The social-networking location is moving aggressively to sign up more users in a circle the world while much of Silicon Valley hunkers down

By Spencer E. Ante

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As gloom descends on Silicon Valley, most startups and giants are growing cautious and cutting back. But not Facebook. The social-networking Web site sees a bleak economy as totally the more reason to press ahead with aggressive plans with a view to growth. “This is not the time for tech companies to be cutting in a backward direction. \; this is the time to be hitting the accelerator,” says Peter Thiel, a Facebook victuals clause and investor.

Facebook executives think they can use the relating to housekeeping downturn to gain ground adhering the competition. So they’re going to difficult lengths to keep user growth on track in these rough spells. The company is gearing up for more acquisitions, hiring rapidly, and rolling out new advertising programs. Rather than shear the site’s development costs, Facebook has engineers cooking up versions in languages like as Xhosa, Tagalog, and French Canadian to go in the pattern of niche audiences around the world. “We’re in this game not just in favor of five or 10 years,” says Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating official. “We’re in it for 20 to 30 years.”

To fuel growth, the company asked the Securities & Exchange Commission earlier this year by reason of an unusual exemption. Typically, private companies that go beyond 500 shareholders fust start disclosing their fiscal results publicly. (This is the law that helped push Google to go public in 2004.) Facebook is approaching that beginning, so the firm asked the SEC for a waiver that will allow it to keep hiring and handing out restricted stock without public disclosure. The SEC granted the request on Oct. 14. That be disposed help the company reach 800 employees by the close of the year, up from 400 at the cathedral of 2007.

The company is even reducing its revenue goals to pull in other thing users. In January, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook was shooting for revenues of $300 million to $350 million this year. But this spring, Zuckerberg and his board lowered the revenue target to $250 million to $300 million, say sources familiar with company fiscal resources. Thiel says engineers were shifted away from ad programs to concentrate on fresh features, languages, and other projects that will boost user growth. Even as the economy has weakened in recent months, Facebook has decided to stick with its spend-now, profit-later approach. “We still think it’s a land grab where we have to try to get to scale first,” says Thiel.

It’sitting a gutsy strategy, increasingly rare in Silicon Valley. Last month, prominent venture firm Sequoia Capital gave a presentation to its startups titled “R.I.P. Good Times,” that argued that companies must cut costs fast to survive. One Power Point slide included a skull-and-crossbones and the dispute “death spiral” to show the in a fair way fate of startups that fail to come to grips with the new being. The Sequoia explore has become accepted wisdom among Valley venture capitalists, leading to layoffs at scores of companies.

Facebook isn’t yet productive. But Thiel says the company can afford to be assailant. It has raised about $500 million and is “slightly cash-flow negative,” Thiel says. At its current scorch rate, he says, the company has enough money for three or four years. “If we stopped enlarging, we could make money, but it makes none faculty of perception for us to pause growing,” he says.

Facebook’sitting strategy stands in contrast to that of rival MySpace (NWS). Part of Rupert Murdoch’s publicly traded News Corp. (NWS), MySpace has dialed back on growth to converging-point on profits. Over the past year the site has expanded modestly, to 118 very great number users, while Facebook has besides than doubled in size, to 161 very great number users, according to research firm comScore (SCOR).

Amid a debt-deflation spiral, the governments’ greatest jeopardize is enacting stimulus measures that are too little to fight the slump

By Peter Coy

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Richard Mia

For more than six decades, through oil shocks and terrorist attacks, the world’s advanced economies have managed to expand their collective output at least a little mouthful each year. But that long lucky streak is probably about to end, a victim of the severe global credit crunch. The International Monetary Fund is now projecting that 2009 will bring the first accumulate decline in economic output in advanced economies since at least World War II.

The IMF still expects China and other developing nations to grow next year as a group, but it warns that “downside risks to putting to the end, even for the emerging economies, remain significant.” Some economists are even gloomier. “There is a very severe deleveraging which you can’t lodge,” says Anders Aslund, senior counterpart at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. “My guess is that [level] if we bear good economic policies, the world will see a [gross domestic product] commit a fault of 10%… . This is global, and it’s fierce.”

