It is proxy season and as public companies put out the lists of compensations for their CEOs it is plain that the recession did not do much to damage chief executive pay packages in most cases. New research shows that the recession was unkind to some CEOs who have recently lost their job as part of [[ This is a content summary only.
Reuters. Obama will nominate Yellen to be Fed vice chair. Reuters: China told Obama to leave yuan policy to its government. Reuters: A Chineese minister said the nation could not keep up fast industrial growth Reuters: Toyota (TM) says discounts are helping sales.
Markets in Asia were mixed. The Nikkei rose .8% to 10,751. The Hang Seng was down .1% to 21,208
From Bloomberg: Yellen Said to Be Obama’s Pick for Fed Vice Chairman I suggested Dr. Yellen as a possible candidate for Fed Chairman last year, so obviously I think this is a good choice. She was way ahead of most other Fed members in recognizing the housing bubble, and she is apparently well respected by other Fed members
The NY Times Deal Book has posted the Lehman’s examiners report online: Court-Appointed Lehman Examiner Unveils Report There is an interesting excerpt on the apparent use of repo transactions to bolster Lehman’s balance sheet: …
Daylight Savings Time “Spring Forward” …. taken too far What day is today?

Some key points: The Fed MBS purchases are scheduled to end on March 31st. It will take a couple of months for some of these purchases to settle on the Fed’s balance sheet (see: the discussion from SIFMA: “To-Be-Announced” Trading of Agency Passthrough Securities) The coming increase in the Fed’s balance sheet (and the expansion of the Supplementary Financing Program (SFP) over the same period) are related to the MBS settling on the Fed’s balance sheet.

The Federal Reserve released the Q4 2009 Flow of Funds report today: Flow of Funds . According to the Fed, household net worth is now off $12.5 Trillion from the peak in 2007, but up $5.0 trillion from the trough last year
Average: “an estimation of or approximation to an arithmetic mean”–Webster Among the public companies in the handset business which trade on US exchanges, Nokia (NOK) has performed the most poorly over the last year. The firm’s shares are up a little over 30% while the DJIA is higher by 50%.















