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Global markets plummeted on Monday after investment bank Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection, rival Merrill Lynch agreed to be taken over and the Federal Reserve threw a life line to the battered financial industry.

As a deepening crisis took new, bigger victims, the U.S. Federal Reserve said for the first time it would accept stocks in exchange for cash loans and 10 of the world’s top banks agreed to establish a $70 billion emergency fund, with any one of them able to tap up to a third of that.

On a black Sunday for Wall Street, frantic attempts to find a rescuer for Lehman failed, and troubled insurer American International Group asked the Fed for a lifeline, according to news reports.

The events signal a seismic shift in Wall Street’s power structure with big name investment banks biting the dust and major banks like Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase becoming the survivors.

“It’s a return to pure capitalism, the survival of the fittest — the government can’t and won’t bail everybody out,” said Justin Urquhart Stewart, investment director at 7 Investment Management in London.

“Investors will now retreat to the trustworthy banks, though that’s not a phrase that trips off the tongue easily nowadays.”

Bank of America agreed to buy Merrill Lynch in an all-stock deal worth $50 billion, seeking a bargain as the world’s largest retail brokerage sought refuge from fears it could be the next victim.

“It’s just shockingly fast how it happened,” an employee for Merrill in Asia said faxless payday loan. “It’s hard to believe there will be no more Merrill Lynch,” he said of his firm, known as The Thundering Herd. 

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Prices surged by as much as 20 cents a gallon at some Houston-area gas stations as Hurricane Ike bore down on the Gulf coast.

"There are clearly some service stations in the Houston area that have hiked prices by 15 to 20 cents a gallon, there’s no question about that," said AAA spokesman Dan Ronan. "But I think there are a lot of service stations that are being very responsible."

The majority of gas stations in Texas showed only moderate increases, or even decreases, according to the AAA fuel gauge, which bases its data on credit card swipes at some 100,000 gas stations nationwide.

Gasoline prices rose Friday for the third straight day, according to the nationwide survey, as Hurricane Ike’s approach to the Texas Gulf Coast shut oil drilling and refining in the region. The average price of regular unleaded gasoline edged up 0.4 cent to $3.675 a gallon from $3.671 a day earlier, AAA said.

In Texas, where the storm is expected to make landfall late Friday or early Saturday, the average price rose 0.9 cent to $3.546 a gallon.

In three coastal areas that could be affected by the storm, the average price rose 4.4 cents in the Houston area, but was only up 0.2 cent in Galveston and down 0.5 cent in Corpus Christi.

Ronan, who is based in Irving near Dallas, said that Houston-based AAA staffers have reported the 20 cent increases at some gas stations, but they’re in the minority. Likewise, he said the reports of stations running low on gas in coastal Texas are scattered and isolated.

"There have been anecdotal reports about service stations running low on fuel and that’s to be expected," said Ronan guaranteed approval cash advance loans. "The good thing is that it seems as though the state and delivery systems have gotten a lot better since Katrina."

Prices have trended higher in the Midwest and Southeast partly due to production delays caused by Hurricane Gustav, said Tom Kloza from Oil Price Information Service, which provides the data for AAA. He noted that prices are expected to continue rising as Hurricane Ike churns through the Gulf of Mexico.

Nationwide, Alaska and Hawaii remained the two states with gas prices still tracking above $4 a gallon; Alaska at $4.393 and Hawaii at $4.336, AAA said. The cheapest gas continues to be found in New Jersey, where prices averaged $3.40 a gallon.

Gas remains about 10.7%, or 43.9 cents, below the record high average of $4.114 that AAA reported July 17. It’s down 11.2 cents in the past month, but up 86.7 cents from a year ago.

Going forward, Kloza said Friday would be a "wild day" for gas prices, since some refineries - not just in coastal Texas but also inland Louisiana - have shut down in preparation for Hurricane Ike.

