Morning Economic News - November 25, 2008

Asian stock markets were up Tuesday, but US stock market futures are down (less than 1%) and European markets opened weak. The dollar is up against the Canadian dollar, euro, pound and most major currencies except the yen and the Korean won. Oil is down more than 2.5% from the Monday New York close. [4:15 AM Eastern]

Existing Home Sales - October 2008

• Total Existing Home Sales Annual Rate: 4.98 million


• Monthly Change: Down 3.1%


• Year-to-year Change: Down 1.6%

Australian Leading Index suffers first drop in 7 months

Australia’s Leading Index gave back three-fourths of its August gain
with a 0.3% drop in September, while the Coincident Index was
unchanged. This was the first decline in the Leading Index for
Australia in 7 months and with 3 of the 7 leading indicators improving
Australia has some decent underlying strength in its economic picture.

Mexican Leading Index falls hard - again

Mexico’s leading indicators fell 1.9% in September after falling 0.9% in August,
while the Coincident Index was unchanged after a 0.2% drop in August.
All 6 leading indicators and 2 of the 3 coincident indicators dropped
in September.

New Facility Targets Consumer Lending

Paulson plans to announce a program to increase the availability of auto loans, student loans and credit cards.

Russia Allows Ruble to Weaken

Russia allowed the ruble to shed 1% of its value,
bolstering expectations it will conduct a staged weakening rather than
a one-off devaluation.

Obama Says U.S. Could Lose `Millions' of Jobs in 2009 Without Bold Action President-elect Barack Obama warned
that the U.S. is “trapped in a vicious cycle” and faces the
loss of “millions of jobs” unless immediate steps are taken to
stimulate the economy and to rescue the nation’s automakers.

Citigroup Bailout Charts New U.S. Course for Rescues, Adding Taxpayer Risk The U.S. government’s emergency
rescue of Citigroup Inc. offers a new model for bank bailouts:
explicitly insuring against losses on toxic assets, with
taxpayers footing the bill.

Paulson, Bernanke Said to Unveil New Plan to Shore Up Consumer Financing The U.S. Treasury and Federal
Reserve will unveil as soon as today a lending program to shore
up the consumer-finance market, using money from the
government’s $700 billion rescue, two people familiar with the
effort said.

Consumer Confidence in Germany Unexpectedly Rises on Declining Oil Price German consumer confidence
unexpectedly rose for a third month, defying the recession.

French Business Confidence Drops to 15-Year Low as Europe Enters Recession French business confidence fell to the
lowest in more than 15 years in November as the euro-region
economy slipped into a recession.

China Should Shift Focus From Exports to Domestic Demand, World Bank Says China should do more to rebalance
its economy from investment, exports and industry to
consumption and services as it rolls out a $586 billion
stimulus package, the World Bank said.

Geithner Struggled to Rally Action After Spotting Dangers of Default Swaps Timothy Geithner was among the first
policy makers to shine a light on the unregulated $47 trillion
credit-default swap market back in 2005. The New York Federal
Reserve president has struggled since then to get dealers to
carry out reforms.

Brown Takes U.K. `Back to the 70s' With Plans to Tax Rich, Increase Debt Prime Minister Gordon Brown swept
aside three decades of economic orthodoxy with tax increases on
the rich and plans that will double Britain’s national debt.

Panama Sept economic activity up 8.24 pct yr/yr

US existing home sales fall, buyers sidelined