Market Talk

- Greece has one month to show progress toward its goal of reducing its fiscal deficit by four percentage points in GDP terms. But naked capitalism blogger Yves Smith notes some EU officials, like Luxembourg’s Jean-Claude Juncker who says he’s waiting for Greece to take its commitments seriously, are being overly harsh on Greece.

- Banks did a nice job “helping” Greece. “The European Union is now asking Greece for details of what it did. But it should go further,” Floyd Norris says. “It should seek to find out if the banks that helped Greece lie — and thus knew its numbers were false — made money betting against it. If so, do those banks deserve to keep those profits?”

- Paul Krugman continues to bang the we-need-more-stimulus drum at his Conscience of a Liberal blog. He notes ARRA stimulus “fades out fast starting in fiscal 2011, which starts in October 2010,” while unemployment is still expected to be near current levels. “Fiscal support for the economy will be pulled away with the economy having barely begun to recover,” he says.

- Gawker announces its first-ever acquisition, also ousts its EIC.

- Yahoo (YHOO) just doesn’t carry the same appeal for Carl Icahn anymore. The billionaire activist investor, who at one point held about 75 million Yahoo shares, has slashed his stake down to 12M as of Feb 12.

- Microsoft (MSFT) yesterday revealed AT&T (T) will be its premier wireless partner for its new Windows Phone devices, possibly marking another reason for Apple (AAPL) to drop its AT&T iPhone exclusivity, Dan Frommer writes.

- Gold has a monster up day, breaks above its 50-day moving average and puts its recent correction behind it, Bespoke notes.

- Insider buying continues to show a bearish tone. “It remains clear that insiders are very hesitant to make long-term investments in their own shares due to continuing negative hiring trends and little to no sign of organic revenue growth,” the Pragmatic Capitalist says.

- Time for a concrete answer on financial reform, but who knows how it’ll all turn out. “Congress will do something. Voters expect it and they’ll deliver,” Mark Thoma says. “The question is whether the changes they make will have any teeth, and whether they’ll be directed at the right problems.”

- Folks may want to take today’s gains with a grain of salt. Volume is still lousy, and traders look at strong volume as a way to gauge the conviction behind a market move, our WSJ bud Matt Phillips writes at MarketBeat.

- Stocks rebound nicely today after rough few weeks, validating research from UBS and JPMorgan, each saying they aren’t worried about the bull market’s sustainability, FT’s Alphaville blog says.

- Amazon gives in to rising e-book prices. But “bear in mind that publishers will actually make less money with the Apple pricing plan,” MediaMemo blogger Peter Kafka says.

- January was a tough month for risky assets as stocks, REITs and commodities all fell substantially while bonds generally held their own, James Picerno notes at The Capital Spectator. Doesn’t mean a new bear market is beginning, but it does show the days of “strong, sustained rallies in everything” are probably over. “The money game now appears destined for a more complicated era.”

- The once-robust charity sector hit with mergers, closings. “Hit by a drop in donations and government funding in the wake of a deep recession, nonprofits—from arts councils to food banks—are undergoing a painful restructuring, including mergers, acquisitions, collaborations, cutbacks and closings,” WSJ says.

- Insider buying picked up a bit last week. but the trend of low levels of buying and continued high selling remains intact, Pragmatic Capitalist says.

- Mark Cuban offers advice on a simple way to create jobs: reduce paperwork. Small businesses and entrepreneurs should spend less time and money on lawyers and accountants and “redirect that intellectual and financial capital to the core competencies of their business,” he says.

- DVD sales are collapsing, nearly as quickly as music sales did over the last decade,” Kafka says. Not good, especially since Hollywood studios are desperately looking for new revenue streams to replace the struggling DVD (hence their big push for a 3-D boom.)

- A $100 million bonus for Goldman Sachs (GS) CEO Lloyd Blankfein? Don’t count on it, Reuters blogger Felix Salmon notes. “It frankly boggles the imagination that he’s going to get anywhere near $100 million,” Salmon says. “Goldman knows that bonuses are a hot-button issue politically, and it’s going to keep them (relatively, by its standards) modest for 2009.”

