Morning Market Report

After yet another bloody day in the markets on Friday, the equity markets are up early this morning. The markets have been dealing with both the fear of Bernanke's renomination going bad and worries over the new banking regulations proposed by the Obama administration. Those fears have been put to rest, however, this morning. The Dow has crossed back ove 10200 at least temporarily.

In individual corporate news, Ed Whitacre is now the permanent CEO of GM.

General Motors Chairman and acting Chief Executive Ed Whitacre will take the CEO role on a permanent basis, CNBC has learned.

The move has been seen as likely since Whitacre, 68, announced he would take over as acting CEO on Dec. 1 when Fritz Henderson was ousted after eight months as chief executive.

Bonds are slightly worse this morning. The ten year bond is at 3.62%. That's three basis points worse. Bonds have improved nearly twenty basis points as equities weakened. The yield spread between the two and ten year continues to challenge all time records and is currently at 2.81%.
The three month t bill is also steady as well and it's currently at .041%.Meanwhile, crude oil continues it's step back started when equities took their own step back. It's down slightly this morning but is now trading at $74.33 a barrel. It was over $80 a barrel before the market crash last week. Gold is trading at $1097 an ounce. That's up slightly but it's also taken a hit when equities took their hit.

We have a rather bloody day in both Europe and the Far East. The Far East was down across the board today and that's nearly the case in Europe as well so far. The Hang Seng in China was down .62%, the NIKKEI in Japan was down .74%, and the Straits Time Index in
Singapore was down .28%. In Europe, the FTSE in London is down .61%, the DAX in Germany is down .79% and the Spanish index is down .33%. The Italian and Swedish indices lead a small group of European indices up this morning.

The Dollar is weaker this morning. It's down .13% against the Euro, it's down .42% against the British Pound and it's down .29% against the Japanese Yen. So, that inverse relationship against equities continues.

Finally, there's breaking economic data to report. Existing home sales were down 16.7% in December. The so called experts expected a loss of about 10% in the month of December. Interest rates weakened throughout the month of December and so that is likely some of this loss. Beyond that, the increased home buyer's credit was originally supposed to expire in November and that also contributed to the number. It's also a sign of the choppiness of the real estate markets. The Dow has stepped back about 50 points since the news.