Even grant that things dress in’confidentially get that bad, it’s serene that we’re deep in uncharted territory—or at least territory that hasn’t been explored from that time the Great Depression. Economists and policymakers are floundering. Since they don’t know how stiff the recession inclination be, they slip forward’privately know how extreme their measures to combat the downturn should be. U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who has struggled to find a path for American policy, defended himself in a Nov. 18 op-ed article in The New York Times, saying: “There is no playbook for responding to turmoil we have never faced.”

The greatest risk at the moment is that governments pleasure do too little to fight the slide. BusinessWeek estimates that governments around the world have committed more than $2.6 trillion for bank bailouts and other efforts to spur growth. But so a great deal of as that may not be enough. Germany, the powerhouse of Europe, has moved only haltingly to stimulate its economy, fearing that assaulting steps might cause inflation. Holger Schmieding, chief European economist at Bank of America (BAC) in London, says Germany’sitting tax-cut map “is such small, I wouldn’t even estimate it.” Japan, once once more in recession, remains unable to muster the energy to break out of an off-and-on play that dates end to 1990. Britain, Ireland, and other nations with full government deficits are indisposed to spend too much on motive for fear it could solicit a speculative assail on their currencies.

The U.S., where the crisis originated, may also be moving over slowly given the depth of the slump, many economists reply. Washington is unlikely to pass a substantial stimulus package until after the new Congress and President take position in January. On Nov. 18, Treasury’sitting Paulson clashed by lawmakers who be lacking him to spend some of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program on aid to homeowners. Paulson said TARP is supposed to hold up financial institutions and “was not intended to be an economic stimulus or an economic recovery package.”

The problem by slow or tentative measures is that they could allow the worldwide downturn to gain a moment that would be even harder to reverse later. The lack of sensitive and massive intervention may have been single of the reasons why the Great Depression, which began in 1929, lingered until the outbreak of World War II revved up the war machines.

An unexampled debt overhang is what makes this downturn both severe and hard to forecast. Consumers, separately in the U.S., overborrowed to purchase houses, cars, toys, and vacations. The bubble in housing prices misled lenders into thinking the loans were well collateralized. A similar dynamic was at work in other kinds of secured lending. Now the spiral has reversed. The declining value of collateral is causing lenders to withdraw credit. That forces borrowers to sell assets to awake turn into money, pushing prices down further in a vicious cycle.

But Republicans act of asking whether $25 billion is sufficiency to save the Big Three automakers—and if they can do plenty to save themselves

By David Kiley

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The prime executives of U.S. automakers struck out with Congress this week. Despite spending other than eight hours testifying put on Capitol Hill, they are going family without the $25 billion bailout budget they so desperately need. They elect get one more dangle at the money on Dec. 8. But even if they are apt to get the votes they need, the riches probably isn’t enough to save them.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday, Nov. 20, that General Motors (GM), Ford Motor (F), and Chrysler will regard to demonstrate "financial viability" as profitable to the degree that responsibility for how the money will be spent and that it can be paid back.

"Until they show us the lay out, we cannot show them the money," Pelosi said Thursday.

But the finances of GM and Chrysler in particular are so fragile that many rely upon the $25 billion would only be a first installment. "What would you do with the money? Where would it go? And granting that sales dress in’face to face improve next year, won’confidentially you sure be back asking for more?" demanded Representative Donald Manzullo (R-Ill.) at Wednesday’session House Financial Services Committee hearing. Senator Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said Thursday: "It’sitting going to be throwing good standard of value after depressing.…I don’t believe they [the Big Three] have a business model that works."

GM, for example, reported $16.2 billion in cash at the end of the third quarter. It worn out $6 billion of its coin reserves in that cut to pieces, and it’s burning about $2 billion a month despite suspending many coming product programs to conserve cash. Even suppose that GM’s cash burn rate drops in moiety and it gets $10 billion to $12 billion in loans, it could be close to collapse before the end of next year.

Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli told Congress he needs $5 billion to $7 billion of the $25 billion on the syllabus. At the end of the third quarter, Chrysler had $6.1 billion in cash, no more than during that July-September termination, it spent $3 billion more than it took in. After an infusion of loans, Chrysler would have about $12 billion. But Chrysler’s product lineup is much less competitive than its rivals, with poor quality scores and great number more soft-selling SUVs than fuel-efficient cars. Moreover, its traditional buyers have lower credit scores than in the greatest degree, and the company is harder hit than GM or Ford by the credit crunch.

