U.S. stocks ended mixed Wednesday after a late-session profit taking almost wiped off a 156-point rally in the Dow average that was fueled by the Fed’s encouraging assessment of the economy and its decision to keep interest rates low for an extended period.  The optimism was short-lived as investors appeared jittery ahead of the October jobs report on Friday. Fresh concerns over bank earnings resurfaced after the House of Representatives passed a bill curbing credit card rate increases.

After the house vote, financials slumped 1.5% and led the decliners among the S&P 500 industry groups.  Analyst Meredith Whitney noted the biggest U.S. banks may face declining values on home-loan bonds with government backing as the Fed moves towards ending its $1.25 trillion purchase program.  Whitney said bank earnings are far from approaching "normalcy," and will reflect regulatory changes for an extended period.  JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) fell 1.2% to $42.21 and

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The Securities and Exchange Commission said on Wednesday that JPMorgan Chase & Company (JPM) agreed to pay more than $700 million to settle federal regulators' charges for an unlawful payment scheme that helped them win business involving municipal-bond offerings and swap-agreement transactions in Jefferson County , Alabama. JPMorgan Securities Inc, a division of JPMorgan Chase & Company, and two of its former managing directors, Charles LeCroy and Douglas MacFaddin, made those unlawful payments to win business and earn fees. The scandal was over the county's debt of around $4 billion which was pushing the county into the biggest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. JPMorgan Securities has agreed to pay a fine of $25 million and $50 million to Jefferson County . The company will also lose more than $647 million in claimed termination fees on the swaps. JPMorgan, LeCroy and MacFaddin were alleged to have ...

Well, it is not as if I relish rubbing salt into old wounds, but this quote from the a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8bb0da5a-c7dc-11de-8ba8-00144feab49a.html"latest piece by Ben Hall in Paris and Ralph Atkins in today's Financial Times/a is just too good to resist.br /br /blockquoteFrench manufacturing output rose at its fastest rate for nine years, according to a survey on Monday, confirming that France has become the economic powerhouse of continental Europe. Purchasing managers’ indices for manufacturing showed France performing significantly better than the continent’s other main economies – thanks to robust domestic demand./blockquotebr /br /a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SvASaIFOk2I/AAAAAAAAPjI/Xa0wjOVFc3A/s1600-h/france+manufacturing.png"img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 213px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5399836193272533858" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SvASaIFOk2I/AAAAAAAAPjI/Xa0wjOVFc3A/s400/france+manufacturing.png" //abr /br /Plenty of food for thought in this paragraph it seems to me. As a href="http://spaineconomy.blogspot.com/2009/10/french-rebound-continues-in-october.html"foreshadowed in this earlier post/a, it is the French economy - and not the German one - which is rebounding sharply, and this ...

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Too big to fail, is still heavy in the derivative market, and primed for a gigantic collapse.

Congress needs a chimney sweep to clean the soot from the smoke they’ve been blowing. Our do nothing congress; well we can’t really say do nothing, they did bail out the banks, and they have raised more money for themselves this session from Insurance, health care and bank lobbyists than in any other one year period, and the year isn’t even over. Now they are spreading the word, the gospel of Obama, it’s time to

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        JPMorgan Chase & Company’s (JPM) third quarter earnings came in at 82 cents per share, substantially ahead of the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 49 cents. This compares favorably with 9 cents in the prior-year quarter. Better-than-expected results were primarily aided by continued strong performance by the Investment Bank group. All the other segments except Consumer Lending and Card Services also delivered solid results during the quarter. However, a continuation of high levels of credit costs in Consumer Lending and Card Services loan portfolios and an increased provision for credit losses were the primary factors that negatively impacted the results. Net income available to common shareholders was $3.6 billion, compared to $2.7 billion in the prior quarter and $527 million in the prior-year quarter. The year-over-year increase was driven by higher net revenue, largely offset by a higher provision for credit losses and higher non-interest expense....

