Kate Beckinsale
Image: Shutterstock
Good morning, here's what you need to know:
  • Overnight trading in Asia was mostly flat, with the Japanese Nikkei down 0.3% and Shanghai SE Composite up 0.2%. The FTSE in London and CAC in Paris were up nominally and U.S futures point to a flat to slightly higher open. 
  • Italy sold €7 billion worth bonds to tepid demand in its final sale of the year. While the country missed its €8.5 billion target, borrowing costs declined slightly for the 10-year to 6.98%, from 7.56% last month. 
  • Hungary's bond auction failed this morning, when debt management agency AKK rejected all bids for its three-year notes and took in reduced bids on the 10-year offering. Yields on 10-year Hungary debt soared to 9.70%, up from 8.78% last month. The nation's debt was downgraded to junk by Standard and Poors and Moody's last week.
  • The Vietnamese economy accelerated in the fourth quarter, as GDP grew 6.1%. Domestic consumption has steadily increased, while inflation slowly turned down from 19.8% in November. If fourth quarter GDP holds, the economy will have grown by 5.89% in 2011, below the 6.78% expansion in 2010.
  • The final initial jobless claims announcement of the year comes today at 8:30 a.m. Economists polled by Bloomberg expect the headline figure to increase to 375,000, up from last month's 364,000 reading.
  • BP may be hit with its first criminal charges from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the Wall Street Journal's Tom Fowler reports. U.S. prosecutors are at work preparing the felony charges, which could include providing false information to the government. 
  • Alibaba Group has hired the Duberstein Group, a lobbying firm in Washington, that it plans to use in case Yahoo's plan to sell off its Asian assets fails. Alibaba made the move in the event it decides to purchase all of Yahoo, to stem Congressional pressure on buying out the U.S. firm.
  • MF Global may have moved client funds to a third party as early as October, The New York Times' Azam Ahmed and Ben Protess report. The finding gives auditors more information in their hunt for more than $1 billion in assets, while also painting the portrait of a much more direr scene in the executive offices at MF.
  • A new CNN poll gives Mitt Romney a lead in Iowa, with Ron Paul closely on his heels. The two received 25% and 22% of votes of those polled, respectively. Newt Gingrich fell sharply in the survey, down to 14% from 33% the last time the survey was held.
  • Gold continued its tumble lower, hitting a five-month low of $1,525.40. The Euro has also traded lower against the U.S. dollar, falling to $1.2877. That's a deep drop from where it traded less than four months ago, when it was above $1.45.