Ford is in better shape. But a failure of either Chrysler or GM—and the suppliers that would be taken down with them, warn many analysts—would likely drive Ford to fail as well.

Dogging altogether three companies is the bad publicity around them and talk of possible bankruptcy, which turns let us go. a lot of consumers already spooked by the plummeting stock market, huge layoffs, and grisly day-to-day economic news. "Until the Congress acts and in consequence President-elect Barack Obama goes out and encourages those who are buying a car to trust Detroit, you are going to see a lot of buyers on the sidelines or going to companies that aren’t threatening to go under," says competent marketing consultant Dennis Keene. "Consumers are much more emotional than rational when it comes to a big-ticket item like a car."

Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said Thursday the legislation he hopes to bring to a vote in a lame-duck session next month is a revision of the 2007 energy bill that granted the automakers $25 billion in loans to retool factories to produce more fuel-efficient vehicles. The revisal would make lend money available right away that ability otherwise take years to draw down. In exchange, the automakers would have to keep to their plans to proceed those vehicles—and replenish the fund as they pay back the loans.

Repeated attacks from in the open air on NASA computers and Web sites are causing consternation among officials and stirring national security concerns

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Space Shuttle Discovery preparing as far while concerns launch in July 2005 NASA/SSPL/The Image Works

By Keith Epstein and Ben Elgin

America’s military and scientific institutions—along with the defense industry that serves them—are being robbed of secret knowledge onward satellites, rocket engines, launch systems, and even the Space Shuttle. The thieves occasion via the Internet from Asia and Europe, penetrating U.S. computer networks. Some of the intruders are suspected of having ties to the governments of China and Russia, interviews and documents exhibition. Of aggregate the ensign armorial of the U.S. form of sovereignty, few are in addition vulnerable than NASA, the civilian space agency, which also works closely with the Pentagon and American intelligence services.

In April 2005, cyber-burglars slipped into the digital network of NASA’s supposedly super-secure Kennedy Space Center east of Orlando, according to internal NASA documents reviewed by the agency of BusinessWeek and never before disclosed. While hundreds of government workers were preparing for a launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery that July, a malignant software program surreptitiously gathered data from computers in the measureless Vehicle Assembly Building, where the Shuttle is maintained. The violated network is managed by a joint venture owned by NASA contractors Boeing (BA) and Lockheed Martin (LMT).

Undetected by the room agency or the companies, the program, called stame.exe, sent a still-undetermined amount of information well-nigh the Shuttle to a computer system in Taiwan. That nation is often used by the Chinese government as a digital way station, according to U.S. security specialists.

By December 2005, the rupture had spread to a NASA satellite direction mingled in suburban Maryland and to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, home of Mission Control. At least 20 gigabytes of compressed premises—the equivalent of 30 million pages—were routed from the Johnson center to the system in Taiwan, NASA documents show. Much of the data came from a computer server allied to a network that tracks malfunctions that could threaten the International Space Station.

Seven months after the initial April intrusion, NASA officials and employees at the Boeing-Lockheed venture finally discovered the emanate of information to Taiwan. Investigators halted every part of work at the Vehicle Assembly Building for several days, combed hundreds of computer systems, and tallied the harm. NASA documents reviewed by BusinessWeek practise not refer to any specific interference by operations of the Shuttle, which was aloft from July 26 to Aug. 9, or the Space Station, which orbits 250 miles above the temporal things.

The startling episode in 2005 added to a pattern of significant electronic intrusions dating at in the smallest degree to the late 1990s. These invasions went far farther than the vandalism of hackers who periodically deface government Web sites or shirk into computer systems just to show they can chouse it. One reason NASA is so vulnerable is that many of its thousands of computers and Web sites are built to be accessible to outside researchers and contractors. Another reason is that the agency at times seems more concerned about minimizing public embarrassment over data theft than preventing breaches in the first place.

In 1998 a U.S.-German dependant known as ROSAT, used for peering into deep space, was rendered useless after it turned suddenly toward the sun. NASA investigators later determined that the accident was linked to a cyber-intrusion at the Goddard Space Flight Center in the Maryland confines of Washington. The interloper sent accusation to computers in Moscow, NASA documents show. U.S. investigators fear the data ended up in the hands of a Russian search out agency.

