Financial Update for April 13, 2009

Banks, oils power TSX to fifth weekly gain

"We had some pretty dismal jobs numbers in Canada as unemployment rose to 8%, but that's been overshadowed by positive sentiment surrounding the financial sector," said Elvis Picardo, analyst and strategist at Global Securities in Vancouver. "Since the financial sector has been front and center in the midst of this turmoil, any improvement reflects positively on the rest of the economy and the rest of the equity markets."

• TSX +217.84 to 9,187.12 as financial issues got a lift from upbeat news from the U.S. banking sector and higher oil prices boosted energy shares.
• DOW +246.27
• Dollar +.80c to 81.62USD
• Oil +$2.86 to $52.24US per barrel.
• Gold -$2.60 to $882.50USD per ounce
• Canadian 5 yr bond yields +.04bps to 1.86 four weeks ago it was 1.90
• http://www.financialpost.com/markets/market_data/money-yields-can_us.html

Obama says U.S. economy beginning to show 'glimmers of hope'

Fri Apr 10, 3:37 PM Liz Sidoti, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - U.S. President Barack Obama said Friday the economy is showing "glimmers of hope" despite continuing stresses, and he signalled more steps to brighten the business climate.

Obama commented to reporters after meeting at the White House with members of his economic team, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, economic adviser Larry Summers and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

"What we're starting to see is glimmers of hope across the economy," the president said, although he also noted that the economy is "still under severe stress."
"Whatever we do ultimately has to translate into economic growth and jobs," Obama said.

He said there has been a significant uptick in the number of homeowners seeking to refinance their mortgages, which will put money back into their pockets. He said a 20-per-cent increase last month in the Small Business Administration's largest program means that small companies, often prized as the backbone of the economy, "are starting to get money."

But Obama also pointed to the high rate of joblessness - which climbed to a 25-year high of 8.5 per cent in March - and acknowledged that "we've still got a lot of work to do."

"We're starting to see progress," he declared, "and if we stick with it, if we don't flinch in the face of some difficulties, then I feel absolutely convinced that we are going to get this economy back on track."

Obama said he and his advisers discussed the stability of the financial system and a program to help banks clear their books of bad assets that have made normal lending difficult if not impossible.

Friday's meeting was Obama's first with his economic team since his return this week from an overseas trip partly focused on the global economic slump. He participated in a meeting in London of leaders from the 20 wealthiest and developing economies.

The backdrop for the meeting was the still-fragile economy that has begun to show hints of a possible recovery, including a strong profit forecast from Wells Fargo and Co., a drop in claims for unemployment benefits and predictions of solid April sales from several retailers.

Also promising were less jittery stock investors, shoppers and homebuyers, slowly thawing credit markets that were once frozen and stabilizing economic indicators that had been going from bad to worse.

All that has at least one Obama adviser sounding cautiously optimistic.
"There has been a substantial anecdotal flow over the last six to eight weeks of things that felt a little bit better," Summers, director of Obama's National Economic Council, said Thursday.

"The sense of a ball falling off a table, which is what the economy has felt like since the middle of last fall, I think we can be reasonably confident that that is going to end within the next few months, and we will no longer have that sense of a free-fall."