Unemployment benefits will now be extended to 79 weeks!
The Senate approved a measure to extend the current benefit program by another 33% and, in a bid to aid the property market, the bill would also extend for five months a tax credit for homebuyers, AND expand it beyond first-time purchasers. There will ALSO be a new tax break for businesses would give large companies bigger refunds to make up for recent losses. Specifically, it would let large firms claim cash refunds on taxes they paid going back nearly five years. Will extending the unemployment checks currently being collected by 6M people save Christmas? Will GS et al now claim losses to get back the tax money they paid in ‘05, ‘06 and ‘07?
This is a very strealthy and MASSIVE infusion of bailout capital and It is certainly saving the markets today as we bottomed out in the futures at 4am with our indexes all soundly below yesterday’s lows, 560 on the Russell, 1,038 on the S&P 2,040 on the Nas and 9,725 on the Dow… Asian markets put us in a bad mood as the Hang Seng once again had trouble with the 21,475 line we discussed in yesterday’s post and they finished the day at 21,479, failing the critical 21,500 mark that was their October break-out. Pathetic as that was, it was nothing compared to Japan’s AWFUL 1.3% drop to 9,717, also failing their October break-out and looking weaker by the day despite the BOJ keeping the dollar above 90 Yen.
The FTSE dropped off a cliff this morning after our very erratic US performance yesterday but the BOE pulled a “stick save” by keeping their rate at 0.5% and tossing another 25 Billion Pounds of stimulus on the fire ($41Bn) . The U.K. central bank’s extension of its program of buying government securities with freshly printed money to £200 billion was widely forecast by economists. Seventeen out of the 20 analysts polled by Dow Jones Newswires last week tipped an increase, although they were divided over the likely amount. The move by the Bank of England to continue showering money on the U.K.’s troubled economy comes as other countries are considering dialing back emergency relief measures.
We have Retail Sales Reports drifting in this morning and another 500,000 job losses will be reported at 8:30, which should keep the remaining workers (almost 90% of the people who haven’t given up on the workforce entirely) scared enough to give us some…
