News, stock exchange, taxes, stocks, insurance, articles about earnings

By Horacio Marquez
Contributing Editor
Money Morning

With BHP Billiton Ltd. (NYSE ADR: BHP), it’s a case of the strong getting stronger and possibly even running away from the pack.

Back in 2001, BHP Ltd. and Billiton PLC merged to form BHP Billiton Ltd., the world’s
leading diversified resources group. And it never looked back.

Now, the lowest-cost natural-resources producer with the broadest portfolio of offerings, BHP superbly positioned itself to weather the current global downturn. Indeed, back in June the company reported its seventh-consecutive year of record profits. Financially, the company is well positioned to maintain its high level of investment in its business.

And because the Melbourne, Australia-based mining giant has so many of its operations in the Pacific region, it is perfectly positioned to continue serving two of the world’s fastest-growing markets: China and India.

The bottom line: BHP is exceptionally well diversified – not only in terms of the commodities it mines and sells, but also in terms of the markets it serves. This has allowed it to minimize the regulatory, climatic and geological risks it faces.

And that diversification is paying off. As millions of people emerge from poverty in Asia and other markets from around the world – led by the creation of a massive middle class in China and fueled by global synchronic growth – the demand for commodities will soar in the years to come. And so will commodity prices.

China alone has expanded the worldwide demand for steel by an amount that equaled the combined production of Canada and Mexico. Over the past year – from copper to coking coal to crude oil – we saw similarly impressive growth statistics around the world, an uptick that is putting pressure on the capacity of the commodity producers around the world. During that time, BHP’s profits grew spectacularly, but it’s also important to note that the company grew in a very balanced and conservative manner.

By, Shah Gilani
Contributing Editor
Money Morning

Underlying the credit crisis gripping the U.S. and worldeconomies is a crisis of confidence. Blame has been laid at the feet of the U.S. Federal Reserve, and an investment bankers’ brew of toxic financial products. Ultimately, however, it was the supposedly trustworthy rating agencies that got everyone to drink the poisoned Kool-Aid.

The sheer fraud and greed of rating agency analysts and executives is staggering. That no one has gone to jail, and none of the agencies have been shut down is a travesty of justice on an infinitely larger scale than Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. Until depositors, bankers and investors regain confidence in the quality of ratings we rely upon to measure financial stability and creditworthiness, the tremors that underlie the credit crisis will drag on indefinitely.

Letter and number ratings – such as AAA, Aa1, BBB and Caa1 – are financial shorthand for the due diligence supposedly done by rating agencies after they’ve examined an issuer or a security’s financial structure, and evaluated the likelihood of its being able to pay interest and principal at maturity. Investors rely on the objectivity and fiduciary responsibility of the rating agencies to publish fair, accurate and uncompromised assessments.

By law, certain investors must rely on the ratings of a handful of Securities and Exchange Commission designated “Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations” (NRSROs). For example, most state insurance regulators require that only assets rated in the top four ratings categories by NRSROs are eligible investments. Similarly, money market funds can only invest in securities with the highest NRSRO ratings. In fact, innumerable institutions – public and private, and domestic and international – mandate asset quality levels predicated on the major rating agencies’ due diligence.

By Martin Hutchinson
Contributing Editor
Money Morning

Between September 2007 and June 2008, oil prices doubled, gold rose 30% and commodities, in general, advanced by a similar percentage.

So why, six months later, when prices have fallen back below last year’s levels, does everybody think they won’t rise again? The difficulties of extraction haven’t gone away, nor have the prospects of increasing consumption in the faster-growing emerging markets such as China. Yes, the prices of commodities are severely affected by marginal moves in supply and demand, but this is ridiculous!

By Don Miller
Contributing Writer
Money Morning

Dragged down by plunging gasoline prices and an auto industry struggling for survival, retail sales fell by 1.8% in November for a record fifth straight month, according to the U.S. Commerce Department.

But a historic drop in retail gasoline prices and auto sales may have exaggerated the decline.  Filling-station sales mirrored the recent drop in prices from $4 a gallon in July to less than $2 a gallon recently. Auto sales fell 2.8%, confirming automakers’ assertions that business had sunk to the lowest levels in decades.

Excluding gasoline, which fell by almost 15%, retail sales fell just 0.2%.

In fact, without sales of autos, gasoline and building materials, sales actually rose 0.5%, the most since May.

“The financial markets were braced for a horrific retail sales report for November, but the numbers were actually not so bad,” Mark Vitner, a senior economist for Wachovia Corp. (WB), told MarketWatch.com.

ndia's largest real estate company DLF Ltd. has reported a 4 percent drop in net profit for the fiscal quarter ended September 30, 2008, attributing it to high borrowing costs and a downturn in property prices.

The second-large builder of India in terms of capitalisation of the market, Unitech Ltd declared the corporate income for the financial quarter finished on September, 30th 2008, informing on decrease for 12.48 percent in net profit because of a crunch of liquidity and the languid requirement.

By Jennifer Yousfi
Contributing Writer
Money Morning

Retail experts are predicting one of the most dismal holiday shoppingseasons in decades this year – a crucial stretch that will set the stage for poor retail sales throughout 2009.

As the American economy slows down, beaten by pushes of the international financial crisis, consumers have been amazed from each management: Unemployment has pierced, and will continue to raise, the economy is untwisted and continues to work through pushes of global crisis of the credit, consumers have surrounded on all parties. Unemployment, the house prices decrease, and the credit it is difficult to arrive.

By Martin Hutchinson
Contributing Editor
Money Morning/The Money Map Report

The U.S. Treasury Department announced Nov. 3 that it intended to borrow a record $550 billion in the fourth quarter. That represents a staggering $408 billion increase over Treasury’s borrowing estimate from early August and includes $260 billion for the recapitalization of U.S. banks.

Do not make an error about it: there will be many enough American Exchequer bonds to choke on as the government tries to finance this debt.

In the three months to Sept. 30, the Treasury Department borrowed $530 billion; in the first quarter of the New Year – which ends March 31 – it expects to borrow $368 billion. The March figure looks thoroughly optimistic; the monthly Treasury Statement of Receipts and Outlays shows that the first calendar quarter of the year is generally about $80 billion to $100 billion worse than the preceding fourth quarter. Thus the loan number is so low as 368 billion $, apparently, would not include expenses of ejection and any additional expenses specifying in recession from a current quarter.

By Martin Hutchinson
Contributing Editor
Money Morning/The Money Map Report

It must now be horribly clear to everybody with an investment portfolio – indeed, to anyone who watches the financial markets – that no country or sector is safe from a bear market of the magnitude of the one we’re suffering through right now. When stocks get marked down
en masse, as they have, literally everything drops. What’s more, there may be very little rationale for which stocks drop — or how much they drop by: When the wave of selling meets very few buyers, good stocks can easily fall more than bad ones.

By Keith Fitz-Gerald
Investment Director
Money Morning/The Money Map Report

As the worst financial crisis in recorded market history rocks Wall Street, millions of investors on Main Street keep asking a single question.

When will this end?

The market volatility is unprecedented: Where professional traders once ranked a day as “wild” if we witnessed a 300-point swing, in recent months we’ve seen 600- and 700-point swings on a regular basis. On Oct. 9, a Thursday, we rode out a record-setting swing of 1,000 points.

That wild backdrop is bad enough. At the same time, however, the major market indices are heading lower – at times with a speed and ferocity never before seen. But the real killer is that there is seemingly nowhere to hide.