Employment Data Guidance on Consumer Strength

This week, investors will focus on employment data that will offer information on households’ ability to support modestly increased consumption. Tepid wage gains and dreary consumer confidence data indicates that households will find it difficult to boost spending, which increased at a 0.7 percent in the second quarter of 2011. Read More...

Euro-Area Inflation & ECB Crisis Management

The acceleration in euro-area headline inflation in September is unlikely to stop the European Central Bank from cutting its key policy rate by the end of the year, though a reduction this week appears unlikely. Read More...

Oil Sands Production Needs Global Climate Attention

President Barack Obama must decide before the end of the year whether to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, which would ferry oil sands crude from Alberta, Canada to Texas. The decision has provoked debate in the U.S. about future greenhouse gas policies. Marc Huot, an analyst with the Pembina Institute’s Oilsands Program in Alberta, tells Siobhan Wagner of Bloomberg New Energy Finance that emissions from oil sands production will make it tougher for Canada to meet its climate targets. Read More...

The Need to Balance Between Sovereign, Other Debt

Santiago Carbo-Valverde, a professor of economics and finance at the University of Granada in Spain, told Dana Wilkie that regulators need to rethink the role of “risk-free” bank assets, because they are “no longer risk-free.” Read More...

Over The Hedge

John Paulson, Stanley Druckenmiller, Philip Falcone and Paul Arrouet were among attendees at last week’s world premiere of “Ocean’s Kingdom” at the David H. Koch Theater at New York’s Lincoln Center. Paul McCartney wrote the cinematic music and libretto, his first for a ballet. After the Sept. 22 performance everyone headed into a tent behind the theater for a pasta supper to be worked off on the dance floor. “This is a very nice night,” said Paulson. The event raised $4 million for New York City Ballet. Read More...

Hovnanian Default Odds Soar After Swap Offer

Investors are wagering an effort by Hovnanian Enterprises to slash interest payments by almost 10 percentage points on as much as $220 million of bonds won’t spare it from default. CDS tied to Hovnanian debt imply 90 percent odds the company will default within five years, up from 86 percent before its announcement on Sept. 28, according to CMA. The company is offering to exchange senior unsecured notes with coupons as high as 11.875 percent and maturities from 2014 for 2 percent senior secured bonds due 2021. Read More...

Oracle Counters Autonomy CEO’s Denial

The dispute over Oracle Corp.’s claim that it was offered Autonomy Corp. before the company’s acquisition by Hewlett-Packard Co. could have gone down as a he-said/ he-said account, except for those PowerPoint slides. Oracle posted a 14-page presentation by Frank Quattrone’s Qatalyst Partners LLC to prove it was offered a chance to buy Autonomy before Hewlett-Packard made its deal. Autonomy CEO Michael Lynch has denied that his Cambridge, England-based company was shopped to Oracle. Read More...

Time Running Out on Muni Default Prediction

Time is running out for Meredith Whitney’s municipal-market default prediction to come true. Defaults fell 60 percent in the first half of 2011 compared with the same period last year, including a $12.5 million Austin, Texas, apartment project that made a late payment in June, according to Distressed Debt Securities Newsletter. Read More...

Option Traders Don’t Expect European Bank Bailout

European bank shareholders aren’t likely to get government bailouts in the event of a bank collapse, equity option skews suggest. Read More...

Colby Wright on the Pricing Mystery of ETNs

Colby Wright, assistant professor of finance at Central Michigan University, discusses his academic work on exchangetraded notes, including examining the “price puzzle” of indicative versus market value of the securities. Wright spoke with Matt Robinson in a telephone interview on Sept. 19. Read More...

Slower-than-expected economic growth likely will force many companies to restructure their balance sheets and much of that will be done outside of a bankruptcy court, according to Ken Buckfire, chief executive of Miller Buckfire, and Harvey Golub, the restructuring firm’s chairman. Read More...