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RBS chief credit strategist and uber-bear Bob Janjuah tells clients to take profits and get ready for another storm. "Ask yourself this: who bails out Government after they have bailed out everyone?"

Um, the fed, who else? Start the printing presses!

James Kwak puzzles over the scant attention afforded ratings agencies - who played an intricate role in the breakdown - in the regulatory overhaul.

This article does not mention Rating Agencies.

Microsoft's (MSFT) Bing momentum continues through week-two since the launch, with U.S. search penetration up 0.9 percentage points to 16.7% - from 13.7% pre-Bing. Its share of search result pages also climbed 0.9 points to 12.1%, vs. 9.1% two weeks ago. (comScore) Meanwhile, shares of MSFT are +12.2% since June 1.

If you read the reviews, or try it, Bing is just as good as google and may be a bit more pleasant to the eye. With a huge advertising campaign behind them, they are likely to get a nice bump.

Most OS's or 'google-integrated' devices give you a choice of Yahoo or Google, not hard to add Bing if it gets popular.

S&P downgrades 18 U.S. banks, and rates five of them in junk territory, noting conditions 'will become less favorable' with greater volatility and tighter regulations. Among the losers: COF -2.5%. WFC -4.3%. FITB -6.4%.

NEW YORK (Standard & Poor's) June 17, 2009--Standard & Poor's Ratings Services said today that it lowered its ratings and revised its outlooks on 22 rated U.S. banks. The actions reflect our belief that operating conditions for the industry will become less favorable than they were in the past, characterized by greater volatility in financial markets during credit cycles, and tighter
regulatory supervision. The changes also reflect our ongoing broad-ranging reassessment of industry risk for U.S. financial institutions (see "How The Credit-Market Crisis Is Changing The World Of Banking," published Nov. 25, 2008, on RatingsDirect).
Our overall assessment of the U.S. banking industry incorporates the following key points: The industry is now in a transition and will likely undergo material structural changes; the loss content of loan portfolios should increase, but recent capital rebuilding should help banks defray these losses; stress tests point to more pain in the future; we don't view regional banks as being highly systemically important; and potential losses could
increase beyond our current expectations.
"We believe the banking industry is undergoing a structural
transformation that may include radical changes with permanent repercussions," said Standard & Poor's credit analyst Rodrigo Quintanilla. "Financial institutions are now shedding balance-sheet risk and altering funding profiles and strategies for the marketplace's new reality. Such a transition period
justifies lower ratings as industry players implement changes." Possiblechanges include increased regulatory oversight and lower profitability.
In addition, we reassessed the relative creditworthiness of many
institutions based on their abilities to deal with the increased risks during this transition period. "We believe some firms may be better able to weather the risks ahead than others," Mr. Quintanilla added. "In the long term, we could foresee ourselves raising ratings if lower earnings and reduced risk are accompanied by stronger risk-adjusted capital and effective governance."
As a result of the downgrades this week, as well as those since mid-2007, the counterparty ratings on U.S. banks (at the operating subsidiary level) have fallen by an average of two notches, to 'BBB+' today from 'A' before the crisis began in June 2007. However, said Mr. Quintanilla, "the high number of firms with negative outlooks suggests that the ratings could still decline if
the credit cycle is longer and/or deeper."
Standard & Poor's will hold a teleconference on Thursday, June 18, to discuss these rating actions. The dial-in numbers are 1-210-795-0624 for the U.S. and other locations, and 44-20-7108-6390 for the U.K. The conference ID is 4437303, and the passcode is SANDP.

More than anyone else, Ben Bernanke saved the U.S. from a second Great Depression, Jim Cramer says. "Bernanke learned the lessons of history and refused to let it repeat itself. Bernanke once seemed Lilliputian compared to Greenspan. Now their statures have been reversed."

I guess everyone forgot Big Ben touting our "Great Moderation" era from 2005-2007.

Why 'Bing'? Why Not 'Sift'?

As steve explained yesterday, you have to make sure "Bing" isn't an expletive in the 20+ countries you're going to be in, and make sure you can get those addresses, and etc. Bing isn't great but it's good - it's not like google sounded great when that started.

