France 'set for 2009 recession'

France will enter recession in 2009, according to Insee, the country's national statistics agency.

The agency says the French economy has shrunk by 0.8% in the last three months of 2008 and will contract by another 0.4% in the first quarter of 2009.

The figures are worse than predictions, which said the economy would shrink by just 0.1% from October and December.

France is eurozone's second biggest economy, and would be the latest major world economy to enter recession.

Figures have already shown that Germany and Japan have endured two quarters of negative economic growth, while economists in the US have declared that its economy has been in recession since earlier in 2008.

France only narrowly avoided negative economic growth between July and September, posting growth of 0.1%.

Insee also predicted that unemployment in France would rise to 8% by the middle of next year, up from 7.7% at the moment.("Here My Every News I'm providing like Hot syndication" And This sites every Ads also Erotic you May check it!!)

Surprise rise in UK retail sales

UK retail sales rose unexpectedly last month, official figures have shown.

Total sales volumes climbed 0.3% in November from the previous month, the Office for National Statistics said. Sales were up 1.5% from a year ago.

Analysts had been expecting sales to fall in November, and recent surveys have suggested trading has been weak.

The rise in monthly sales was led by household goods, which were up 3.9% in November - their biggest monthly increase since July 2007.

Food sales were up 0.2% for the month, while those of clothing and footwear were down 0.1%.

The level of overall retail sales made via the internet was 3.8%, up from 3.2% in October.

'Doesn't tally'

Analysts had been expecting retail sales to fall 0.6% in November."Early Christmas shopping could explain part of the strength, but it doesn't really tally with the weakness in consumer confidence nor the data seen in the CBI and British Retail Consortium (BRC) surveys," said James Knightley, an economist at ING.

BRC director general Stephen Robertson said the rise in the official figure for November was "hard to explain".

However, he put the increase down to high profile price cuts and promotions, combined with the recent falls in interest rates and VAT.

"Some retailers will now dare to breathe a sigh of relief that customers are simply deferring their Christmas spending rather than cancelling it entirely," he said.

The BRC said last week that total UK retail sales had fallen in consecutive months for the first time in at least 13 years.

It found that sales were November were down 0.4% from a year earlier, following a 0.1% dip in October.

And more timely figures from Experian, which track "footfalls" or the number of people out on the High Street, suggest that the number of shoppers has dropped by 11.5% in the first three days of this week compared to the same period last year.

Meanwhile, official data on Wednesday showed that the number of people out of work in the UK rose by 137,000 to 1.86 million in the three months to October - the highest level since 1997.("Here My Every News I'm providing like Hot syndication" And This sites every Ads also Erotic you May check it!!)

German confidence at 18-year low

German business confidence dropped sharply in December to its lowest level in 18 years, according to a business index from the Ifo research institute.

Exporters were suffering particularly badly as the global economy turns down, it said.

Ifo's business climate index, based on a poll of 7,000 firms, fell to 82.6 in December from 84.0 in November.

The institute said that such a low reading had not been seen since German reunification in 1990.

And Ifo said it had go back to 1982 to find such a weak index level for business sentiment in the former West Germany.

'Cloudy prospects'

"The dominant feature of the December decline is the worsening of the firms' current business situation," Ifo said.

"With regard to the six-month business outlook, the scepticism of the survey participants remains nearly unchanged."

The gloomy figure had been widely expected.

"German economic prospects remain clouded and as such the new data is not surprising. Germany's GDP will continue to weaken and so far an end to the recession is not in sight," said economist Ralf Umlauf of Helaba bank.

"Pressure on the European Central Bank to make further clear cuts in interest rates to fight against the crisis ought to increase because of this," he added.("Here My Every News I'm providing like Hot syndication" And This sites every Ads also Erotic you May check it!!)

