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PHILADELPHIA — When President-elect Obama strode into Congress Hall on Tuesday beneath a bust of Benjamin Franklin, 48 governors rose and applauded, illustrating the unusual degree to which Obama has assumed the paraphernalia of public predominance amid the economic crisis.

Speaking at the start of the kind of session usually convened by sitting presidents, Obama told the governors he wanted them to help “draft and form” a multibillion-dollar stimulus plan that also would aid states struggling with deficits as demands rise in succession social-safety-net programs.

“We are not going to be hampered through empiricism in trying to earn this country back on track,” Obama said. “We want to figure out what works.” He pledged a partnership with states, saying he would not allow his administration to “obtain infected with Washington-itis.”

Obama, joined by Vice President-elect Joseph Biden, has said he hopes Congress will have economic-recovery legislation prompt for him to foreboding soon after taking office Jan. 20. Aides said the cost could touch in extent $700 billion in excess two years, on top of a similar purport already committed to prop up fiscal institutions.

As part of the package, governors have asked for more federal help paying for soundness care for the destitute and disabled, extending unemployment insurance and expanding access to nutriment stamps, along with up to $136 billion worth of infrastructure projects such as road and bridge repairs to create jobs.

From 1790 to 1800, Congress Hall served as the U.S. Capitol, with the Senate meeting upstairs and the House in the larger downstairs room where Tuesday’sitting conversation took place.

“I’ve got to shake everybody’s hand, so please be patient,” Obama announced to the degree that he entered the room, drawing laughter. He proceeded to do so.

Obama and Biden left after the nearly two-hour auditory, which several governors described in the manner that prolific.

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, landlord of the gathering as chairman of the National Governors Association, said Obama was supportive of the governors’ requests but did not make any specific commitments. Participants discussed general principles rather than specific dollar amounts, he uttered.

Not all the governors were on board with massive amounts of new expenditure.

Republican Mark Sanford, of South Carolina, said, “We’ve been told over a number of months that this stimulus or that stimulus will turn the good housewifery around, and they haven’t worked.”

The assemblage drew 48 of the 59 invited governors and governors-elect, including those from territories. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, was among those present, along through resurrection GOP stars Govs. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota.

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LUBBOCK, Texas — Texas Tech strong director Gerald Myers says the school is negotiating a contract extension through Mike Leach, amongst reports that the Red Raiders coach has met with the University of Washington ready the Huskies’ top job.

Myers wouldn’t confirm or deny newspaper reports that Leach was in Seattle this week to parley to UW officials. Myers said Leach didn’t seek permission for each interview and that he hadn’t been contacted by Washington.

Leach didn’t return a call seeking remark Wednesday.

Leach has two years remaining on a five-year contract and is making $1.75 million this accustom.

The Seattle Times, Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Lubbock Avalanche-Journal reported the Leach-UW meeting, citing unidentified sources.

Major indexes gained more than 3% as investors sought bargains after Monday’s ugly sell-off

By Will Andrews

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U.S. stocks rose Tuesday following Monday’s herculean stock market sell-off that represented the fourth largest point decline on record as far as concerns the Dow industrials. The broader market was boosted through energy shares, select financials, and General Electric Co. (GE).

Bargain hunters scooped shares that were battered in Monday’s market rout, notes S&P MarketScope.

On Tuesday, the Dow Jones industrial average gained 270.00 points, or 3.31%, to 8,419.09. The broad S&P 500 index added 32.60 points, or 3.99%, to 848.81. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite director rose 51.73 points, or 3.70%, to 1,449.80.

On the New York Stock Exchange, 24 stocks were higher in price for every 7 that bring to the ground. The ratio on the Nasdaq was 20-8 positive.

Bonds were higher. The dollar index was weaker. Gold futures were up. Oil futures were subside.

European funds rebounded Tuesday from losses in the antecedent session, with major indexes gaining 1.41% in London, 2.35% in Paris, and 3.12% in Frankfurt. Asian equities finished with losses, with Tokyo public securities tumbling 6.35%, Hong Kong falling 4.98%, and Shanghai right side by means of 0.26%.

The Big Three U.S. automakers — General Motors (GM), Ford Motor Co. (F), and Chrysler LLC — are scheduled to submit to Congress today their plans for remaking themselves with powers that be money. GM, Ford and Chrysler are seeking $25 billion in government aid. Shares of GM and Ford rose Tuesday.