He said the nationwide average for gas prices could break the July 17 record as a result of the hurricane, but even if that happens, they would stabilize by October.

Oil prices rose Friday on concern about the storm. Thursday’s $100.87 settlement was the lowest since March 24. 

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The federal budget fell further into the red in August, pushing the deficit with one month left in the budget year to an all-time high.

The Treasury Department reported Thursday that the deficit through the first 11 months of this budget year totaled $483.4 billion, up 76.2% from the same period a year ago.

While that set an all-time high for a budget deficit through the first 11 months of a budget year, analysts say a surplus in September will push the deficit slightly below the current record-holder for an entire year, a $413 billion deficit set in 2004. 

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Australian employers hired almost three times as many workers in August as economists forecast, adding to evidence a mining boom is helping offset weaker domestic demand.

The number of people employed rose 14,600 last month, the statistics bureau said in Sydney today. The median estimate of 25 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News was for a 5,000 gain. The jobless rate fell to 4.1 percent from 4.3 percent.

Australia's currency rose on speculation the lowest unemployment rate in five months reduces the central bank's scope to cut borrowing costs again this year. Governor Glenn Stevens reduced the benchmark last week for the first time in sevens years and said policy makers were now questioning whether to cut again or hold.

“This reinforces the idea that while the Reserve Bank is looking to make policy less restrictive, they're not about to race to an expansionary footing,'' said Andrew Hanlan, a senior economist at Westpac Banking Corp. in Sydney.

The Australian dollar rose to 80.05 U.S. cents at 12:35 p.m. in Sydney from 79.61 cents before the report was released. The two-year government bond yield climbed 7 basis points, or 0.07 percentage point, to 5.60 percent.

The S&P/ASX 200 Index of stocks narrowed its losses. It was down 1.1 percent to 4,850.10 at 12:36 a.m. in Sydney, up from a low of 4,834.2 before the report.

Full-Time Jobs

The number of full-time positions rose 7,500 in August and part-time jobs increased 7,200. About half of the nation's 21 million people are employed. The August employment gain followed a revised increase of 18,700 jobs in July.

Demand for skilled labor at companies including BHP Billiton Ltd., which is expanding mines to meet Chinese orders for iron ore, is helping generate new jobs in the states of Western Australia and Queensland, where unemployment fell in August to 2.8 percent and 3.3 percent respectively.

By contrast, Australia's most populous state, New South Wales, saw an increase in its jobless rate to 4.9 percent from 4.7 percent. The rate was 4.3 percent in Victoria, 4.4 percent in South Australia and 4 percent in Tasmania.

Concern that demand for skilled labor would stoke wage increases and inflation was a key reason central bank policy makers increased borrowing costs twice this year to a 12-year high. They reduced the benchmark rate by a quarter point to 7 percent on Sept. 2.

Rate Outlook

“In the near term, the question will be do we hold here or go down a bit more'' on interest rates, Stevens told parliament's economics committee in Melbourne this week faxless cash advance.

Investors reduced bets that Stevens will cut the benchmark again on Oct. 7, according to a Credit Suisse Group index based on trading in interest-rate swaps. They forecast an 80 percent chance of a reduction, the index showed at 12:15 p.m. in Sydney, down from 90 percent before the report was released.

There are signs that businesses reliant on household spending are starting to review hiring plans. Fairfax Media Ltd., Boeing Co., Ford Motor Co., Starbucks Corp. and Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd., all announced job cuts in Australia last month. Qantas Airways Ltd., the nation's biggest airline, will fire 1,500 workers.

“Don't get too excited — the unemployment rate has fallen because the participation rate dropped slightly,'' said Katie Dean, a senior economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. in Melbourne. “Moreover, the leading indicators of employment suggest that the jobless rate will rise gradually.''

Business Confidence

Job-vacancy advertisements fell 4.9 percent in August, the biggest drop in more than seven years, according to an ANZ Bank report released on Sept. 8. Businesses confidence is also close to the lowest level since the 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S.

