Financial Headlines 3/4/2009

Some economic headlines:

• US car sales in February fell 41% to a 9.1 million annual rate, the lowest since December 1981, when most Americans rode to work via horse and buggy.  GM reported the steepest decline of 53%, perhaps due to the fact that Americans are forced to endure extreme close-ups of Rick Wagoner's weeping face on the cover of every financial rag. 
• ADP reported that companies cut an estimated 697,000 workers in February.  This report is a precursor to Friday's non-farm payroll report issued by the Labor Department which is clearly bound to be grim.
• Not everyone is suffering due to the collapse of our financial institutions.  The Wall Street Journal reports that 11 top executives from Merrill were paid more than $10 million in cash and stock last year, despite the firms $27.6 billion loss for 2008.  The Journal was even kind enough to name names and post pictures of the top earners.  Merrill's Andrea Orcel took home $33.8 million in cash and stock, which should be more than enough to help cover the increase in security that he's going to need when the angry mob figures out where he lives and shows up for a public stoning.
• 20% of home mortgages were underwater, according to a report released by First American CoreLogic.  Oh wait, forget I said that, just keep paying your mortgage, the government is going to take care of it.
• Out of work in the financial services industry?  Still looking?  Good news!  Public pension funds are hiring, presumably because they need more people to count all the losses piling up from investments in leveraged high risk vehicles such as Morgan Stanley's commercial property "opportunity" fund which is set to take a 60% write-down on the equity in its $8.8 billion fund.  Of course, a $1 trillion bailout for pensions may be just around the corner, so an increase in head count ahead of a large government infusion is highly appropriate.
• According to the Financial Times, AIG has another $12 billion it can punt in credit losses that somehow has not been included in all the many government bailout packages.  But no worries, Bernanke is really mad about having to bail them out, which should make taxpayers feel much better.