Thursday, December 16, 2010

Housing Starts (annualized rate): Survey 550k Actual 555 Prior 519 Revised 534

Still skating sideways along the bottom.

Initial Jobless Claims: Survey 425 Actual 420 Prior 421 Revised 423

The downtrend continues.

The first regional manufacturing survey for December reversed the surprise deceleration in
November, jumping 22 points into growth territory with a reading of 10.6 while industrial production for
November rose 0.4% m/m and manufacturing activity picked up by 0.3% m/m. – Roubini Global
Economics
A White House review of President Obama's year-old Afghan war strategy concluded that it is
"showing progress" against al-Qaeda. The review, it said, indicated that the administration was "setting
conditions" to begin the "responsible reduction" of U.S. forces in Afghanistan in July. – Washington Post
European Sovereign Debt Spreads - Western Europe's weaker economies continue to see
higher yields on their sovereign debt. Ireland's and Greece's are the highest, at 8.22 percent and 11.86
percent as of yesterday, respectively, with Portugal's not far behind, at 6.43 percent. – Bloomberg

BAC - WSJ saying the co in talks w/large mortgage investors to settle claims...WSJ says this is a
"major shift in strategy" on the part of CEO Moynihan (WSJ) http://on.wsj.com/idpXpQ (BAC published
a statement after the close on Wed confirming the WSJ article.....BAC says that it is continuing
"constructive dialogue around the concerns raised" by mortgage investors; those investors have agreed
to extend deadlines first outlined in an Oct 18 letter). This issue has been one of the biggest overhangs
on the banks and to the extent BAC is able to settle w/this group of investors, it could provide an
investors w/an important benchmark in determining the true liability to Wall St from the repurchase
issue. – JPM
New Basel rules officially published - The Basel Committee issued today the Basel III rules text,
which presents the details of global regulatory standards on bank capital adequacy and liquidity. Banks
have until 2015 to meet the LCR standard and until 2018 to meet the NSFR standard, which will reflect
any revisions following each standard's observation period. The final text confirms all key ratios and
their timing, as expected. The committee said its study showed that as of December 2009, if the new
Basel III rules were applied, there would have been a shortfall of 577 billion euros for the world's top
94 internationally active banks.