Boeing Company (NYSE: BA) yesterday (Thursday) announced it would test-fly its 787 Dreamliner later this year but disappointed customers by delaying delivery of the plane until the fourth quarter of 2010.

Wall Street cheered the announcement as Boeing’s stock soared more than 6% in New York trading after the company said it still expects the 787 to be profitable.

The rally came despite news that costs for the first three test planes would be charged-off as having no commercial value, resulting in an estimated pretax charge of $2.5 billion, or $2.21 a share, in the third quarter. Boeing said the charge wouldn’t affect its cash flows.

“This new schedule provides us the time needed to complete the remaining work necessary to put the 787’s game-changing capability in the hands of our customers,” said Boeing Chief Executive Officer Jim McNerney.

The 787, already two years behind its original schedule, was scheduled for its

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Perhaps the mishmash of numbers floating around the housing market have you confused.  For those who follow the market closely, the daily news seems to bring a never-ending stream of contradictory data. 

Here are just a few statistics in the news lately from respected market mavens like the S&P/Case-Shiller Indices and the National Association of Realtors:

The “average” price of homes in the U.S. is down almost 35% from the record highs of 2006. “Median” housing prices are down 19% in 90% of the major markets in the United States. Building permits were up 4% in April from last year, and homebuilder confidence increased from 16 to 18.

So what do these numbers mean to you?

Probably nothing.

“It’s like a weatherman who combines conditions in Nome, Alaska and Clearwater, Florida and issues an “average” national forecast of 45 degrees,” according to

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Employers cut 539,000 jobs in April, the lowest total in six months, but the Labor Department said the unemployment rate still soared to 8.9%, from 8.5% in March. While some analysts viewed the latest report as a sign of a nascent economic recovery, the unemployment numbers are almost certain to head higher before the recession is declared over.

Last week’s report could have been worse if the numbers hadn’t been held in check by a burst of federal government hiring of temporary workers to prepare for the 2010 Census.

The report was also skewed by the way the government categorizes the unemployed.  As Money Morning previously reported, if laid-off workers who have given up looking for new jobs or have settled for part-time work are included, the numbers skyrocket.

In fact, if the latest unemployment report had included those workers, the rate would have soared

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Consumer Credit Falls to Record Low in March; GM Burns Through $10.2 Billion in First Quarter; Commercial Mortgage Delinquencies Soar to 11-Year High; Retailers Report Better-Than-Expected Sales in April; FBI Will Add More Agents for White-Collar Crime; Boeing Loses Dream Deal

Consumer credit in the United States fell by a record $11.1 billion in March after the jobless rate reached its highest level in a quarter century and banks made it harder to get loans in an effort to firm up their balance sheets.  Consumer credit fell by $2.55 trillion, almost three times more than forecast and the most since records began in 1943, according to a Federal Reserve report released yesterday (Thursday) in Washington. “When you have record job losses, you have to expect record declines in spending and economic activity in general,” Richard Yamarone, ...

India Cuts Repurchase Rate to 5%; Private Employers Cut 697,000 Jobs in Feb.; U.S. Auto Sales Down 41% in February; Oil Rallies to Six-year High; Merrill’s Top 10 Execs Paid $209 Million Last Year

The Reserve Bank of India reduced its repurchase rate from an already low of 5.5% to 5.0%, its fifth cut since October. “We see a significant slowdown in investment,” Sailesh Jha, a senior regional economist at Barclays Capital Plc in Singapore, told Bloomberg. “There is scope for more significant rate cuts.” ADP Employer Services said that U.S. private employers cut 697,000 jobs in February, an acceleration of the revised 614,000 jobs lost in January. The figures mark the biggest job loss since the report’s ...

Prime Brokerage SingaporeArticle on Prime Brokerage in Singapore

Here is a recent post from our associated PrimeBrokerageGuide.com site:

When visitors arrive at Singapore's Changi Airport, they get both an immigration card and an application form for opening a hedge fund.

This was one of the jokes making the rounds in 2007. The fact is that hedge funds in Singapore were growing fast since 2006. According to an article dated Feb 2007 from eFinancialCareers, "prime brokers are in hiring mode" - Barclays Capital, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley and UBS all hired for their Singapore prime brokerage operations in 2006.

By Nov 2007, Singapore serves as prime broking regional headquarters for Credit Suisse

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