FLASH: Apple Announces a Dividend and a Buyback Program

$11 per share and a $45 billion buy back program…

“On January 25th we got word from the Fed that ZIRP would be extended until at least 2014. Bernanke’s guarantee of another two years of cheap-cheap money has lifted the market’s animal spirits. Since the Fed announcement (33 trading days), the S&P got a 7% lift. But that’s not the measure of Ben’s success. I’m seeing it in deal flow:

*There have been 29 IPO’s that raised $3.3B

*Another 35 deals got inked for secondary issuance of common, preferred and/or convertible stock totaling $3.7B

*The visible calendar for both IPOs and secondaries is big. $4.3B is registered for sale; another boatload of paper wants to get sold on top of that.

*The High Yield market blew out $70B of paper.

*Leveraged loan activity has totaled $75B.

I want to focus on six deals ….”

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Related article: 50% of Investors Think The Fed is too Loose

Never yielding Hussman cries another bearish call…

Not surprising if the tale becomes truth….

I shall not ride an Airbus….

With lower margins Starbucks will try to create a new fresh look selling juice without the gin….

“Media report says fire hit parts supplier

* Sorento, Santa Fe SUVs could see production losses -analyst

* Kia says sees little impact on sales

SEOUL, March 19 (Reuters) – South Korean carmaker Kia Motors said on Monday that it would suspend production at its U.S. plant on Monday and Tuesday, after media reported said a fire broke out at a parts supplier.

The news sent shares in Kia and parent Hyundai Motor down on concerns about possible output disruptions.

Kia’s U.S. plant in Georgia, with an annual production capacity of 300,000 vehicles, produces the Optima sedan, the Sorento SUV and Hyundai Motor’s Santa Fe SUV.

A South Korean media report said on Monday that a fire had struck a Georgia factory operated by Daehan Solution, an unlisted South Korean parts supplier for Kia. An official at Daehan Solution declined to comment…”

Full article

“There was disheartening news last week regarding the way the U.S. financial system operates. I’m not referring to the opinion piece by a departing Goldman Sachs Group Inc. employee, which suggested that the company has little respect for its customers.

If you have a complex derivatives transaction in place with Goldman — or any other big Wall Street firm — and you didn’t know they thought of you as a malleable “muppet,” it may be time to replace your chief financial officer.

Anyone who thinks this kind of hubris is new should read Frank Partnoy’s inside account, “F.I.A.S.C.O.,” published in 1999. Wall Street became a more aggressive and risk-loving place when trading increased as a line of business, but this happened way back in the 1980s by most accounts.

The truly dreadful news last week was conveyed in the resultsof the Federal Reserve’s latest bank stress tests. As presented by the Fed, most of the news was good. Some large financial institutions were judged likely to have sufficient equity capital even if the U.S. economy were to experience a significant downturn. With that, banks such as JPMorgan Chase & Co. were allowed to increase their dividends and buy back shares. Naturally, bank stocks rallied.

Economic Uncertainty

But there’s a problem, and it’s not a small one. If you buy the Fed’s view of what is likely to constitute stress, there is some justification for its action. Even then, you should ask the question that Anat Admati, a Stanford University finance professor, has been pressing: Why would we let banks reduce their capital in the face of so much financial and economic uncertainty around the world? If you leave shareholder equity on bank balance sheets, it still belongs to shareholders. Let it stay there as loss-absorbing capital in case the world turns nasty again.

Reducing bank capital, according to Admati and her colleagues, doesn’t help the economy. Bankers like lower capital levels because their pay is based on return-on-capital unadjusted for risk. Shareholders are willing to go along either because they don’t understand the risks of thinly capitalized and therefore highly leveraged businesses, or they expect to share in the downside protection that will be provided by the government.

Make no mistake: Lower equity at big banks means higher expected losses for taxpayers down the road. Don’t let anyone fool you into thinking that banking crises are costless. The disaster of 2008 caused about a 50 percent increase in U.S. debt relative to gross domestic product — the second largest shock to the country’s balance sheet after World War II. (The details of this calculation and a broader perspective on today’s fiscal risks are in my new book with James Kwak, “White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why It Matters to You,” which will be published April 3.)…”

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“Apple Inc. (AAPL), which plans to discuss its $97.6 billion in cash and investments in a conference call today, is likely to announce a dividend, according to analysts’ predictions and data compiled by Bloomberg.

Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook and Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer will host the call, scheduled for 9 a.m. New York time, Cupertino, California-based Apple said in a statement yesterday. The company didn’t elaborate on its plans, and said it won’t discuss topics besides cash….”

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“Not since 1999 have currency traders been bullish on the dollar for so long, a sign that the market sees the U.S. resuming its role as the engine of global economic growth.

Futures anticipating a stronger dollar against its developed-market peers have outnumbered those predicting a drop for 26 consecutive weeks through the five days ended March 13, according to Commodity Futures Trading Commission data. That’s the longest streak since the start of a three-year rally in the world’s reserve currency 13 years ago.

While much of the 2.4 percent gain in the Dollar Index since 2009 has come from investors seeking safety from European debt turmoil and the global financial crisis, analysts now say expansion is trumping fear as a reason for buying U.S. assets. Growth in retail sales and jobs in the world’s biggest economy has damped expectations for more Federal Reserve stimulus that might debase the currency….”

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United Parcel Service Inc. (UPS) raised its offer for TNT Express NV (TNTE) by 5.6 percent to 5.16 billion euros ($6.8 billion) to secure the biggest deal in the U.S. company’s 105-year history and challenge Deutsche Post AG.