In an interview from his drive to Washington, the Ford CEO calls the beating of latest month "a learning continued"

By David Kiley

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Ford CEO Alan Mulally bombed last month in hearings near the front of the Senate (BusinessWeek.com, 11/18/08) and House of Representatives in what one. Detroit’s Big Three automakers were asking for up to $25 billion in loans. Mulally’s performance was hurt in large part by the fact that greatest number members of Congress treated the CEOs of General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler as if they were quite in the same boat (or corporate jet).

Ford (F), in fact, not only has more cash on hand than GM (GM) or Chrysler. It says it may not need restraint money at all to outlast the recession. Safety and quality ratings have been running higher than those of its domestic rivals, according to Consumer Reports and other third-party rating entities. And the company is about to introduce Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan hybrid cars in early 2009 that beat the Toyota Camry cross-bred by about 5 mpg.

But admitting that Ford’s story is a bit better than those of GM or Chrysler, its executives admit that the companies’ fortunes are intertwined. They be pendent on the similar suppliers, and if GM or Chrysler goes bankrupt, it will take more of those companies down with it. That, in exigence, would play havoc with Ford’sitting ability to maintain production and sales.

Mulally made two big mistakes before Congress: Along with the other auto CEOs, he flew to Washington in a sequestered jet to ask for taxpayer loans. And when asked if he should take a cut in the $22 million compensation package he got last year, Mulally said: "I have an opinion I’m all right where I am."

On Tuesday, Dec. 2, Mulally was driving in a Ford Escape Hybrid, along with three other Ford executives, for two more days of Washington hearings, which start Thursday. In a phone conversation with BusinessWeek auto scribe David Kiley, Mulally took a break from his turkey-salad sandwich to discuss the require he and Ford face.

So, you aren’t driving right now?We are rotating driving, limit they tell me I shouldn’t talk to you while driving, so, no.

You are a wealthy, successful guy. Are you corrosive bad road food and coffee from cessation areas like Breezewood, Pa.?I didn’cheek by jowl know about Breezewood control they told me about it. They tell me we have to stop there and procreate our pictures taken. We stopped at a dynamite service plaza and we bought a little boxed lunch.

Were you taken aback by how you were received in Washington (BusinessWeek.com, 11/19/08) last month? I was surprised. But going from one side it and reflecting on it, I really expert a lot. The enormous issues we have in the uncultivated, the economy, the fiscal crisis and the securities crisis, and unemployment, consumer confidence. And all these things where everyone is trying to figure wanting the most important created being to stabilize the economy. So my rise in value for the frustration, and my compassion for the thoughtfulness that great number of the Congress people had, positively went up.

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NEW YORK — The Institute for Supply Management’s monthly-manufacturing index dropped to a 26-year low Monday — another dire read on the economy that helped send stocks sharply lower in the U.S. and Europe.

The found’sitting report, which comes used up the first business day of the month, is the first economic indicator from the prior month. It gives a sense of whether new orders, inventories and office are influencing up or down at the nation’s factories, and has dilatory been seen as a bellwether of the overall economy.

Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisors in Holland, Pa., said he follows the index closely. “I be enough, most economists do, the Fed does, everybody does.”

The main reason why, he said, is that over the years, it’s bestowed a precious job of telling economists how well the manufacturing sector is doing.

“Right now, it’sitting telling us it’session in very bad shape,” he said. “It’s hard to argue with them.”

For somebody in the way that powerful, it’s a pleasing without being striking small measure and estimate — just 350 purchasing managers. Even though they apply to join, its average response rate is 60 percent. The institute releases no margin of error.

Some questions and answers end for end the index:

Q. What is the Institute for Supply Management and how does it master its data?

A. The Tempe, Ariz.-based institute is a trade group of purchasing managers. These people do more than keep the washroom stocked with paper towels and the supply closets ready with new pens.

In manufacturing, purchasing managers be seized of a lot of power, buying the raw materials their companies depend attached, everything from rolled steel to miniature batteries. The exemplar behind the exponent is that they have their fingers on the pulse of where the manufacturing sector is heading.

Adding more efficacy to the survey is the fact that most of the managers on the array work with respect to larger companies, Naroff said. They drudge in 18 industries, including printing, furniture, electrical furniture and bills of exchange products.

They provide anonymous responses to a monthly online questionnaire that’s open the first sum of two units or three weeks of the month, according to Dave Schultz, resource-center manager at the begin. Managers are encouraged to ask others in their company touching business terms before filling out the survey, which takes about 10 minutes to complete.

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NEW YORK — The old way to get to Carnegie Hall was application, practice, practice.

The newly come way? YouTube, YouTube, YouTube.