The participation rate, which measures the labor force as a percentage of the population aged over 15, fell to 65.2 percent in August from 65.3 percent in July, today's figures showed.

Gross domestic product rose 0.3 percent in the three months through June 30, the smallest gain since the fourth quarter of 2004, as consumers cut spending by 0.1 percent, a report showed last week.

The jobless rate will rise “a bit'' over the next year to 18 months, Governor Stevens said this week. “The rate of employment growth will slow. It is starting to do that already,'' he said.

Today's unemployment report was compiled by the statistics bureau using a sample of businesses that has been cut by 24 percent. The bureau, which reduced the survey because of budget cuts, has said it will increase the volatility of the figures.

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Shares of Google Inc. fell Monday with analysts citing technical trading patterns, and broader market issues including turmoil in the mortgage market and the impact of a strengthening dollar as possible culprits.

The Internet search company’s stock fell $24.30, or 5.5%, to 419.95 in regular trading and extended losses in after-hours activity, slipping another 14 cents to $419.81.

Stanford Group analyst Clayton Moran pointed to technical trading patterns that in the past kept shares of the Mountain View, Calif, company above a "support level" of $440. But once the stock broke through that barrier on Monday, he said, that support disappeared — triggering more selling and pushing the shares to as low as $417.55 at one point.

"It’s a psychological thing," Moran said.

Sanford Bernstein & Co. analyst Jeffrey Lindsay said Google’s (GOOG, Fortune 500) shares may be a victim of the turmoil shaking the housing and mortgage market, which led the government on Sunday to take over mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae (FNM, Fortune 500) and Freddie Mac (FRE, Fortune 500), sinking their shares.

Big institutional investors that have sustained major losses could be reacting by cutting their holdings in other high-profile stocks, including Google overnight payday loans. Lindsay added that while Google’s new Android software platform for cell phones and other mobile devices has not officially hit the market, early online reviews in blogs have generally been disappointing.

And in another development, Goldman Sachs analysts wrote in a note to investors that a strengthening dollar could hurt revenue of Internet companies that derive sales overseas in the near-term, including Google.

Longer-term, after hedges — investments used to reduce possible losses — expire, a stronger U.S. currency could have a bigger negative impact, the analysts wrote. 

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Kerry Killinger is out as CEO of Washington Mutual, the nation’s largest thrift, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Killinger will be succeeded by Alan Fishman, who is chairman of Meridian Capital Group, a New York-based commercial mortgage broker, according to the paper. Prior to that, Fishman served as president and chief operating officer of Sovereign Bank (SOV, Fortune 500), which is the nation’s second-largest thrift and based in Philadelphia.

Wamu’s shares have lost 85% of their value in the last year, and Killinger has said that the company could sustain losses of between $12 billion and $19 billion, according to the Journal. The thrift does a lot of business in states that have seen housing prices fall sharply, and holds over $50 billion in risky option adjustable-rate mortgages.

In April, the private equity firm TPG (formerly Texas Pacific Group), led a $7 billion capital infusion into Wamu (WM, Fortune 500), according to the paper, and some analysts believe the thrift will need more than that faxless payday advance.

Throughout the turmoil, the company’s board backed Killinger, who has been at the helm since 1990. But in June he was stripped of his title as chairman.

Fishman will receive a $10 million signing bonus including $2.5 million in performance based stock awards, according to the Journal, as well as a salary of $1 million and options to buy five million shares.

Killinger will retire with no extra severance benefits, the paper reported. He currently has $5.2 million in common stock, $14.9 million in deferred compensation and $3.5 million in pension benefits. 

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Regulators on Friday shut down Silver State Bank, saying the Nevada bank failed because of losses on soured loans, mainly in commercial real estate and land development.

It was the 11th failure this year of a federally insured bank.

Nevada regulators closed Silver State and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was appointed receiver of the bank, based in Henderson, Nev. It had $2 billion in assets and $1.7 billion in deposits as of June 30.

