Watch Your Fannie

Fannie Mae is asking for $16 billion more in federal support, tapping into a fund of $200 billion set up for it and Freddie Mac. Compared to Freddie, that needed $35 billion, this looks good, but it is more than was expected. Taxpayers, keep those checkbooks open.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aInEyfSmcbQ8&refer=home

http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/01/fannie-to-ask-for-up-to-16-billion.html

Disclosures: My sister works for Fannie Mae.

Profits Down 72% - Stock Price Up 7.2% - Nice Symmetry There

Only in this economy can a company report these dismal results and have a nice bounce. All this while it, American Express, is noting this is the "harshest operating environment in decades." Yes, it is better than the worst predictions. And American Express is cutting 7,000 jobs. Just one of many - and I mean many - job cuts annonced today.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601110&sid=aveoSCEM48_I

CNN reports that over 70,000 job cuts were announced today, and those are just the ones that got some press. Just a staggering number. Let me put this into perspective. Obama has talked about his stimulus spending being aimed at creating three million jobs this year. At today's pace of layoffs, Obama's plan would only offset about six weeks of layoffs. But the good news is that I consider this to be largely a January issue.

It looks like a host of companies tried to hold on as best they could through the end of 2008 but they are now looking at their year end numbers and taking on some necessary painful cuts. Undoubtedly a necessary move, but never one a company wants to take. I say this from two perspectives. Perspective one is the people that are being let go. They will go through a good bit of pain and turmoil and no one wants to put any family through that. The other perspective is as a business that is shedding employees they undoubtedly spent some time, perhaps years, training. There are costs associated with letting them go and more costs in replacing them if the economy rebounds. Not a happy result for employer or employee.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/26/news/economy/job_cuts/?postversion=2009012613

And after all this cheery news, I am happy to report tha Asian markets are celebrating.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aJMiYkzPS5Yk&refer=home

Part of their celebration is due to U.S. sales of existing homes climbing 6.5% last month. Now that is definitely cause for celebration. Yes, this ox(as in the year of) is raising his head. Though I must note that there is a slightly different, and more problematic, view of housing worth noting.

http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/01/existing-home-sales-nsa.html

Oh, this really looks promising right now.

Disclosures: None.