Did Bernard Madoff act alone? Investors doubt it

Did Bernard Madoff act alone? Investors doubt it, investigators look for accomplices

NEW YORK (AP) -- Bernard Madoff's contention that he pulled off one of the biggest financial frauds in history without any help is being met with disbelief by his investors and experts in the securities industry. It normally takes a team of accountants, stock brokers, lawyers and more to operate the kind of multibillion-dollar investment fund that Madoff ran from the 17th floor of his Manhattan headquarters.The firm had clients around the globe. Simply generating the detailed financial statements investors got in the mail every month would have been a monumental effort for just one person, observers said, even if those reports were pure fantasy.

"Someone had to create them. Someone had to create the appearance that there were returns," said attorney Harry Susman, who represents several Madoff investors.

"The guy was 70 years old. Could he have done it himself? The computer systems would have needed to be extensive. Supposedly, he's selling puts, buying puts, selling calls, buying stocks. Somebody had to sit there and buy stocks. Where are these people?"

Federal investigators are still in the early stages of trying to answer those same questions as they decipher Madoff's operation. Already, they have discovered multiple sets of books and what appear to be fraudulent documents in his Manhattan offices, raising the question of who prepared them. It may take time before they can say whether he had accomplices.

Investigators have started serving grand jury subpoenas requiring witnesses to testify and seeking documents, according to an official familiar with the case. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, declined to identify who was served or specify what documents were wanted.

The investigation has been unfolding in a Manhattan office that was once Madoff's sanctuary but is now the site of a nonstop hunt for incriminating documents, with boxes of confiscated records stacked in the hallway.

"Every time I go out my office door to go to the ladies' room I've been tripping over FBI agents," said Muriel "Mickie" Siebert, whose namesake brokerage firm shares the 17th floor of the office building.

The investigation is being led by the FBI and Securities and Exchange Commission -- agencies already challenged with unearthing other financial scandals since the Wall Street meltdown.

One potential subject of the inquiry is the role played by Frank DiPascali, a top financial officer at Madoff's investment advisory business.

Several investors, their lawyers and a former Madoff employee who spoke to The Associated Press described DiPascali, of Bridgewater, N.J., as the man who appeared to be most responsible for the day-to-day operations of the business.

When clients had questions about the firm's investment strategy or its performance, DiPascali was the one who got on the phone. If they wanted to add or subtract money from their accounts, DiPascali made the arrangements and distributed the checks.

Authorities haven't publicly accused DiPascali of any wrongdoing. His attorney, Marc Mukasey, on Thursday declined to discuss his client's role or say whether he became aware of the fraud prior to Madoff's arrest.

"We are sitting with our client and reviewing his career at Madoff and his duties and responsibilities," said Mukasey, the son of U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey. "I understand that people are extremely frustrated and upset ... We would love to see people get as much of their money back as possible."

Questions also loom about Madoff's auditor, Friehling & Horowitz, a relatively unknown accountant in the city's northern suburbs who appeared to operate from a one-room office with irregular business hours and a bare-bones staff.

Those audits apparently failed to detect the fraud, which Madoff told investigators was a Ponzi scheme that lost an estimated $50 billion.

The firm's principal, David G. Friehling, has not answered his telephone in days. His attorney, Andrew Lankler, declined to comment Thursday.

Investigators were also expected to look at the potential involvement of several Madoff relatives who worked for his firm, including his brother, two sons and others who worked for his various business entities. His wife has also come under scrutiny.

To date, however, they also have not been formally accused of any wrongdoing.

The law firm representing Madoff's sons, Andrew and Marc, released a statement saying they first learned of the fraud just days ago, when their father tearfully confessed, and immediately turned him in. The two are said to have worked predominantly in another division of their father's company, not in the secretive unit that handled investor money.

By some accounts, Bernard Madoff appeared to take unusual steps to limit the number of people and outside companies that had a hand in running the business.

Much of the recruiting of new investors to his funds was done informally, by friends, or through a group of large, independently managed feeder funds, who also took most of the management fees for handling the investments. They included the Fairfield Greenwich Group, which put all $7.3 billion of its Fairfield Sentry Fund in Madoff's hands.