The bar’s sinking shares indicate investors have lost confidence in CEO Vikram Pandit and it may be headed for a sale or another bailout

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Pedestrians demean one’s self by a Citigroup building in New York City. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

By Mara Der Hovanesian

Investors are quickly losing faith in Citigroup (C). Shares of the company, once the largest and mightiest U.S. bank by estate and market value, have fallen 66% in November, and finished down 1.85, to 4.55, on Nov. 20. The last time the shares traded that low was 14 years ago. While the stock sank, the recompense soared on its credit deficiency swaps, which measure the cost of insuring Citi’s offence—another worrisome symbol. The mart woes are raising intellectual examination that some sort of government interposition or major outside investment may be requirement.

Says William Fitzpatrick, an equity analyst at Optique Capital Management: "Clearly the solvency egress is in the rear without ceasing the table."

Citi is doing its best to serenity investors, reiterating that the bound isn’t in critical condition. Citi issued a formal statement upon Thursday, Nov. 20, sententious precept that it "has a very strong capital and fluidity position and a unique global franchise. We are focused on executing our strategy, including our targeted expense and legacy asset reductions, and we believe the benefits will hold being seen past time."

Indeed, Citi has bolstered the capital on its books in recent weeks. Less than two weeks past, the bank—which is now fifth-largest in terms of assets—received $25 billion from the founded on government, one of nine commitments made to expanded banks for a piece of the $700 billion bailout. Citi also believed new assurances from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, once the bank’s largest shareholder, who said publicly he intended to enlarge his stake by $350 the great body of the people, to 5%, from less than 4%, and pledged "full and complete support to Citi management."

After the Nov. 20 mart close, analyst Richard X. Bove of Ladenburg Thalmann (LTS) dashed from a bill reiterating his buy rating for Citi, arguing that the bank has positive net free cash flows, a strong capital plebeian, and a diversified business base. Bove says in the end "cash flows are all that matters" and that it would "take a Depression every bit as large and long as the 1930s debacle to jar this company’s viability.…I would exist a buyer of this stock."

Still, the market shrugged off the support and Chief Executive Vikram Pandit continues to lose market confidence. Says Len Blum, managing director of Westwood Capital: "I slip on’t think that Pandit has really shown the place of traffic that he has any direction. They are deviation from the way into an also-ran."

Losing the Wachovia (WB) acquisition to rival Wells Fargo (WFC) in October was "a big blow" to Citi, says Blum, and very lately "every one of its employees is absolutely distracted for fear of loss their jobs. They’re not calling adhering accounts and clients." On Nov. 17, Pandit announced a plan to eliminate 52,000 jobs (BusinessWeek.com, 11/18/08) as part of a program to cut expenses 20%. William B. Smith of Smith Asset Management in New York says it’s not enough and has renewed his call for a breakup: "The provision and management have breached their fiduciary bounden duty to shareholders and employees. Can [anyone] still justify Pandit?"

Mostly, the market is spooked by two large unknowns: What is the extent of damage and losses in the bank’s derivatives portfolio, and how unprincipled will the consumer downturn continue to pressure results?

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A six-lane replacement bridge for Highway 520 looks increasingly hard to afford, based on recently made known cost estimates Thursday by the state Department of Transportation.

The new numbers ostensibly favor the cheapest of three leading options for every departure to the University of Washington: a larger Montlake alternation plus a second Montlake Boulevard drawbridge, to allow for other thing traffic and high-occupancy lanes going north and south.

But after more than 10 years of civil arguments over bridge design, it’sitting foolish to assume anything.

All three options, each with pair car-pool lanes, be superior to the $3.9 billion target set by Gov. Christine Gregoire. In January, the governor and state DOT leaders asserted that by accelerating pontoon rendering and simplifying design, they could hold costs from the top to the bottom of.

That’s no longer the case.

New features and spikes in material prices boosted costs, aforesaid David Dye, envoy DOT director. Some structures, including noise walls, need more concrete and steel than expected.

The design controversies point of concentration on how to design the bridge on the Seattle shoreline. Those choices would consequence in the following require to be paid for the whole 520 passage, to Interstate 405:

• The Montlake give and take mutually option, $4.6 billion.

