"Economists are pessimists: they've predicted 8 of the last 3 depressions."
--Barry Asmus

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Tuesday, January 18, 2011

News You Can Use

Remember all the excitement about the private placement sale of Facebook shares?  Well, under regulatory and media scrutiny, Goldman Sachs has decided to limit the private placement to shareholders outside the United States.  Goldman is denying that this is due to any regulatory requirement by the SEC, but former SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt points out that "it conceivably could be argued that Goldman was benefiting from a general solicitation, via news reports of its efforts on behalf of Facebook," something that is not allowed for private placements.
 
Citibank missed expectations for Q4.  They announced $0.04/share profits for the quarter;  not bad, given that they lost $0.33/share for Q4 2009, but still missing the $0.08/share analysts were expecting to see.  Amongst other problems their fixed-income revenue is down 56% and securities and trading revenues are down 6%.  Also, they had to take a $1.1 billion hit to revenues because of their overall liabilities.
 
Responding to (most recently) Treasury Secretary Geithner's comments about China and it's monetary policy, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said "A great many factors have proven that the renminbi's[1] exchange rate policy is not the main cause of the China-US trade imbalance."[2]  The commentary is the latest Chinese response ahead of Chinese President Hu Jintao's Tuesday visit to the United States, where he will be landing to a group of US Senators (led by Senator Charles Schumer) who are trying to pass legislation designed to "punish" China for not allowing its currency to rise in value.
 
[1]  Another name for the yuan..
{2]  Being diplomatic, he didn't add "so stop whining".

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