Andrew K. McCain, a son of Republican presidential nominee John McCain, sat on the boards of Silver State Bank and of its parent, Silver State Bancorp, starting in February but resigned in July citing "personal reasons," corporate filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission show. Andrew McCain also was a member of the bank’s audit committee, responsible for oversight of the company’s accounting.

The younger McCain, who is the chief financial officer of Hensley & Co., the beer distributorship of which Cindy McCain is chairwoman, is the Arizona senator’s adopted son from his first marriage.

Andrew McCain’s position on the Silver State board and departure were first reported Friday by The Wall Street Journal online.

Silver State Bank ran into difficulty because of a substantial amount of "poor-quality loans primarily related to real estate development" in southern Nevada and other distressed markets, FDIC spokesman David Barr said.

"When the housing market slowed down, people who bought raw land to build new homes didn’t need that land so they couldn’t do anything with it and repay their loans. So those loans went bad," Barr said.

Silver State Bancorp recently reported a net loss for the second quarter of $73.2 million, or $4.84 a share, compared with net profit of $6.2 million, or 44 cents a share, in the same period last year.

Construction and development loans have been the fastest-growing category of troubled loans for U.S. banks, and many banks have heavy concentrations of them in their lending portfolios, according to the FDIC. Some small banks are considered especially vulnerable. Delinquent loan payments and defaults by commercial and residential developers have surged to the highest levels since the early 1990s - the latter part of the savings and loan crisis.

The FDIC said Silver State Bank’s insured deposits will be assumed by Nevada State Bank of Las Vegas. Its branches will reopen Monday as offices of Nevada State Bank in Nevada and National Bank of Arizona in Arizona.

The agency said depositors of Silver State Bank will continue to have full access to their deposits.

The 11 failures so far this year compare with three for all of 2007, and federal banking officials have said that more banks are in danger of collapse.

Silver State Bank has operated 13 branches in the greater Las Vegas area and four in the greater Phoenix-Scottsdale area of Arizona as well as loan offices in Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Washington, Oregon, California and Florida.

The FDIC estimated its resolution will cost the deposit insurance fund between $450 million and $550 million.

Regular deposit accounts are insured up to $100,000.

There were about $20 million in uninsured deposits held in roughly 500 accounts at Silver State that potentially exceeded the insurance limit, the FDIC said.

Concern has been growing over the solvency of some banks amid the housing slump and the steep slide in the mortgage market cash till payday. The pressures of tighter credit, tumbling home prices and rising foreclosures have been battering many banks, large and small, across the nation.

The largest bank failure by far this year has been that of savings and loan IndyMac Bank, which was seized by regulators on July 11 with about $32 billion in assets and deposits of $19 billion.

The seizure of Pasadena, Calif.-based IndyMac, which was the largest regulated thrift to fail in the United States, prompted hundreds of angry customers to line up for hours in Southern California to demand their money. IndyMac also was the second-largest financial institution to close in U.S. history, after Continental Illinois National Bank in 1984.

The FDIC has been operating the bank, now called IndyMac Federal Bank, under a conservatorship.

The FDIC plans to raise insurance premiums paid by banks and thrifts to replenish its reserve fund after paying out billions of dollars to depositors at IndyMac. The fund, currently at $45 billion, is expected to take a hit from IndyMac of $4 billion to $8 billion.

Federal officials expect turbulence in the banking industry to continue well into next year, and more banks to appear on the FDIC’s internal list of troubled institutions.

Of the 8,500 or so FDIC-insured banks in the country, 117 were considered to be in trouble in the second quarter — the highest level in about five years and up from 90 in the first quarter. The agency doesn’t disclose the banks’ names.

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Silver State Bank customers with accounts exceeding $100,000 can contact the FDIC at 1-800-523-8177 to set up an appointment to discuss their deposits. 

