in recession now, and the bigger question is how severe this downturn is going to be. 80,000 jobs were lost in March, more than what most analysts had expected, and unemployment rate rose to 5.1%. Although the numbers are very bad on their own, many investors and traders have already factored this in; after all, the economy is indeed slowing down. US stock markets actually took the poor payrolls data quite well on Friday, ignoring the biggest job loss in five years. For the week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI: 12609.42 -16.61 -0.13%) rose 3.2%; the S&P 500 index (^GSPC: 1370.40 +1.09 +0.08%) jumped 4.2% and the Nasdaq (^IXIC: 2370.98 +7.68 +0.32%) closed up 4.9%.

On Friday itself, the Dow lost 0.13%, pulled down by General Motors (GM: 20.58 -1.01 -4.68%) which dropped 4.7% on news that its largest auto parts supplier, Delphi, may not get its hands on the needed external capital to avoid bankruptcy as a group of investors led by hedge fund Appaloosa Management said it terminated its agreement to invest $2.55 billion in Delphi.

Meanwhile, banks can’t stop downgrading other banks. JPMorgan (JPM: 45.57 -0.71 -1.53%) cut its 2008 earnings forecast for banks like Citigroup (C: 24.08 -0.28 -1.15%), Wachovia (WB: 27.21 -1.16 -4.09%) and Bank of America (BAC: 39.41 -0.96 -2.38%).

Now that the first quarter has passed, we are heading into the earnings season, starting with Alcoa (AA: 39.00 +0.46 +1.19%) on Monday, Circuit City (: ) on Wednesday, Genentech (DNA: 79.73 +0.31 +0.39%) on Thursday and General Electric (GE: 37.56 -0.28 -0.74%) on Friday.

A Cup of Tea Without Milk, or Sugar, or Tea

What happened to real crashes? I mean real crashes. When I was your age a financial crisis was a financial crisis. Kids today, they'd just never believe you if you told them about the Crash of '87, or LTCM. Today a hedge fund loses $6 billion and nothing happens. A nine decade old Wall Street mainstay collapses, banks write down $300 billion and people barely sneeze. VIX? Tradeable volatility? If we wanted volatility we'd walk home barefoot on broken glass and tell mom about dad's secretary's midnight call. We were lucky if we even had trading volume data back then. Yeah, we had chaos, but we were happy, I tell you.

Ugly Employment Numbers

That 80,000 job loss number for released by the Labor Department earlier this morning represents the biggest decline in jobs in five years, although it's only slightly worse than the 76,000 jobs lost in each of January and February. If we needed any more evidence that we're in a recession, well here it is.

Opening Bell: 4.4.08

Citi merger architect calls deal ‘mistake’ (FT) More reflection on a decade of Citigroup. In retrospect, says John Reed, who helped orchestrate the merger of Citi and Travellers, well it might not have been the best idea. In an interview with FT he called the company a sad story, adding: "The specific merger transaction clearly has to be seen to have been a mistake." He declined to say whether it was the management or the model that deserved the blame, although to some extent that's irrelevant. Sort of like those horrendous conversations kids have in college about whether communism could ever work if only it had the right leaders.

Ex-UBS chief pushes for bank’s break-up (FT) Luqman Arnold, ex-CEO of UBS, wants to see a break up of the bank, which isn't doing so hot. Specifically, he wants to see the separation of its investment and private banking arms. Beyond that he wants a total board overhaul. And oh yeah, he's quietly amassed a stake in the company. Well .7 percent of it. Yeah, probably not enough to push through any changes on his own. But, you never know.

Investors Stalk the Wounded of Wall Street (NYT) Nobody wants to be the one who tried to catch the falling knife... but to some extent a little obvious: with financial assets way down, folks are nibbling. And that's probably a good thing, though we smell a faint whiff of "vulturism" in this story.

J.P. Morgan buys $140.7 million in Bear Stearns stock (MarketWatch) JPM now owns a significant chunk of Bear, as it announced that it bought 11.5 million shares on the open market for $140.7 million. Taking no chances obviously -- that's at $12.20 per share, over 20 percent above what the company has an agreement to buy Bear at once the shareholders vote.

J.P. Morgan Said to Withdraw Bear Offers (Dealbook) Pretty predictable: Fresh Bear Stearns hires are having their job offers rescinded from JPM. Obviously not very appealing, but you have to figure that seniority counts for something at a time like this.

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