10 CEOs To Go For 2009: Vikram Pandit of Citigroup (C, WFC, WB)
Citigroup, Inc. (NYSE: C) is still in a pinch despite more than a 100% bounce from recent lows, and its still-relatively new CEO is caught right in the middle of a storm he might…
All Work
Douglas A. McIntyre
Former AOL CEO Bidding For Yahoo! (YHOO)?–Stock Up 10%
Yahoo! (YHOO) has become a "rumor an hour" company. Over the weekend, the Times of London said the portal had a deal with Microsoft (MSFT) for its search business. As part of that arrangement…
Ugly Motor Sales Continue (F, GM)
Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) just released its November auto sales, and it is pretty hard to get excited about the data. The company sold 118,818 units in November, below the 119,000 Edmunds.com predicted. …
Kinder Morgan Starts Ethanol Pipeline (KMP)
Until today, every drop of ethanol used in transportation fuel has been moved by trucks or train cars. This added to the cost of getting ethanol to market and to the amount of total…
Ford Outlines Government Turnaround (F)
Ford Motor Co. (NYSE: F) is submitting its plan to Congress, and interestingly enough it does not sound as dire as some might have guessed based upon the auto company’s prior presentations. Ford has…
What About OPEC? Some Members Big Winners, Other Lose Big
OPEC is once more rattling the saber of crude oil production cuts in an effort to prop up the price of the black stuff. Whether the cartel will be successful in its aims is…
Citigroup Slashes Estimates and Price Target on Bank of America (BAC)
Analysts continue to slash estimates on bank stocks. Today it was Bank of America’s (BAC) turn. Citigroup lowered its estimates and price target on Bank of America due to marks and higher credit costs.…
Christmas Shopping and the Consumption Myth
By John Tamny RealClearMarkets In the days leading up to last week’s Black Friday, the post-Thanksgiving shopping day when many retailers become profitable for the year, Americans were inundated with lots of media commentary…
With Oil Prices Dropping Are Airline Mergers Smart?
With oil prices dropping, the cost of jet fuel is down by more than 50%. That makes the rush to merge airlines which accelerated earlier this year look like an idea whose time came…
GE’s Update Lacks Nasty Surprises Compared To Peers (GE)
General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) is providing its scheduled GE Capital update. GE sees fourth quarter earnings at $0.50 to $0.52 EPS range rather than the $0.50 to $0.56 EPS range previously offered. It…
Chevron: Claim for Environmental Damages in Ecuador Rises to $27 Billion (CVX)
When Chevron (NYSE:CVX) swallowed Texaco a few years back, one of the morsels it ingested was a claim for environmental damage to several Texaco drilling sites in Ecuador. Unlike Chevron’s recent exoneration in a…
Electricity Use Falling–So Are Share Prices (DUK, DYN, AEP)
Just as with natural gas and crude oil, electricity use is off as the economy heads into its second year of recession. The lack of demand for electricity affects the bottom line for generators…
Top Pre-Market Analyst Upgrades & Downgrades (NGG, QGEN, RGC, WSM, GPN, GFI, QSFT, TSRA)
These are the early bird analyst upgrades and downgrades we have seen this Tuesday morning with more than two hours to the open: National Grid (NYSE: NGG) Raised to Overweight at HSBC. Qiagen (NASDAQ:…
Sears (SHLD): The Real Face Of Retail
Forget how Wal-Mart (WMT) is doing. Sears (SHLD) is the real face of retail. Between its Sears and K-Mart stores, it has 3,000 outlets and 330,000 employees. And, it is dying a quick death.…
Banks Look To Fourth Quarter Trouble
Hope springs eternal. For several months now analysts and investors have believed that the fourth quarter would be a reasonable one for banks. A lot of the bad paper on their balance sheets would…
No Help For Homeowners, No Help For Banks
It has been repeated ad nauseam. Housing has to be fixed before the credit markets and banks can recover. Housing has to be fixed so that people who are hard-working souls won’t be thrown…
The Great Treasury Bubble, Or Something Worse….
There has been one asset class which has held up with flying colors: US TREASURIES. It has been a great ride if you hold them, but the yields are reaching a point that signals…
Memo To Congress: Merge The Big Three (GM)(F)
Look at the GM (GM) 10-Q. The company had $3.3 billion in sales, general, and administrative expenses. That is all of those white collar workers, the R&D and product development staffs, the marketing men…
Memo To Congress: Toyota (TM) Already Won
A lot of fat, pork-barreling Congressmen who are supposed to vote on an auto bailout just want to go home for the holidays. Many of them are out of work. They were caught doing…
Media Digest 12/2/2008 Reuters, WSJ, NYTimes, FT, Bloomberg
According to Reuters, JP Morgan (JPM), Bank of America (BAC), and Merrill Lynch (MER) will cut a total of almost 20,000 jobs. Reuters reports that Boeing (BA) will sign a new deal with machinists.…