Friday, December 14, 2007

Inflation worries, stocks down

Inflation worries, that'll do it. The Dow is down 67 & decliners outnumber advancers 2-1, but no big declines. NAZ is only down 3, oil pulled back to 91.50 & the Treasury bond yield is back at 4.23% (up almost 50 basis points from a couple weeks ago). Nov CPI index was up .8% while core inflation (excluding energy & food) was up .6%. Both are bigger numbers than expected raising concerns about he FED's ability to lower interest rates.

Citigroup (C) said, get ready for this, "it plans to move assets from seven 'structured investment vehicles' onto its books and put up $49 billion to help the SIVs repay their debts." Does anybody know what that means? That's sort of assumed to be "good" by the experts, Citi's up 45 cents, OK! I guess the idea is, what's a few billion among friends? Moody's cut Citi's credit rating last night because Citi is straining it's finances. Their dividend is in question. Other banks aren't much better off, credit crunch problems drag on.

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