Merrill Lynch's CEO: Has No Plan To Raise More Capital

Merrill Lynch has already raised more capital than it has lost, according to John Thain, Merrill's CEO. He claimed in a briefing in Tokyo that the US investment bank has been shrinking, but no layoffs announced yet. While Merrill's CEO seemed to be negative about the flow of the business, Dell's CEO is seeing positive return of investment this year.



A shrinking of Merrill's balance sheet will continue, he added at a briefing in Tokyo.

Merrill, which has so far written down $24 billion worth of investments related to the troubled U.S. mortgage market, has no need to raise fresh capital, Thain said in an interview last week.

Thain also told Japan's Nikkei business daily that he has no plans to sell the company, or merge it with another bank.

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"US is sliding into recession since December," says Economic Bureau Head

The President of the National Bureau of Economic Research believed that US Economic has been falling into a recession since December. Martin Feldstein, in an interview, claimed that the current US economic downturn could live longer and deeper than previous recessions.




“And indeed it runs the risk that those checks will go to paying down credit card debts and other kinds of debts, building up liquidity as people prepare themselves for possible hard times ahead.”

Although the Fed is injecting liquidity into the markets, Feldstein said, they are not dealing with the fundamental issue: the excess of negative equity mortgages.

“They’re providing a little bit of liquidity, but they’re not dealing with the fundamental problem of this wave of potential defaults on mortgages which we’re yet to see, but which I think will become a reality as house prices continue to come down.”

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US Economic downturn makes the biggest jobs drop

If you are a simple employee in the US, you might be one of the thousands employees who lost their jobs because of the near-recession in the US. In March alone, almost, 80,000 employees have lost their jobs. The U.S Labor Department estimated the unemployment rate escalated to 5.1% from 4.8% last month. Despite reports of job cuts, US stockmarket is reportedly gain a slight.....

"Finance and accounting, IT, engineering, scientific, legal -- all have gone from very strong growth in 2007 to flat or even strong declines" in the first three months of this year, Mr. Gilliam said. He said clients of Adecco -- the third-largest U.S. employer after Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and the U.S. Postal Service -- are still hiring, but he expects the unemployment rate to rise to 5.5% by the year's end.

The labor-market weakness hit some industries that had been holding up fairly well. Employment in services rose by 13,000 jobs in March, but the gain was all in government work; private service-sector jobs declined by 5,000. Business and professional-services companies shed 35,000 jobs, while financial firms lost jobs for the eighth straight month. Retail lost 12,400 jobs.

Temporary employment, which economists consider a leading indicator of job trends, dropped by more than 21,000 last month.

Manufacturing firms, which have cut jobs every month for almost two years, shed 48,000 jobs. Automobile employment fell by 24,000, as a strike at American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings Inc., a car-parts supplier in Detroit, compounded the woes in the auto industry. Construction employment posted its ninth straight drop.

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Bear Stearns: collapsed in just one devastating day?

2008 is an unfortunate year for the Bear Stearns. Its collapsed had alarmed all financial sectors all over the world. Was it the beginning of the US recession? Investors are the most affected individuals in this issue. Though, some analysts claimed that it was a good time to invest in a stock market. Yet, some are still hesistant to adventurously invest in a not-so-sure undertakings. Because, even the chairman of the Federal Reserve has almost admitted the economic fall of US. It seemed that Bear Stearns was just instrumental to the economic collapse of America.

Fed Chairman Bernanke opened the testimony with a grim picture of the current financial situation. “Although the situation has recently improved somewhat,” he said, “financial markets remain under considerable stress. Pressures in short-term funding markets, which had abated somewhat beginning late last year, have increased once again.

“Many lenders have been reluctant to provide credit to counterparties, especially leveraged investors, and increased the amount of collateral they required to back short-term security financing agreements. To meet those demands, investors have reduced their leverage and liquidated holdings of securities, putting further downward pressure on security prices.

“Credit availability has also been restricted because some large financial institutions, including some commercial and investment banks and the government-sponsored enterprises, have reported substantial losses and write-downs, reducing their capital available to support increased lending. Some key securitization markets, including those for nonconforming mortgages, continued to function poorly, if at all.”

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Bernanke claims recession is possible.

Even the Chairman of Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke is losing hope to revive the ailing economy of United States, despite the recently argued econmic overhaul pan. He even forecast that a recession is possible as the US economy is expected to shrink in the fiest half of the year.

As a result, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell four-tenths of a percent, ending at 12-thousand-609. The NASDAQ lost just under one-tenth of a percent, closing at two-thousand-361. And the S-and-P 500 dropped two-tenths of a percent, closing at one-thousand-368.

It's the closest the nation's central bank chief has come to proclaiming a recession.

"Overall, the near-term economic outlook has weakened relative to the projections released by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) at the end of January. It now appears likely that real gross domestic product (GDP) will not grow much, if at all, over the first half of 2008 and could even contract slightly," he said.

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BAY AREA could possibly lose global competitive edge

The Bay area will continue to be the magnet of the world's largest company but it may lose its global competitive edge due to the tremendous financial crisis the global market is facing. This was the gist of the report being made and released by Mckinley & Co. and the Bay Area Council. The study found out that there has still been concentration od massive talents, capital and innovations, but there should also have improvement of educational system and infrastracture. It also said that some countries are now grabbing their shares despite global financial crisis.

"We're in a world in which talent can flow wherever it wants to go," said McKinsey director and BAC chairman Lenny Mendonca, who is visiting Singapore. "There are very attractive opportunities in India, China, the Philippines and Singapore, and we are more at risk of losing our talen