Borrowing from “American Idol,” the online video site announced plans Monday for a YouTube Symphony Orchestra, featuring a collaboration of wannabe musicians with Carnegie Hall, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, composer Tan Dun and others.

Through Jan. 28, musicians can submit entries as they perform couple videos: a bring into view of their musical talents and an interpretation of an original be in action by Tan, who won an original-score Academy Award as being 2000’session “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”

A panel of experts from some of the world’s leading orchestras will narrow the field. YouTube users will then vote for the winners, who will be announced March 2.

In April, those selected will be flown to New York to participate in a three-day workshop with Thomas, culminating in a Carnegie Hall performance on April 15 of the sort of Tan calls his “Internet Symphony No. 1 — Eroica.”

Clips of the video entries of Tan’s piece — which immodestly shares the name of some of Beethoven’s most famous works — will have existence woven together to create a living YouTube symphony.

“This thing is huge,” Thomas, music director of the San Francisco Symphony, said in an interview Monday. “Five months from now, I know that we’re doing something. Exactly who’s doing it, I don’t apprehend. Exactly what it is, I don’face to face know. So my ability to tell you exactly what’s going to turn up on that day — at the moment — is: I don’confidentially be sure. That’s part of the adventure of the total thing.”

The promulgation heralds the commencement of a global initiative between YouTube and the classical-music world with the enthusiastic participation of similar luminaries similar to Thomas and the pianist Lang Lang, and many elite orchestras, including the London Symphony.

It’s a stark melding of high and low improvement, complete with the “Idol”-style competition.

“The potential of YouTube is to bring classical music closer to family’s lives so that it’session something that they can stretch forth out to more easily,” aforesaid Thomas, who also plans to use YouTube to helper tell the annals of classical music.

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It’s Menton Week at Fort Lewis, and that means the 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne) is celebrating.

On Monday, family day, relatives of Special Forces soldiers not only saw a demonstration of small-arms weapons, they got to shoot more, too.

Today, a wreath-laying ceremony is scheduled, and on Wednesday, teams of combined U.S. and Canadian forces will compete in helicopter rappelling and rifle marksmanship at the shameful.

The week’s events lead up to the 64th Menton Day, which commemorates the inactivation of the U.S.-Canadian elite First Special Service Force upon the body Dec. 5, 1944, in Menton, France.

That one, known as the “Devil’s Brigade” during World War II, was one of the first and foremost Special Forces units activated. Its mission was to parachute into enemy-occupied territory and destroy vital Axis installations. It logged a extraordinary enroll of unconventional operations at the back of enemy lines.

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In a mass layoff that also could shake Seattle’s real-estate emporium, JPMorgan Chase is cutting about 80 percent of the Seattle work force at Washington Mutual.

About 3,400 mostly high-paid headquarters employees will be let movement, while workers at WaMu’s 185 Washington branches command keep their jobs.

As it shrinks staff, JPMorgan will empty most of the leased extension in downtown Seattle used by WaMu, the biggest occupant of downtown duty property. It may but also devoid a boastful piece of its 2-year-old WaMu Center headquarters tower, now owned by JPMorgan.

“We are going to shape a great company for the throughout run. Unfortunately, that entails tough decisions in the short stretch,” said JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who visited Seattle this week for the foremost time since his bank bought most of WaMu’s assets after federal regulators seized the profit Sept. 25.

One of Dimon’s big messages to incorporated and civic leaders Monday was that JPMorgan next year give by will maintain WaMu’sitting 2008 charitable donations of $2.65 million to Washington state nonprofits, primarily in Seattle.

That’s little solace to WaMu employees, some of whom feel they were misled by Dimon and his cadre of New York bankers.

Right afterwards WaMu was bought, said undivided person in the credit-risk department who learned Monday she is conscious laid off, “we went from conference call to conference call hearing, ‘We really love you guys, we’re going to keep the majority of the people and work to breed people jobs in other areas.’

“I expected to at least have somebody converse to me about which could I do and what am I interested in,” said the employee, who spoke on class of anonymity.

JPMorgan executives should be obliged made clear they wanted for the greatest part the workers in WaMu branches, not the headquarters, she said.

Only about 20 percent of WaMu’s nationwide work force of 43,200 is being laid off, bank officials said Monday.

JPMorgan, known for cutting costs after making acquisitions, slashed more deeply after buying investment bank Bear Stearns last summer. It offered jobs to only 6,500 of Bear’sitting 14,000 workers, and too cut 2,000 JPMorgan positions.

Biggest hit