24/7 Wall St.

Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) YouTube will launch 100 premium channels, in what will be the start-up of a bone-crushing competitor to online video sites like Hulu and Yahoo! video. YouTube’s size in terms of monthly visits dwarfs every other video destination in America. “The venture, in partnership with dozens of media companies, Hollywood production companies, and online-video creators, will generate about 25 hours of new, original programming a day on YouTube. The majority of the roughly 100 channels will launch next year,” according to The Wall Street Journal.

Klaus Regling, the head of Europe’s rescue fund, has actively solicited China’s government to put money into the facility that will be used for a rescue of Greece, and perhaps other southern EU nations. The Chinese will want concessions of course, which may involve some guarantee of the value of their investments. EU officials, of course, will not want to give them. That makes a stalemate likely. The one inducement the Europeans might have is that markets are skeptical about how the new fund will be created and funded. The Chinese could help assure the the financial foundation of the facility is well set.

Groupon may raise the price of its IPO, Reuters reports. Skepticism about the company’s viability as the leader in its market have halved the value of Groupon in the last six months. Several other internet IPO candidates like Zynga have suffered similar fates as equity holders become skeptical about the chances of Web 2.0 firms to maintain profitable operations.

Moody’s said it may downgrade Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) now that it has decided to keep its PC division. Many analysts view PCs as commodities with low margins. This belief has been fueled by the rise in sales of tablet PC’s like the Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPad and smartphones from Apple, Samsung and Motorola (NYSE: MMI)

Douglas A. McIntyre