Bernard Hickey details the key news overnight in 90 seconds at 9am, including comments from US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke that the US economy continued to face 'formidable headwinds' from a weak employment market and tight bank credit that meant any economic recovery next year would be modest. Inflation was also likely to fall, he pointed out. Many took these comments to mean the Fed will keep its Official Cash Rate lower for longer, which boosted the Dow, Bloomberg reported.
Meanwhile the cost of bailing out the US banks looks likely to be US$200 billion lower than expected and Barack Obama is looking at using that 'TARP' money for a second stimulus package to boost jobs, the WSJ reported.
Back in Wellington, Hanover Finance's Mark Hotchin faced angry investors, including one lady who blamed him for her husband's death from cancer in the following terms, as reported by the Dominion Post:
When Raymond McPherson was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, the money he had carefully saved for a "very rainy day" should have paid for his treatment. Almost two years later his distraught wife, Sheila, of Days Bay, places the blame for his death squarely at the feet of failed finance company Hanover. Yesterday she told a meeting of investors in Wellington how she begged Hanover directors, including founder Mark Hotchin, to return the money her family needed for stem cell treatment. They had refused and Mr McPherson, 67, died in December 2008. "We wrote a letter to Hanover directors begging. I have never begged in my life, begging to get our funds back to be able to get my husband to America to get a stem cell transplant, which was the only option ... and you denied my request at that," she told directors. "How callous and how calculating. You deserve to rot, and I hope that you never have a family member go through what our family has had to go through. This is life and death that we are talking about here, and you took my husband, father, and grandfather away from us."
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