It was unclear whether authorities were looking to see whether any of those funds, whose investors have emerged as some of Madoff's largest victims, may have been complicit in the scheme. Each has claimed no knowledge that anything was amiss.

Usually, a fund like Madoff's would use an outside brokerage firm to complete its stock trades. In his case, those duties -- if they actually occurred -- were apparently handled in-house.

He appeared not to have hired outside professional services firms to help calculate his performance or to produce electronic data for investors.

"He was still doing it the way you did it in the 1960s, with a paper ticket," said Suzanne Murphy, a hedge fund consultant who had examined Madoff's business two years ago before deciding not to invest in it.

"In most hedge funds, you have many partners in deals, but he was doing everything in a self-contained way," said Jake Walthour, head of advisory services for the due diligence firm Aksia LLC, which also examined Madoff's operation and decided something was wrong.

That lack of partners made it tough to verify that Madoff's business was really achieving good returns. It may also reflect an effort to limit the number of possible accomplices.("Here My Every News I'm providing like Hot syndication" And This sites every Ads also Erotic you May check it!!)

Bush considering 'orderly' auto bankruptcy

White House considering 'orderly' bankruptcy to deal with ailing automakers, Paulson says WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration is looking at "orderly" bankruptcy as a possible way to deal with the desperately ailing U.S. auto industry, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Thursday as carmakers readied more plant closings and a half million new jobless claims underscored the deteriorating national economy.With General Motors, Chrysler and the rest of Detroit anxiously awaiting a White House decision on billions of dollars in emergency federal loans, Paulson said bankruptcy for Detroit automakers should be avoided if possible but that an orderly reorganization may be the best option to keep them from collapsing.

"If the right outcome is reorganization or bankruptcy, then isn't it better to get there through an orderly process?" Paulson said in a speech to a business forum Thursday night in New York.

Paulson said it was too risky to simply let the automakers fail.

"When you look at the size of this industry and look at all those that it touches in terms of suppliers and dealers ... it would seem to be an imprudent risk to take," he said.

President George W. Bush, asked earlier about an auto bailout, said he hadn't decided what he would do but didn't want to leave a mess for Barack Obama who takes office a month from Saturday. A White House decision on helping the troubled automakers could come as early as Friday.

Bush, like Paulson, spoke of the idea of bankruptcies orchestrated by the federal government as a possible way to go -- without committing to it.

"Under normal circumstances, no question bankruptcy court is the best way to work through credit and debt and restructuring," he said during a speech and question-and-answer session at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank. "These aren't normal circumstances. That's the problem."

Paulson said Bush wants to avoid automakers filing for bankruptcy protection but that the No. 1 priority is putting automakers back on a viable path. Part of that effort, he said, would require all sides coming together to make sacrifices to boost competitiveness.

"It's difficult to do such things outside of reorganization. But sometimes that can be successfully done," Paulson said.

White House press secretary Dana Perino addressed the bankruptcy question earlier in the day and emphasized there were still several possible approaches to assisting the automakers, including short-term loans from the Treasury Department's $700 billion Wall Street bailout program.

The Big Three automakers said anew that bankruptcy wasn't the answer, as did an official of the United Auto Workers who called the idea unworkable and even dangerous. GM said a report that it and Chrysler had restarted talks to combine was untrue.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Capitol Hill that grim new unemployment data heightened the urgency for the administration "to prevent the imminent insolvency of the domestic auto industry."

The California Democrat said Bush has the legal authority to act now, and should attach the accountability standards that were included in a $14 billion House-passed and Bush-supported carmaker bailout that died in the Senate last week. That plan would have given the government, through a Bush-appointed "car czar," veto power over major business decisions at any auto company that received federal loans.

Pelosi spoke after the government announced that initial claims for unemployment benefits totaled a seasonally adjusted 554,000 last week.