• A high exit build a bridge over over Union Bay to Husky Stadium, $5.1 billion.

• A tunneled exit underneath Montlake Cut, $6.6 billion.

A 34-person mediation dispose split Thursday over which plan is best.

Seattle City Council President Richard Conlin blasted the cheaper Montlake interchange version. “It will be very perplexing for the Seattle City Council to come out in favor of an choice that offloads freeway traffic onto our neighborhood streets,” he said.

The state hopes to open a new bridge by 2016.

The return side looks bleak. A total $1.9 billion has been earmarked from recite gas taxes, federal bridge grants and other known sources. Only by tolling both the Highway 520 and I-90 floating bridges (which requires lifting a prohibition in state law) could the state raise more than $2 billion and arrive close to affording the least expensive option.

The state will study all three, look for savings, and consider other funding, said Ron Judd, higher monitor to Gregoire. “Do we do it as an entire proposal, or do we achieve it in phases, and how do we pay for that?”

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OLYMPIA — Legislative leaders may have a way to build support for replacing the deteriorating Alaskan Way Viaduct and Highway 520 bridge: Call it a jobs package.

“There’sitting no question it’s a jobs bill,” said Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano Island, seat of authority of the Senate Transportation Committee. “If you want to create jobs, you build matter. It’s a no-brainer.”

There will subsist a lot more talk like that in the coming weeks and months as the Legislature grapples with couple essential transportation projects that cost billions of dollars — at a time when a recession appears unavoidable and the state operating budget has a $5 billion lair.

That’s the shortfall lawmakers last will and testament have to close when they start crafting a starting anew two-year budget in January. It will mean deep and to be expected agonizing cuts in state spending — but not when it comes to transportation projects.

Transportation has a separate budget with its allow source of revenue — primarily the gasoline tax, which is more stable than the sales censure.

“We’re not impacted by the shortfall in the operating budget,” said Rep. Judy Clibborn, D-Mercer Island, professorship of the House Transportation Committee. “Our projects are moving forward taken in the character of scheduled.”

The quality released new cost estimates Thursday with a view to the viaduct and 520 floating bridge. Viaduct options range in cost from $800 million to build a surface boulevard along the central waterfront to $3.5 billion for a bored subterranean passage under Western Avenue. Those costs slip on’confidentially hold more than $1 billion already committed to construction steady the north and south ends.

The Highway 520 project is now expected to cost about $4.6 billion to $6.6 billion, depending on how a Seattle interchange is designed.

Both highways are nearing the expiration of their design life, and could fail in a major earthquake. The Highway 520 floating bridge could sink in a severe windstorm. For years, politicians and the public have argued immersing in what state to move folks from one side both corridors without destroying the neighborhoods alongside.

Legislative leaders said they’re confident they will now move ahead.

In more ways, the economic downturn helps sell the projects, lawmakers declared.

“We’ve been talking about it as the economic stimulus that volition help the operating budget if we can take care of our projects moving,” Clibborn said.

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WASHINGTON — Barack Obama was famously able to impose discipline and control over his presidential campaign, but it didn’t capture long for him to discover running a transition is quite different.

Top aides to the president-elect had hoped to take a methodical approach to selecting and unveiling their new team, starting with the announcements of top national-security and household players in a few words after Thanksgiving. But leaks and rumors be delivered of disrupted that plan, suggesting the “no drama Obama” mantra may not be as operational in Washington considered in the state of it was at campaign headquarters in Chicago.

Obama has not officially announced any Cabinet appointments, but transition officials have reluctantly confirmed that former Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota would be nominated as Health and Human Services secretary, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano is Obama’s leading select for the Department of Homeland Security and Eric Holder will likely subsist named attorney general.

Meanwhile, the fate of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., remains up in the look, by varying reports adhering whether she order accept the job of secretary of state that she discussed with Obama last week in Chicago. And late Thursday, aides were confronted with unconfirmed confabulation that retired Gen. James Jones could be tapped for national-security counsellor.

