In a long speech, William Dudley, President of the New York Federal Reserve, addressed his economic outlook and the lessons learned for last year’s financial crisis. I present key excerpts from the speech about the lessons learned below as well as my assessment of them. However, the speech is worth reading in its entirety and can be found here. "The actions undertaken by the Federal Reserve over the past two and a half years have been critical to stabilizing the financial system and preventing the extraordinary distress in markets from causing a deeper and more protracted economic downturn. Much of the Fed’s ability to respond as effectively as it did during this crisis, whether it was from a monetary policy, a 'lender-of-last resort' or a supervisory perspective, came from its breadth and depth of knowledge and experience with financial institutions, financial markets and financial market infrastructure, both ...

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I was listening to our president and recalled Jerzy Lec:

"I am so full of optimism that I can't take any more of it."

What didn't Dmitry Medvedev promise us! "Intolerance toward corruption...improvement of housing conditions...nurturing of the personality already in school...normalisation of the situation in monocities..." And also about agriculture, modernisation of the economy, flights to other planets; reducing taxes; raising the quality of school education...

Of the new - a possible abolition of the switches from summer to winter and a reduction in the quantity of time zones. And - applause, applause, applause...in the spirit of the times of Brezhnev.

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In a long speech to the annual Kansas City Fed gathering at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Fed Chief Ben Bernanke gave a history lesson about the recent financial crisis. It is worth reading in its entirety since it reminds us of just how close we came to absolute catastrophe. He recounts the demise of Lehman Brothers and the decisions to bail out Fannie Mae ([/url]), Freddie Mac ([url=http://www.zacks.com/stock/quote/fre]FRE) and American International Group (AIG), as well as the shotgun marriages of Bank of America (BAC) with Merrill Lynch and J.P. Morgan (JPM) with Washington Mutual. The full speech can be read here: http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/bernanke20090821a.htm. While most of the speech focused on the recent past, he gave the following assessment of the current situation: “Overall, the policy actions implemented in recent months have helped stabilize a number of key financial markets, both in the ...

Fitch recently removed Wisconsin-based Johnson Control (JCI), a supplier of automotive interiors, batteries, and other control equipment, from Rating Watch Negative and affirmed a Negative rating for the company. Fitch has also affirmed the Issuer Default Rating (IDR) and long-term ratings for the company at 'BBB'.

Short-term ratings have been affirmed at 'F2'. As of June 30, 2009, Johnson Control had approximately $4.8 billion of outstanding debt, including $450 million of equity units to which Fitch has assigned 100% equity credit.

Fitch notified that the challenges in Johnson Control’s Automotive Experience business and expected weak demand in the company's non-residential construction markets through 2010 corroborates the negative outlook. This is worsened by high leverage and margin pressure related to lower sales volumes across the major business segments. The rating agency also stated that low production volumes in Europe and North America and industry restructuring are significant concerns for the company.

A weak

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The extremely strong opening delivered by the Transformers movie sequel could bode well for Hasbro's (HAS) sales in the coming months. The film, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, racked up domestic ticket sales of more than $200 million in the 5 days since its opening on Wednesday. This financial performance exceeded expectations, and narrowly missed setting the record for 5-day revenues set last year by the Batman sequel, The Dark Knight. The financial strength of the movie could indicate better-than-expected sales for Hasbro going forward. The company owns the Transformers brand, and toys tied to the movie are a major component of the company's operations going forward. Although we rate the shares a Hold and believe the shares are fairly-valued near current levels, we consider the company to be well positioned going forward. Owning the brand upon which the movie is based provides Hasbro ...

Wonder Auto Technologies, Inc. (...

div style="text-align: justify;"Merriman Curhan Ford is out with a rather positive call on span style="font-weight: bold;"Sangamo Biosciences (NASDAQ:SGMO)/span reiterating their Buy rating and raising their target range from $5.50-6.50 to $10-11.br /br /Firm believes Sangamo has the potential to be the leader in zinc finger applications both in the therapeutic arena and applications outside of the clinic. While the company’s diabetic neuropathy program is currently in question, they still believe in the therapeutic potential for the zinc finger platform. Additionally, partnerships with Dow Agro- Sciences and Sigma-Aldrich have the potential to provide Sangamo with future royalty streams and milestone payments. Merriman believes SGMO shares should trade to a range of $10-11.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Broad growth opportunity. /spanSangamo is now entering an interesting chapter in the company’s growth. They continue to believe that the zinc finger technology platform has a broad set of applications in both the therapeutic and non-therapeutic ...