Stocks welcomed a joint effort by the Federal Reserve and the White House to reassure on the credit front. Analysts offered more qualified support to a promise by President Bush to help struggling homeowners refinance their mortgages.

“It’s very light on detail and limited in scope,” said Jeff Schappe, chief investment officer at BB&T Asset Management. “He is putting it essentially in the lap of Congress. It would allow some delinquent borrowers to get an FHA guarantee so that they can refinance. I suspect it’s going to be limited to borrowers in a primary residence who are significantly delinquent.”

Axel Merk, a portfolio manager at the Merk Hard Currency Fund, concluded what Bush’s plan “will do is make poor homeowners slaves of their homes. .. The terms of the loan will require that you basically never pay down your loan. Unless they are bailed out by higher home prices, they are becoming prisoners of their homes.”

More Wall Street comments here

Reuters correspondent Deborah Charles, 42, learned she had breast cancer on Nov. 6, 2007. She writes about her diagnosis — infiltrating ductal carcinoma — and how her life’s changed in a four-part series here.

Send comments or questions on her stories below. Or share your own. Have you or a friend gone back to work after a cancer diagnosis?

$570 million a year - that’s the average salary for the top 25 managers in the industry, according to Alpha Magazine. The top three managers took home over $1 billion each. Find the top ten 2006 hedge fund earners here. The funds earn fees for managing money and share in any gains made from successful strategies.   

The 57 percent rise in hedge fund manager earnings last year comes as shareholders pressure corporate boards to get control over rising CEO pay. Washington is also responding to complaints over rising pay for top executives. The House of Representatives last Friday approved the “say on pay” bill to give shareholders the right to cast nonbinding votes on the pay of top company executives.

What do you think? Is the massive pay for top performers in the hedge fund industry good for the markets or the U.S. economy?

Subprime isn’t a major part of the U.S. mortgage market but mounting losses for the lenders in the sector are pushing the whole market around. The biggest percentage loser on the Nasdaq Tuesday is Accredited Home Lenders Holding Co.(LEND).

More than two dozen subprime lenders have quit the industry over the past year. An update from the Mortgage Bankers Association Tuesday, that late payments and foreclosures on U.S. homes reached rose in fourth quarter, is keeping the pressure on.

SeekingAlpha.com carries a report from Credit Suisse analyst Ivy Zelman that forecasts a 20 percent drop in new home sales. Among other views, Torsten Slok, senior economist at Deutsche Bank, tells Reuters that “mortgage delinquencies went up, but it’s not in dangerous territory. If you look at historical levels, we are still below previous peaks hit during the recession of 2001.”

Are you concerned about the impact of the subprime mortgage meltdown? Do you think it has been too easy to get a home loan in recent years? Should the government bring in controls to prevent such lending?
 

Former U.S. President Gerald Ford, who has died at his home in California at age 93, was remembered Wednesday by President Bush as a ‘calm and steady hand.’ Vice President Cheney, in a statement, called Ford a ‘dear friend and mentor’. Alexander Haig, Ford’s chief of staff, told CNN that Ford’s pardon of former President Richard Nixon “was one of the most courageous acts a president ever took.” Ford pardoned Nixon on September 8, 1974, an act that stunned the nation. More facts about ex-President Ford here.

In other tributes and commentaries, The Washington Post, the paper that broke the Watergate scandals that eventually brought down Nixon, posted archived stories and a video interview with Bob Woodward on the story.

The Detroit Free Press (Ford was from Michigan) reported a “steady stream” of visitors at a makeshift shrine outside the Gerald R. Ford musuem (pictured right/REUTERS). In an editorial, the newspaper declared the former president had  ”earned a revered place in American history by making the ultimate political sacrifice.”

Comedian Chevy Chase, who protrayed Ford on ‘Saturday Night Live’ , called him “a very, very sweet man… He took my wife and I on a whole lovely trip through Grand Rapids to show us where he had been as a child and what not.” See full Reuters interview here
A lively comment thread surfaced on the left-leaning blog Daily Kos, with some of the posts on topic. On the right, blogger Michelle Malkin links to a  tribute from columnist Martin Schram, who recalls ”a very comfortable professional relationship between a very important Washington politician and a very inexperienced young journalist.” Religious blog Mondaymorninginsight compiles quotes attributed to Ford over the years, including “I am a Ford, not a Lincoln.” From the markets, Peter Cohen concludes in bloggingstocks, that the U.S. stock market performed “surprisingly well” during Ford’s 895-day tenure.