UPS will pay 9.50 euros a share in cash for the region’s second-largest express delivery company, up from a bid last month of 9 euros per share and 54 percent higher than the closing price Feb. 16, the day before the talks were made public, the companies said in a joint statement today.

Full article

WTI is trading around the flat line…currently up a nickel @ $107.11

“China’s stocks rose, driving the benchmark index to a one-week high, after International Monetary Fund official Zhu Min said China will avoid an economic hard- landing as investment remains strong.

Kingdream Public Ltd. (000825), whose businesses include gas distribution, jumped 10 percent after the government said it will boost development of the shale gas industry. Inner Mongolia Baotou Steel Rare-Earth Hi-Tech Co. advanced 4.3 percent, pacing a rally for producers of rare earth. China Vanke Co. (000002) and Poly Real Estate Group Co. led property developers to the biggest decline among industry groups in the Shanghai Composite Index after home prices posted the worst performance in a year.

“The government has the tools to offset a decline in economic growth such as monetary policy or measures targeting specific industries,” said Wu Kan, a Shanghai-based fund manager at Dazhong Insurance Co., which oversees $285 million. “The property market is still the biggest risk the economy is facing now.”

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Final pricing will come later in the day, but sellers may have to pay 78.25 cents on the Euro….

Asia

Europe

Futures

Currencies

Commodities

LIBOR, EURIBOR, 10 year yields for Italy, Spain, France, and Germany

Gary Stix

Almost six years ago, I was the editor of a single-topic issue on energy for Scientific American that included an article by Princeton University’s Robert Socolow that set out a well-reasoned plan for how to keep atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations below a planet-livable threshold of 560 ppm. The issue came replete with technical solutions that ranged from a hydrogen economy to space-based solar.

If I had it to do over, I’d approach the issue planning differently, my fellow editors permitting. I would scale back on the nuclear fusion and clean coal, instead devoting at least half of the available space for feature articles on psychology, sociology, economics and political science. Since doing that issue, I’ve come to the conclusion that the technical details are the easy part. It’s the social engineering that’s the killer. Moon shots and Manhattan Projects are child’s play compared to needed changes in the way we behave.

A policy article authored by several dozen scientists appeared online March 15 in Science to acknowledge this point: “Human societies must now change course and steer away from critical tipping points in the Earth system that might lead to rapid and irreversible change. This requires fundamental reorientation and restructuring of national and international institutions toward more effective Earth system governance and planetary stewardship.”

The report summarized 10 years of research evaluating the capability of international institutions to deal with climate and other environmental issues, an assessment that found existing capabilities to effect change sorely lacking. The authors called for a “constitutional moment” at the upcoming 2012 U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio in June to reform world politics and government. Among the proposals: a call to replace the largely ineffective U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development with a council that reports to the U.N. General Assembly, at attempt to better handle emerging issues related to water, climate, energy and food security. The report advocates a similar revamping of other international environmental institutions.

Unfortunately, far more is needed. To be effective, a new set of institutions would have to be imbued with heavy-handed, transnational enforcement powers.

Read the rest here.

When the agents of totalitarianism come to crush you, they will do it not with tanks and guns but with electric meters and bike paths.

And your plight, according to that view, will be the work of a United Nations plot for world domination called Agenda 21.

Tea party members and others concerned about Agenda 21 are increasingly popping up at local government meetings to rail against proposals they see as part of the plot.

Among the measures they have tied to Agenda 21: growth plans for Chesterfield and Mathews counties; concerns about rising sea levels along the Middle Peninsula; the Chesapeake Bay cleanup; open-land protections; modern electric meters in homes; and things such as bike paths that are labeled “smart growth” or “sustainable development.”

“It is a methodology that has been devised to promote control over resources, the environment and ultimately, people,” said Andrew Maggard, a Mathews retiree and avid battler against Agenda 21.

In addition to tea party activists, those opposing Agenda 21 include the John Birch Society, GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich and the Republican National Committee.

Professional planners and others who have looked into Agenda 21 say the alleged plot is a nonsensical conspiracy theory stemming from long-held fears that the U.N. is bent on ruling the planet under a world government.

“The fact that local governments believe in things like smart growth, livable communities and planning for climate change … doesn’t mean that local governments are part of a nefarious U.N. plot to take over land-use decisions,” said Noah M. Sachs, a University of Richmond law professor and environmental expert.

Agenda 21 — the term means an agenda for the 21st century — is a nonbinding set of U.N. guidelines for protecting the environment, Sachs said. It was ratified in 1992 by more than 170 governments, including the U.S. during the first Bush administration.

“Agenda 21 has been a dead letter for 20 years,” Sachs said. “Its recommendations have not been implemented by most governments, and the U.S. has largely ignored it.”

Read the rest here.

Cap and trade programs to reduce emissions do not inherently provide incentives to induce the private sector to develop innovative technologies to address climate change, according to a new study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

According to a press release just issued, we’ll all find out about “the outcome of the Company’s discussions” tomorrow on a conference call with CEO Tim Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer at 9AM ET. What does $100 billion or so of iMac, Macbook, iPhone and iPad money buy? Speculation has already included dividends for investors, a spending spree of acquisitions or even a dip into philanthropy.

Source

The giant bond fund PIMCO said Europe has not yet tamed its debt crisis and will soon face a “second Greece” in Portugal as the country’s economy spirals downwards.