GM (GM) bondholders accept amended debt-for-equity offer. ((CNBC)) Details to follow. Stock halted at $3.11, up 170%. Maybe this is why it wasn't trading at $0.00 yesterday?

I say 170% is a poor return for an investment that had a 90% chance of being worth 0.

While national chain appliance and electronics retailers struggle, smaller sellers like hhgregg (HGG) and Conn's (CONN) are cashing in on retro: real-live sales staff to help consumers understand how that thing-a-ma-washing machine works.

Anyone that has tried to get help buying something at BestBuy knows the value of good customer service.

Bing. That's the new name for Microsoft's (MSFT) search engine. But the product needs more than a superficial makeover to take on Google (GOOG).

It's what happens when you don't have proper leadership and everything is decided by committee.

Also, bing.com looks taken, please tell me they picked a name w/o a website...

UAW = U Are Whole: For the $20-odd billion owed the UAW VEBA, it gets $19B in cash and securities, 17.5% of the company, and warrants. "So much for the equal footing of unsecured creditors."

Unsecured creditors have priority standings - ie, lawyers fees, wages, taxes come before unsecured debt. While the UAW agreement is unprecedented, it can be justified to a certain extent.

www.enotes.com/busines...

Priority of distribution. All creditors are not treated equally. There are several levels of priority in the distribution of assets. A creditor with a security lien on property (e.g., bank mortgage) has priority over other creditors.

In descending order, the following unsecured creditors are entitled to the expenses and claims:

1. Administrative expenses incurred by the trustee
2. Post-petition credit extended to debtors
3. Claims up to $4,300 for wages, salaries, or commissions earned by an individual within ninety days of filing of the petition
4. Claims for contributions to employee benefit plans up to $4,300 for services rendered up to 180 days before filing of petition
5. Claims up to $4,300 for a person operating a grain storage or fish produce storage or processing facility
6. Claims by consumers up to $1,950 for deposits made for purchase, lease, or rental of property or for the purchase or consumer goods or services
7. Claims for alimony, maintenance, or child support
8. Income and other taxes due to governmental units
9. The remaining unsecured creditors

Annoyed that we still trust the ratings agencies after their many failures, the Telegraph's Tracy Corrigan places S&P and Moody's under review for possible downgrade.

Maybe people should read the report and decide for themselves if rating agencies are competent or not.

People need to realize that ratings on structured products were based on real estate models that were wrong. Corporates, sovereigns, and every other group at ratings agencies operate off fundementals and the four c's of fixed income.

Scary chart of the day: S&P 500 earnings decline over the last 20 months.

The chart itself is accurate - but if you think for a minute, it is averaging in some colossal losses by banks, if you zeroed those out (ie, if they went bankrupt or removed from s&p) i'm sure you'd get a scary but more reasonable chart.

Citigroup (C) has used most of its $45B in TARP funds to make new loans, approving $44.75B in lending initiatives as of March 31. The loans include an additional $2B to suppliers, $1B for residential mortgages and $250M in auto loans.

It's even smaller. $44B is nothing on a 1.9 TRILLION dollar balance sheet.

Get ready for a "surprising rebound" in H2, Larry Kantor, head of research at Barclays Capital says. "Most of our clients have missed this rally."

It astounds me that people can extrapolate growth out of these horrific numbers. Nobody, NOBODY has talked about where America's growth is coming from - What areas are going to grow? who is growing revenue this fall? Who is hiring? Oh right, we're just going to lever up and spend again.

"There are no more shoes to drop," Brian Wesbury and Robert Stein of First Trust Advisors write. "Now it looks like our V-shaped recovery is underway. When the NBER eventually gets around to declaring the recession end date, we think it will be May 2009."

Because we're going to go from -6% GDP in Q1 to a positive number in Q2. Not one of these bulls has said anything about unemployment or manufacturing, which continue to plummet. "It's not as bad as we thought" is not equal to "Recovery." Furthermore, people assume all these stocks are going to return to a PE of 20 and grow at 15% a year.

The inmates are running the asylum.