Green Bay Packers fans behind Packerama detail two of Ford’s connections to the famed football franchise. That Ford dedicated the original building of the Packer Hall of Fame is but only one of them. More chat on Ford’s influence, at least from the college football “micro angle”, here at Collegefootballresource.  Hookedongolfblog posts an old photograph of Ford with a personal touch.

Send us your comments to the link below.

Are the neighbor’s Christmas lights visible from the moon? Does the disheveled mitt-waving mechanical Santa & Mrs. Claus at the tire shop give you the creeps?

It’s time to take an inventory of the craziest holiday decorations. Send us your pictures to pics@reuters.com and we’ll post the best of them on reuters.com. Be sure to send your name, contact information (in case we have questions) and a description of the photo (what, where and when) with your email.

And this is call to everyone: Americans aren’t the only ones to lose their perspective on holiday decor… Aside from our all-time favorite, the underwater nativity scene in Italy, take a look at these pictures:

	People dressed as Santa Clauses pose for a picture at the Europa Park leisure park in Rust, southwestern Germany December 2, 2006. Vincent Kessler
	Sunshine Aquarium employee dressed in Santa Claus costume swims with fish in the aquarium in Tokyo December 6, 2006. Toshiyuki Aizawa
	A large transparent decoration which contains a Christmas tree at the ‘Sensations Suisses’ in Paris, November 25, 2004. John Schults
	Godzilla monster, sporting a bow tie, makes an appearance during the lighting of the Christmas tree at Tokyo Tower, November 3, 2003. REUTERS/Eriko Sugita
	Snowman model outside a shopping mall with Christmas decorations in downtown Singapore December 23, 2005. Ben Lynn
	The window of a department store in Paris, December 8, 2005. Franck Prevel

Despite slightly lower-than-expected revenue, defense contractor
General Dynamics Corp. reported third-quarter earnings per share (EPS) that were above analyst estimates. This is somewhat surprising, as the tank and submarine manufacturer has a history of surpassing Wall Streets expectations for both, notes Reuters.com investment columnist Erik Dellith.

In each of the last four quarters, General Dynamics has provided upside
surprises for both revenue and EPS. During this time, revenue has
generated surprises ranging from 2.4 percent to 6.8 percent, while EPS gains
came in between 1 percent and 11.9 percent above expectations.

Still, analysts were not completely caught off guard by the latest
results. They had been paring back top-line estimates while beefing up EPS
projections in recent weeks. Nonetheless, the stock was down about 1
percent in morning trading a hiccup for a stock that has climbed more than 21 percent in the last six months, while the S&P 500 index has edged forward only about 4 percent.

A point of concern, though, is the potential for the trend of EPS
surprises to follow the revenue trend. CEO Nicholas Chabraja told analysts that they had penciled in overly optimistic revenue projections. He reiterated the earlier revenue guidance of $24 billion for the full year and indjiicated that margins would likely narrow in the fourth quarter.

In a recent Reuters poll, analysts expected profit around $24.5 billion, which they expected would translate into earnings of $4.18 per share. At about $75, shares of General Dynamics are priced at about 18 times those expected earnings. This is a considerable discount in an industry where the average is closer to about 29 times this years expected earnings. Still, investors need to be wary about potential downward earnings revisions to better reflect the companys guidance.

Wall Street compensation averaged $289,664 per person last year, 5.1 times the average $56,634 for workers in New York City, Jonathan Stempel reports Tuesday, citing a study release by New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi. It gets better, at least for some: bonuses totaled a record $21.5 billion, or $125,500 per person.

There are a couple of downbeat notes in the full report from Hevesi’s office. Employment in the securities industry is down from a peak in 2000, although a job growth recovery has begun, starting in 2003.

Reuters.com investment columnist Erik Dellith is seeing some caveats to the European growth outlook in 2007… yet Manpower is nonetheless expected to improve earnings in 2007.