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High-quality and premium coffees that today command better prices and seduce consumers with their exotic image will eventually become an everyday commodity as demand for them rises, a Brazilian specialty coffee producers said this week.

Joao Guilherme Pires Martins, executive director at Octavio Cafes, which has a vast 6 million-tree coffee plantation in the 1,000 meter altitude Mogiana region, said even very cost-conscious consumers were seeking more flavorful drinks.

“The only way to go is to produce specialty or fine cup coffees. People are looking for them. They don’t want to drink bad coffees with poor taste. Even poor people are looking for good tastes and good prices,” he said.

Martins said prices for specialty coffees were kept high by the fast-growing world demand of about 15 percent per year. But he said that as supply grows, prices eventually would fluctuate in the same way as regular coffees do.

“In my opinion, in 10 or 20 years we won’t have a premium for specialty coffees, just preferences (between types),” he said in an interview at the company’s farm, which is installing its own bean roasting equipment at its newly-built premises.

He said Brazil currently produced around 1.2 million bags of specialty coffee on average per year and estimated that could rise to around 2 million by 2015.

But the slowing economy in the United States, the world’s largest coffee consumer, could slow premium coffee growth fast payday loan no faxing. The specialty sector accounts for 17 percent of U.S. coffee sales.

Ric Reinhart, director of the Specialty Coffee Association, told Reuters at a coffee conference in Nicaragua this week that some U.S. buyers had begun cutting back on more expensive espressos in favor of drip-brewed coffee to save money. 

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U.S. communications equipment maker Ciena Corp (CIEN.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) slashed its outlook on Thursday due to phone companies delaying purchases amid a weak economy, triggering a 24 percent fall in its shares.

The company, which posted a 59 percent fall in quarterly profit, warned that many phone service providers were delaying orders as they reconsidered their capital spending plans.

Ciena sells optical switches and other products that support Internet protocol networks to top U.S. phone companies such as AT&T Inc (T.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Sprint Nextel Corp (S.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

Ciena said it did not think it was the only one suffering order delays, and its warning dragged down shares in other telecommunications equipment vendors like Cisco Systems Inc (CSCO.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), Alcatel-Lucent (ALUA.PA: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), and Juniper Networks Inc

(JNPR.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) easy fast cash.

“The macroeconomic environment gives them a pause for thought, for greater capex scrutiny,” Chief Executive Gary Smith said in a phone interview, adding that customers were not canceling projects or orders but taking more time in their buying decisions.

“I think they’re just being prudent and reflective of the concerns in the global macroeconomic world.” he said.

Ciena forecast revenue in its current, fiscal fourth quarter in a range of $190 million to $210 million, dramatically below the market’s forecast of $264 million, according to Reuters Estimates. 

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New orders at U.S. factories jumped more than expected in July, helped by a rise in transportation orders, a government report showed on Wednesday, as exports buoyed an economy hit by a deep housing downturn and tight credit.

Factory orders rose 1.3 percent in the month after an upwardly revised 2.1 percent gain in June, the Commerce Department said.

Economists polled by Reuters were expecting factory orders to gain 1 percent in the month. Factory orders have risen for five months in a row.

Stocks rose and the dollar extended gains on the data, which pointed to resilience in manufacturing, where strong export demand has kept the broader economy from slipping into recession. However, U.S. Treasury prices fell. Analysts expect the surge in exports to tail off in the latter part of the year as the dollar strengthens and global demand weakens.

“It fills in the picture of a moderately recovering U.S pay day loans. economy,” said Joseph Trevisani, chief market analyst at FX Solutions in Saddle River, New Jersey.

LABOR MARKET CHALLENGES

However, the labor market showed persistent softness. U.S. companies’ announced layoffs in August fell from July, but were still much higher than a year ago, a report on Wednesday showed.

Downsizing at U.S. companies last month totaled 88,736, 14 percent below June but 12 percent higher than August 2007, employment consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. said. 

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