- Toyota says it’s already begun shipping a fix to the gas pedal problem involved in the recall of millions of vehicles. Time’s John Curran highlights the “Toyota Stimulus.”

- Yahoo (YHOO) and AP reach new licensing agreement; web portal will continue hosting AP articles. “The agreement could help define a core issue facing news organizations: How to deal with the Internet portals that help distribute their material but that some publishers say unfairly profit from their work,” WSJ says.

- Obama unveiling the “Volcker Rule” last week was encouraging, but there are still reasons to be skeptical, Simon Johnson says. “There are very real indications that the conversation is either superficial (on the economic side of the White House) or entirely a marketing ploy (on the political side),” he says.

- A tablet may not be Apple’s (AAPL) only major announcement at Wednesday’s event. Reports are circulating that Apple could announce the end of its AT&T (T) iPhone exclusivity deal later this week.

- Speaking of Apple, the buzz surrounding Wednesday’s event and expected unveiling of the tablet is reaching epic proportions. WSJ’s Digits blog looks at some of the bizarre tablet rumors. NYT’s David Carr is amazed at how Apple can drum up so much buzz without saying anything. And David Pogue says “The only thing we know for sure about the Apple tablet is that we don’t know anything for sure.”

- Are stocks ignoring earnings? Or has the market already priced in a strong earnings season? Bespoke weighs in.

- Disappointing existing home sales data this morning, but new home sales is what really matters for the economy, Calculated Risk says.

- Journalists, economists, bloggers and others weigh in on the troubles facing Ben Bernanke’s confirmation as Fed chairman. WSJ’s Real Time Economics has the details.

- Insider buying falls to a new low for week ending Jan. 20, while insider selling remains high. Not surprising corporate insiders are expressing little faith in their own shares. “As of now, signs of a sustained rebound in earnings and revenues remain mixed,” the Pragmatic Capitalist blog says.

- Sun Micro (JAVA) CEO Jonathan Schwartz is set to resign, leaving JAVA in hands of new owner Oracle (ORCL), Digital Daily blogger John Paczkowski reports, citing sources close to Sun.

- Tishman gives up Stuyvesant Project to its creditors in the collapse of one of the most high-profile deals of the real-estate boom, WSJ reports.

- StockTwits acquires the financial news aggregator Abnormal Returns, which is great all-around for the econoblogosphere and one-man blogs in particular, Felix Salmon says.

- Econbrowser blogger James Hamilton details how the Fed earned that $46B profit last year.

- NY Times (NYT) finally looks ready to put its site behind some sort of pay wall. Felix Salmon remains optimistic if it’s implemented correctly, Jeff Jarvis is against it and Barry Graubart is skeptical, although he admits that NYT can’t be blamed for trying.

- Big banks need to be broken up, Rick Boockstaber, senior policy adviser at the SEC, writes on his blog.

- Has the Fed really been buying stock futures since the March rally began? TrimTabs’ Charles Biderman believes the theory is possible, but Barron’s Mike Santoli calls him out. Barry Ritholtz adds his two cents at The Big Picture.

- The Tonight Show drama keeps escalating, but Mark Cuban actually praises NBCU CEO Jeff Zucker for making the bold move to shift Leno to prime time, even though it backfired.

- Insider transactions continue to remain lopsided. “As the recession on Main Street continues, the negative trends in insider buying get even worse,” the Pragmatic Capitalist says.

- GDP may sparkle, but demand still looks dull. “With the huge overhang of existing home inventory and record rental vacancies, and the ongoing repair of household balance sheets, I expect underlying demand to remain weak in 2010,” Bill McrBride writes at Calculated Risk.

- VCs starting to compete directly with M&A market. “Entrepreneurs are waiting longer to take their companies public and that’s a very good thing for everyone,” VC Fred Wilson says. “With the emergence of this new layer of late stage/primary+secondary capital, we can all wait a bit longer. And not sell out. And that’s a very good thing.”

- John Hussman looks at inflation expectations over the next decade. “From a longer-term perspective, however, I believe that inflation will be a major event in the latter part of the coming decade, with the consumer price index roughly doubling over the next ten years,” he says.

- MetLife’s in final negotiations to purchase one of AIG’s biggest international life-insurance units – Alico – for between $14 billion and $15 billion.