Economy

-Home sales of existing homes rose 1.4% in October and should outpace last year’s total, but prices dropped and are now 4.7% below last year’s level. 11/22

-Chinese manufacturing plunged in November adding to concerns of a global slowdown. 11/23

-Third quarter GDP in the U.S. was reduced to 2.0% from the previous estimate of 2.5%. 11/23

-Business spending dropped 1.8% in October. 11/25

Corporate

-PE firm KKR agreed to purchase oil and natural gas explorer Samson Investment for $7.2 billion. 11/22

-Gilead Sciences is purchasing Pharmasset, a drug maker, for $11 billion on high expectations of its new treatments for hepatitis C. 11/22

-HP’s earnings fell and it released a guarded forecast on expected weakness in the personal computing business. 11/22

-The Trustee charged with the liquidation process of MF global said that up to $1.2 billion of client funds could be missing. 11/22

-U.S. banks saw their earnings jump this summer to the highest level since mid 2007, however it was driven primarily by banks allocating less to cover bad loans. 11/23

-Nokia Siemens announced it will be cutting 17,000 jobs in order to restructure operations and reach profitability. 11/25

-AT&T set aside $4 billion to cover costs associated with its planned merger with T mobile not going through, as there are increasing signs that the deal will not succeed. 11/25

Regulatory

-The congressional super committee is set to admit to failure to achieve a more far reaching deficit reduction plan before the Wednesday deadline. 11/21

Market

-Markets took another tumble on Monday with the Dow falling 2.1%, the S&P 500 dropping 2.5%, and European stocks dropping 3.2% with news that the deficit reduction super committee failed to find any common ground. There were increased concerns it could lead to another rating downgrade, but investors still snapped up Treasuries. The 10 year yield fell to 1.963%. 11/22

-Belgium’s credit rating was lowered one level by S&P. 11/26

-Bad news continued for Italy as its most recent debt offering saw yields reach a record high for the Euro-zone era. 11/26

-The markets continued their recent downward trend and the Dow had its worst Thanksgiving week since the index’s construction. The Dow fell 4.8% for the week and is down 3% for the year and the S&P 500 is down 7.9% over the past 7 weeks. The Nikkei fell 2.6% and Europe was down 4.6%. U.S. Equity markets have given up much of the gains that were achieved over a record October. 11/26