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Full Story At Yahoo! News

UNITED NATIONS – The United States has blocked approval of a U.N. Security Council statement calling for an immediate cease-fire between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers, diplomats said.

French U.N. Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert, the council president, said the 15 council members could not agree on a statement in closed discussions held after Israel launched a ground invasion into the Gaza Strip on Saturday. But he said there were “strong convergences” among the members to express concern about the deteriorating situation in Gaza and the need for “an immediate, permanent and fully respected cease-fire.”

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Full Story At  Reuters

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Governors of five U.S. states urged the federal government to provide $1 trillion in aid to the country’s 50 states to help pay for education, welfare and infrastructure as states struggle with steep budget deficits amid a deepening recession.

The governors of New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Ohio and Wisconsin — all Democrats — said the initiative for the two-year aid package was backed by other governors and follows a meeting in December where governors called on President-elect Barack Obama to help them maintain services in the face of slumping revenues.

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Full Story At NYTimes.com

DETROIT — The Big Three automakers are now two troubled companies
getting government help to survive and one — the Ford Motor Company — trying to make it on its own.

But Ford faces a new challenge of its own — improving its competitive position without the assistance that $17.4 billion in federal loans will provide General Motors and Chrysler.

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Full Story At CNNMoney.com

The global economic crisis caused a crushing drop in auto sales this year pushing America’s already-struggling automakers into a full-blown crisis requiring at least two of them - Chrysler and General Motors - to request immediate financial help from the government lest they go bust.

But, at least for consumers, there is one bright spot in the spiraling auto industry’s malaise. If you’re interested in buying a car, we’ve got some deals for you. And they’re not just from domestic automakers, either. Even popular Japanese automakers are piling on the incentives.

We asked auto pricing experts at CarsDirect.com to help us identify some of the best deals out there. Of course, the deal is only as good as the car, so we’ve only included offers on models we’d consider buying ourselves.

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 CNNMoney.com

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The Federal Reserve on Wednesday opened the door for GMAC to get federal bailout money by granting the troubled General Motors finance arm status as a bank holding company.

“In light of the unusual and exigent circumstances affecting the financial markets … the board has determined that emergency conditions exist that justify expeditious action,” the Fed said in an order released Wednesday evening.

The move represents the latest extraordinary government action intended to rescue the American auto industry. Last week, President Bush announced a $13.4 billion aid package for GM (GM, Fortune 500) and Chrysler LLC, saying that allowing the U.S. auto industry to collapse “is not a responsible course of action.”

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Full Story At CNNMoney.com)

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — President-elect Barack Obama’s economic team and congressional staffers are close to finalizing a massive recovery proposal but are still hammering out details, Vice President-elect Joe Biden and economic adviser Larry Summers said Tuesday.

One of the principal remaining issues is the price, which was estimated last week to go as high as nearly $800 billion.

“There’s overall agreement on the scope and nature of the investment we are going to be making,” Biden said at a meeting of Obama’s top economic advisers in Washington, D.C. “While our short-term goal is to start creating jobs as quickly as possible, we plan to invest in areas…that will produce long-term benefits for the long-term health of our economy.”

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CNN.com

(CNN) — You know the financial crisis is bad when investment bankers are grumpy at Christmastime. That’s because in investment banking, Christmastime is bonus time, and bonus time is what it’s all about.

Bonus time is when all the deals you crafted and all the money you made for the bank gets toted up and you get your fair share.

Usually, in the world of Wall Street and its international counterparts, that “fair share” can reach 10 or 15 times your annual salary. That usually makes year-end a time of great joy in investment banking land.

But this year is different. This is the year when dodgy mortgages, which had been packaged together, securitized and thus magically transformed into “ultrasafe” securities, blew up. That led to the collapse of so many of the deals bankers had crafted (and got paid for) in past years. Many banks disappeared or were merged out of existence.

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CNNMoney.com

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Stocks fell Monday in a thinly traded session amid concerns about fourth-quarter corporate earnings, falling oil prices and ongoing woes in the auto industry.

The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) fell 0.7% according to early tallies. The Standard & Poor’s 500 (SPX) index dipped 2% and the Nasdaq composite (COMP) was lost 1.8%.

Stocks languished for most of the morning before falling sharply in the afternoon as oil prices slid below $40 a barrel. That sent shares of oil industry firms Chevron Corp (CVX, Fortune 500) and Exxon Mobil (XOM, Fortune 500) lower and weighed on the Dow. But the major indexes recovered some ground near the closing bell.

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