JPMorgan Chase & Company (JPM) decided to pay $55 million to settle a lawsuit related to the losses of investors with the collapse of American Business Financial Services Inc.  American Business Financial Services filed for bankruptcy in Jan 2005 as its debts (including interest) exceed $1 billion. JPMorgan had by all accounts taken part in reporting pretended gains and assets to create the illusion that American Business Financial Services was profitable. But originally it was losing hundreds of millions of dollars.  Concurrently, other two investment banks, Credit Suisse (CS) and Morgan Stanley (MS), agreed to settle the same lawsuit. Credit Suisse agreed to pay $37.5 million and Morgan Stanley agreed to pay $7.5 million.   The settlement amount of these three banks aggregates $100 million. This is the largest settlement so far in a series of lawsuits by the court-appointed bankruptcy trustee George Miller. ...

JPMorgan Chase & Company (JPM) has paid back more than $28 million in frozen auction-rate securities to Missouri investors, bringing the total amount returned to Missourians to more than $2 billion. The repayment was done under a finalized consent order with Secretary of State Robin Carnahan.  Regarding auction-rate securities, JPMorgan is the seventh major firm to sign an agreement with Carnahan’s office. The consent order covers Missouri individual and small business clients. JPMorgan completed the signings of the consent order earlier this year.  The company will also pay $86,000 to the Missouri Investor Education and Protection Fund, which serves educational initiatives for investors across the state.  The Securities Division in Carnahan’s office seeks to finalize repurchases with several other firms in the coming months. The division also actively investigates the auction-rate securities activities of several other brokers for which it expects to announce more formal ...

Behold, The Power Of Cheese… And Chocolate

Tony Daltorio, Investment U Research

The typically sleepy world of food makers woke up this week to the loud sounds of Kraft’s bold takeover offer for Cadbury.

Cadbury, the confectionery company that makes Britain’s best known chocolate, has sold cocoa and chocolate since John Cadbury founded it in the early 1830s.

Across the ocean and some seventy years later, Joseph Kraft started his own business by selling wholesale cheese. Now into the twenty-first century, that entrepreneur’s dream has grown into the largest food company in the US. And on the global market, it comes second only to Switzerland’s Nestle.

Forget apple pie; Kraft’s well-known brands – from Ritz’s crackers to Jell-O, Oreo cookies to Maxwell House – can be found in over 99% of American households.

That naturally translates into high sales… of more than $40 billion annually.

Kraft’s

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This week marks the one-year anniversary of the Lehman bankruptcy. The media struggles to say something meaningful about it. Here at the Daily Reckoning we will not even attempt meaningfulness. We’ll be satisfied with a few snide remarks.

What is most remarkable about the world a year after Lehman fell is that so little seems to have changed. Even the papers have noticed.

“A year after Lehman, little change on Wall Street,” says the headline on today’s International Herald Tribune. “Backed by huge U.S. government guarantees, the biggest banks have re-structured only around the edges. Employment [on Wall Street] has fallen just 8% since last September.”

“Obama to push banking overhaul,” says another headline at the Telegraph. Yes, the pols will try to convince the world that they have regulated risk out of the market. Perhaps they will limit salaries… or insist on more disclosure… or require that the

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JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) on Wednesday said a team would now be dedicated for delivering its integrated prime brokerage and custody platform to clients. The team, Prime-Custody Solutions Group, will serve hedge funds and asset managers who look for a combination of prime brokerage capabilities and securities services.

Bear Stearns was one of the only prime brokers that had offered custody benefits to clients since 1997. The prime brokerage flourished after it was acquired by JPMorgan. Its Treasury & Securities Services division now manages $13.7 trillion in assets under custody and is the industry leader in prime brokerage and custody businesses.

The new development will further expand its product offering and deliver additional benefits to clients in a more efficient manner. As a result, it will be able to capture extended market share during the ongoing market challenges which have underscored the importance of partnering with a

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