The comments in Washington came a day after Chrysler LLC announced it was closing all its North American manufacturing plants for at least a month as it, General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. await word on government action. General Motors also has been closing plants, and it and Chrysler have said they might not have enough money to pay their bills in a matter of weeks.

Separately, there were worries that GMAC LLC, which provides financing for GM vehicle and dealer loans along with home mortgages, could be forced to file for bankruptcy itself. GMAC was having trouble finding adequate support from its bondholders for a debt transaction that would allow it to become a bank holding company and gain eligibility for the $700 billion rescue package.

Prices of GM and Ford stocks fell sharply Thursday after the remarks out of the White House. Ford, unlike General Motors and Chrysler, is not seeking billions in federal bailout loans, but a collapse of the other two could hurt Ford as well.

Alan Reuther, the United Auto Workers' legislative director, said the union urged the administration during a meeting this week to follow the provisions included in the House-passed auto aid bill.

"It's our hope that the House bill that was passed is what they will use as a guide, so to speak, when they start releasing funds," UAW President Ron Gettelfinger told WXYZ-TV in Detroit.

Congressional aides in both parties who have been closely following the discussions suggested the talk of bankruptcy could be a tactic to extract more hefty concessions from the companies and union in exchange for granting short-term loans from Treasury's financial industry rescue fund.

Perino said one factor preventing an announcement of action by the administration is that discussions continue with the various sides that would have to sign on to a managed bankruptcy -- entities such as labor and equity holders in addition to the companies themselves.

A senior administration official said the talks between Bush officials and the Big Three and their stakeholders amount to information-gathering, not negotiating.

The White House has repeatedly emphasized its opposition to "disorderly bankruptcy" -- presumably a Chapter 7 filing that would effectively shut down a company and require liquidation of assets. That has left on the table the possibility of forcing one or more automakers into a Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which allows a firm to keep operating while under a court's purview.

Harlan Platt, who teaches corporate turnarounds at Northeastern University in Boston, said the government may be waiting for an offer of an ownership stake in the companies, much as it received in return for capital plowed into banks. "You really have to ask the question: If this is good enough for Wall Street, why isn't it good enough for Detroit?" he said.

On Thursday, spokesmen for Chrysler, GM and Ford generally referred to their previous comments that bankruptcy was not a workable solution. The car companies argue that no one would buy a vehicle from a bankrupt company for fear that the company might not be around to honor warranties.

"We continue to work with the administration to find a solution to this liquidity crisis," said GM spokesman Tony Cervone.

Chrysler spokeswoman Shawn Morgan noted previous statements against bankruptcy by CEO Robert Nardelli. Financing even a prepackaged bankruptcy would be difficult in the current tight credit market, Chrysler has said.

Cerberus Capital Management LP owns 80.1 percent of Chrysler and a 51 percent stake in GMAC. The New York private equity firm has said its investors are composed of pension funds, university endowments and family investors who are limited in the amount of additional money they can provide to Chrysler.

The National Automobile Dealers Association also spoke out against bankruptcy for car companies "in any way shape or form, orderly or disorderly, prepackaged or unpackaged, managed or unmanaged," said spokesman Bailey Wood.

Bush said the auto industry is "obviously very fragile" and he is worried about what an out-and-out collapse without Washington involvement "would do to the psychology" of the markets.

"There still is a lot of uncertainty," he said.

At the same time, the president said anew that he is worried about "putting good money after bad," meaning taxpayer dollars shouldn't be used to prop up companies that can't survive the long term.

He revealed one other consideration -- that Obama will become president in just over a month.

"I thought about what it would be like for me to become president during this period. I believe that good policy is not to dump him a major catastrophe on his first day in office," Bush said.

Associated Press writers Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Ken Thomas in Washington, Tom Krisher and David Goodman in Detroit and Bree Fowler and Stevenson Jacobs in New York contributed to this story.("Here My Every News I'm providing like Hot syndication" And This sites every Ads also Erotic you May check it!!)

