Stock Preacher

Fox Business Network has turned to a provocative talk radio veteran to boost ratings and advertising revenues two years after Rupert Murdoch launched his challenge to CNBC and Bloomberg Television. The US financial channel, launched by News Corp in October 2007, yesterday confirmed it would simulcast Don Imus’s syndicated radio show between 6 am and 9 am from October 5. The decision will hand a crucial period for earnings announcements and the build-up to the New York market opening to a presenter with a national following but no record of business coverage. Fox Business said the show would incorporate more business news into its format, with appearances from the hosts of the channel’s 5 am-6 am broadcast. “His 40 years of on-air experience combined with his superb interviewing skills and capitalist sensibilities will be a great addition to our line-up,” Kevin Magee, executive vice-president of Fox Business, said in a statement.

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US President Barack Obama has Rock Star appeal among the investing class, except in the USA. The Quarterly Bloomberg Global Poll of financial investors and analysts finds attitudes about the new president in Asia and Europe are overwhelmingly positive. In the US, by contrast, they are slightly negative. In Europe and Asia, 87% of respondents say they view Obama positively, compared with just 49% in the US. His standing among American investors is even lower on economic matters: only a quarter of US poll respondents rate his economic policies as “good” or “excellent,” compared with more than half in Europe and Asia. President Obama’s “stratospheric favorability ratings” outside the US after five months in office are related to attitudes about his predecessor, former President George W. Bush. “It speaks as much to the visceral distaste for George Bush outside of the US,” she says. In Europe and Asia, more than four of five poll respondents choose Obama over Bush as the president offering better economic leadership. In the US, investors pick Bush, 43% to 41%.

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China’s stocks rose again last week driving the benchmark index to a fourth monthly advance, after Tsingtao Brewery Co. reported higher profit and copper prices jumped. “With the economy in recovery, we will see a turnaround in corporate earnings,” said Li Jun, a strategist at Central China Securities Holdings Co. in Shanghai. Still, he only expects a pick up in profits in the fourth quarter. The Shanghai Composite Index which tracks the bigger of China’s exchanges rose 7.75, or 0.3%, to 2,475.94. The measure added 4.4% in April, as record new lending and expectation that growth will be revived drove up share prices. The Shanghai Composite has jumped 36% so far in 2009; it is the 2nd best performer among 90 global gauges tracked by Bloomberg. The measure has advanced on optimism a 4 trillion Yuan (US$585B) stimulus package and record new loans will prevent a slump in the world’s 3rd largest economy.

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The financial crisis will be harder to end than the Great Depression and may force banks to be nationalized, “Black Swan” author Nassim Nicholas Taleb said. A more complex financial system makes the current problems, which cut global stock market value by 55% to US$28T since October 2007, worse than the contraction in the 1930s, Taleb said in a Bloomberg Television interview today.

Bonuses paid on Wall Street encouraged risk taking with no regard for losses, he added. Rare and unforeseen events are known as “Black Swans,” after Taleb’s 2007 book, “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.” The financial crisis isn’t one, he said. “The “black swan” for me would be for us to emerge out of this unscathed and return to normalcy,” Taleb said.

Compared with the Great Depression, this crisis is “very different, and it requires much more drastic action.” Taleb’s book was published in May 2007, about three months before the credit crunch led banks to announce write downs and credit losses that now total more than US$1T

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The world’s largest money managers say China’s steepest monthly stock gain in more than a year shows the fastest-growing major economy will avert a recession. The Shanghai Composite Index is the broadest measure of shares traded on the Mainland posted a 9.3% gain in January, the best among the world’s 10 biggest markets. Last year, the index fell 65 percent, the worst since at least 1996, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Chinese shares rebounded after the central bank lowered interest rates five times since September and the government announced a US$585B stimulus plan. China’s economy is expected to grow near 8% this year even after expanding 6.8% in Y 2008 Q-4, the slowest pace since December 2001. China’s central government is pressuring state owned banks to increase lending as it unveiled the 4 trillion yuan stimulus package, reduced export taxes and agreed to provide support for 10 industries, through tax cuts and subsidies for steel and autos.

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The Federal Reserve may today reduce its main interest rate to the lowest level on record and prepare for one of the boldest experiments in its 94-year history: using its balance sheet as the key tool for monetary policy. The FOMC is likely to cut its benchmark rate in half, to 0.5%, according to forecasts in a Bloomberg survey. The central bank may also signal plans to channel credit to businesses and consumers by further enlarging its $2.26 trillion of assets.

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