1 15 2009

Banks in Europe and the United States faced fresh doubts about their ability to ride out a global financial crisis which is expected to prompt a European Central Bank interest rate cut later on Thursday.

Shares in Bank of America and Citigroup, two of America's biggest banks, tumbled in a new crisis of confidence over whether they have enough capital to cover losses from toxic assets and global recession.

"The large banks in the United States are not lending, and they're desperate to conserve capital," said Dan Alpert at Westwood Capital in New York. "Banks only remain going concerns because the federal government is topping up their equity."

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Japan's largest bank, said on Thursday it lost at least $3.2 billion on its securities portfolio in the third quarter, hurt by its heavy exposure to Japan's languishing stock market.

Japanese banks had little exposure to the risky end of the U.S. home loan market, whose collapse prompted the worst financial crisis in 80 years, but they have since been battered by a savage downturn in share prices.

A profit warning from Germany's Deutsche Bank on Wednesday and a prediction HSBC may need fresh capital also shook confidence in two major European banks previously credited with dodging the worst of the fallout.

Citigroup, whose shares dived 23 percent on Wednesday, plans to report quarterly results on Friday and analysts are looking for a fifth straight multibillion-dollar loss.

The bank was also expected to provide details of a reorganization of the company designed to ensure its survival.

Bank of America is close to receiving billions of dollars of support from the U.S. government, a source familiar with the matter said, as it tries to digest Merrill Lynch, the investment bank it bought on January 1, which has billions in troubled assets ranging from commercial real estate to subprime mortgages.

Citigroup has already taken $45 billion in government funds while Bank of America and Merrill have received $25 billion.

There is no relief in sight, warned Jamie Dimon, chief executive of rival JPMorgan Chase & Co, which reports its own fourth quarter results later on Thursday.

"The worst of the economic situation is not yet behind us. It looks as if it will continue to deteriorate for most of 2009," he told the Financial Times.

The crisis claimed another big scalp on Wednesday -- Canada's Nortel Networks, North America's biggest telephone equipment maker, filed for bankruptcy.

ECB TO CUT

Data across the developed world pointing to a deepening recession and fears that more public money may be needed to keep banks afloat weighed on financial markets.

European stocks lost ground for a seventh session running, with Anglo Irish Bank, BNP Paribas and HSBC among the biggest losers.

The yen, which tends to gain from its perceived safety in times of market stress, climbed and Tokyo's Nikkei share average slipped close to 5 percent after Japan's core machinery orders fell at a record pace in November.

The crunch began in 2007, when bank lending dried up because of huge losses on U.S. home loans. It took a sharp turn for the worse with the collapse of U.S. bank Lehman Brothers last September and has now pushed much of the world into recession.

Euro zone policymakers have been slower than counterparts in the United States, Japan and Britain to lower interest rates.

But a sharp German contraction in last year's final quarter and a plunge in euro zone industrial output in November has raised expectations the ECB will cut deeply.

"The data flow does tell a fairly consistent picture, which is unfortunately very downbeat," said Dresdner Kleinwort economist Rainer Guntermann, who sees a half point cut to 2.0 percent.

Japanese data showed core machinery orders fell a record 16.2 percent on the month in November to a two-decade low, while wholesale inflation hit a four-year low, flagging the risk of deflation.

Deflation -- when price falls and weak demand feed each other in a vicious downward spiral -- would risk turning recession into depression.

The global slowdown has hit hard in Japan, with big firms like carmaker Toyota and electronics firm Sony slashing production and cutting jobs as export orders dry up.

Nissan Motor Co the country's third-largest car maker, is set to post an annual operating loss, a company source said. The company had forecast a profit.

The Supreme Court said Wednesday that evidence obtained after illegal searches or arrests based on simple police mistakes may be used to prosecute criminal defendants.

The justices split 5-4 along ideological lines to apply new limits to the court's so-called exclusionary rule, which generally requires evidence to be suppressed if it results from a violation of a suspect's Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches or seizure.

The conservative majority acknowledged that the arrest of Bennie Dean Herring of Alabama — based on the mistaken belief that there was a warrant for his arrest — violated his constitutional rights, yet upheld his conviction on federal drug and gun charges.

Coffee County, Ala., sheriff's deputies found amphetamines in Herring's pockets and an unloaded gun in his truck when they conducted a search following his arrest. It turned out that the warrant from neighboring Dale County had been recalled five months earlier, but the county sheriff's computers had not been updated.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the court, said the evidence may be used "when police mistakes are the result of negligence such as that described here, rather than systemic error or reckless disregard of constitutional requirements."

Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas sided with Roberts.

In a dissent for the other four justices, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the ruling "leaves Herring, and others like him, with no remedy for violations of their constitutional rights."

Ginsburg said accurate police record-keeping is of paramount importance, particularly with the widespread use of electronic databases. Justices Stephen Breyer, David Souter and John Paul Stevens also dissented.

Herring was arrested after a Coffee sheriff's employee asked her counterpart in Dale County whether Herring, called "no stranger to law enforcement" by Roberts, was wanted in Dale. An arrest warrant had been issued in Dale, but it had been recalled by July 2004.

The sheriff's electronic records, however, showed it was still a valid warrant.

Acting on that information, Coffee County deputies arrested and searched Herring.

The Dale employee meanwhile discovered the warrant was no longer valid and called Coffee County to say so. But it was too late for Herring.

Some courts have ruled that as a deterrent to police misconduct, the fruits of a similar search may be excluded from evidence.

But the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta said that suppressing evidence in Herring's case would be unlikely to deter sloppy record keeping.

The case is Herring v. U.S., 07-513.

Banks in Europe and the United States faced fresh doubts about their ability to ride out a global financial crisis which is expected to prompt a European Central Bank interest rate cut