In the example of Chicago billionaire Penny Pritzker, leaks apparently proved hurtful to her getting a Cabinet job. An architect of Obama’s record-shattering fundraising operation, Pritzker emerged as the top superior to incline the Commerce Department. Sources close to the Hyatt hotels heiress said she was solemnly interested in the job, and Obama allies said the president-elect, who considers Pritzker a close friend and who views her as a stellar manager, was eager to make an offer.

But as her name began to circulate, sources close to the campaign said Pritzker came to realize she could not extract herself from the vast and complex profession obligations that make her one of the native land’s wealthiest individuals. Thursday afternoon, she took herself out of wrangling.

“Speculation has grown that I am a candidate for scribe of communication. I am not,” Pritzker reported. “I think I can best serve our nation in my current capacity: building businesses, creating jobs and working to strengthen our economy.”

Pritzker is unit of three cousins who manage their clan’session fortune, which includes Hyatt hotels, casinos and other ventures. She oversees a chain of luxury retirement communities, an airport parking company, a realty group and the credit-rating agency TransUnion.

The talk of a Cabinet postman, what any. would require Senate confirmation, had cast a spotlight on her secretive family’session empire and her spent business dealings, including episodes that might prove politically embarrassing.

Earlier in her career, Pritzker was involved in running and overseeing Superior Bank, in a Chicago suburb, which focused on bundling subprime mortgages into securities, the practice that later helped set off the current financial crisis. The institution collapsed in 2001.

Moreover, Pritzker’sitting race is renowned for finding ways to avoid paying taxes on its wealth. The Pritzkers were pioneers in using tax loopholes to shelter their holdings from the IRS, and many of their dealings have never been made persons.

By considering Napolitano to run the Department of Homeland Security, Obama is rewarding one of his earliest high-profile supporters and enlisting a border-state regulator with law-enforcement credentials to oversee a sprawling force with jurisdiction over immigration mode of management and family security.

Information from The New York Times is included in this report.

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Boeing transactions warned workers Thursday that employment will fall in 2009 and that layoffs are possible, an ominous sign that even the previously booming aerospace sector is staggering from the worldwide economic downturn.

A memo from Boeing’s Executive Council said the company next year anticipates lower military expenditure and a potential global recession in the airline industry.

“We mould be agreeable to aggressively to these affair realities,” Boeing Chairman and Chief Executive Jim McNerney wrote in the memo.

The memo said that “while no firm estimate has been made, the employment decline could exceed Boeing’s mean proportion annual wearing away rate of 4 to 5 percent and volition be composed of a mix of normal rubbing away, hiring freezes and layoffs.”

That seems like little other thing than initial belt-tightening, compared with many other industries.

But top aerospace analyst Richard Aboulafia of the Teal Group said a more substantial Boeing downturn is clearly on the way.

A be congealed in the credit markets and falling passenger numbers have crimped airlines’ buying power, and the most ambitious jet buyers — Middle Eastern carriers — have been undercut by the plunging estimation of oil.

Teal Group’s most optimistic scenario forecasts production dropping from 2010 on, falling in all parts of 15 percent by 2013. A ramp-up of the repaired 787 Dreamliner would cushion the total production decline from acquirement any worse.

Worst-case scenario

In the worst-case scenario, conceited the honor freeze doesn’t thaw, Aboulafia predicts a production drop and layoffs likely for example early as next fall. In that case, the situation could worsen rapidly and the sediments is unpredictable.

The economic downturn has hit with massive force across industries from monetary theory and homebuilding to automobiles and unfinished materials. But despite a series of lengthening delays and a two-month Machinists strike, until now Boeing’s business appeared rock-solid.

In the first quarter of this year, Boeing’s commercial division raked in not quite $1 billion in service on revenues of more than $8 billion.

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NEW YORK — Wall Street is experiencing some relief, through shares opening sharply higher, following a report that a pounded-down Citigroup Inc. might put itself up for sale.

That prospect and moves by means of bargain-hunters after two days of imbrue selling is helping stocks show a rebound in the first and foremost minutes after the opening bell Friday.

The emporium’sitting optimism about Citi and the financial sector overall follows a Wall Street Journal report that Citigroup is considering the possibility of selling intellect of itself or even the entire party.

The Dow Jones industrial average is up 150, or 2 percent, at the 7,700 level after a two-day slide of more than 10 percent. The other major indexes are showing similar percentage gains.