Housing starts fall more than expected

Housing starts, building permits fall more than expected in November to record lows

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The construction of new homes plummeted in November by the largest amount in almost a quarter-century as builders slashed production in the face of a recessionary economy.

The Commerce Department said Tuesday that new home starts fell to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 625,000 from a downwardly revised level of 771,000 in October.That is a drop of 18.9 percent, the steepest since March 1984. The total is far below the 740,000 pace that Wall Street economists expected.

Applications for building permits, considered a good sign of future activity, fell by 15.6 percent to 616,000, from an upwardly revised figure of 730,000 in October. Economists expected an annual rate of 700,000 permits, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.

The housing starts and permit figures are at all-time lows, breaking records that were set last month.

Builders continue to be discouraged by the prospects of a housing turnaround amid what's likely to be the worst recession in decades, spurring rising unemployment and foreclosures.

More dour housing news came Monday, as the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo housing market index held at a record-low level of nine in December for the second straight month.

"It is going to be a very cold winter indeed for homebuilders," Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist for forecasting firm MFR Inc., wrote in a note to clients Monday.

Index readings higher than 50 indicate positive sentiment about the market. But the index has drifted below 50 since May 2006 and has been below 20 since April.

Builders began new single-family homes at an annual rate of 441,000 last month, the department said, 16.9 percent below October's figure of 531,000. That is the steepest drop in single-family home starts since January 1991.

Tighter lending standards, rising defaults and fear about the housing market's future have sidelined buyers, an absence felt acutely by homebuilders such as D.R. Horton Inc., Pulte Homes Inc. and Centex Corp.("Here My Every News I'm providing like Hot syndication" And This sites every Ads also Erotic you May check it!!)

Goldman Sachs posts first loss since going public

Goldman loses $2.29 billion during fiscal 4th quarter as value of assets, investments plummet

NEW YORK (AP) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc. on Tuesday reported its first quarterly loss since it went public in 1999, losing $2.29 billion during its fiscal fourth quarter.

The loss proves the turmoil in the financial markets has tripped up even the best-run financial institutions. The New York-based bank has long been considered the premier investment bank on Wall Street, and in recent quarters, the sturdiest bank amid the market turmoil.The venerable Wall Street company lost $4.97 per share in the quarter ended Nov. 30. In the year-ago quarter, Goldman earned $3.17 billion, or $7.01 per share.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters, on average, forecast a loss of $3.73 per share for the latest quarter. Over the past several weeks, analysts sharply slashed their estimates amid ongoing concern about investment losses. Just a month ago, analysts predicted Goldman would lose just 28 cents per share, with some analysts still predicting a quarterly profit.

The investment banking sector was turned on its head in September when Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and Goldman and Morgan Stanley became bank holding companies. Like most banks, Goldman was tripped up by the plunging value of its investments, especially at its principal trading desk.

Goldman reported negative revenue of $4.36 billion in its trading and principal investments unit, which includes its fixed income, equities and principal investments divisions.

Overall, Goldman reported negative revenue of $1.58 billion, compared with revenue of $10.74 billion during the year-ago quarter. Analysts were expected quarterly revenue of $662.8 million.

The principal investments division recorded a net loss of $3.6 billion during the quarter. The division lost $2 billion on corporate investments, $961 million from real estate investments and $631 million tied to the firm's investment in Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.

Negative revenue in the fixed income division totaled $3.4 billion. The weakness was attributed to losses on investments including corporate debt, private and public equities and trading in credit products. The division's losses included $1.3 billion from non-investment-grade credit origination activities and $700 million on commercial mortgage loans and securities.

For the full year, Goldman earned $2.04 billion, or $4.47 per share. Goldman had remained profitable through the beginning of the year, while other financial firms posted huge losses tied to the troubled housing and credit markets.

Shares of Goldman rose $2.42, or 3.6 percent, to $68.88 in premarket trading. Goldman shares traded as high as $71.45 earlier in the morning.("Here My Every News I'm providing like Hot syndication" And This sites every Ads also Erotic you May check it!!)