Quick Overview

• Dexia, a Belgian-French Bank, was leveraged by more than 100 times. It has assets exceeding Euro 500 billion and equity of just 5 billion  -- and it passed the recent European bank stress test!!
• (FT) Global banking regulators will press ahead with the first worldwide effort to force banks to hold more liquid assets and cut back the industry’s reliance on short-term funding, despite complaints that the rule changes could damage the broader economy, the new chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision has warned
• A computer virus has hit the US Predator and Reaper drone fleet that Washington deploys to hunt down militants, logging the keystrokes of pilots remotely flying missions, Wired magazine reported.

• Economist: An ill-conceived congressional bill to punish China for manipulation its currency is yet another sign that America has little to be proud of in terms of economic policy... The debt crisis has been running for 18 month now, and the only way that euro-zone leaders have dazzled is through sheer incompetence.

• U.S. nonfarm payroll employment edged up by 103,000 jobs in September, but the unemployment rate remained at 9.1% for the third straight month.

• A big shift of manufacturing from China to the U.S. and other parts of North America will create up to 3 million U.S. jobs in coming years, says a study from Boston Consulting Group.

• The number of foreign trade containers moving through the Port of Tokyo rose 9.7% in the first half of 2011 from the same period last year to 1.98 million TEUs.

• North American railroads again set a new all-time high in intermodal loadings with 313,026 containers and trailers in the week ending Oct. 1.

• (Bloomberg) -- U.S. sugar stockpiles are shrinking to the lowest in 37 years after rain and freezing weather damaged the beet crop, potentially reversing a price slump and forcing the government to ease import limits.

• Fitch cut Italy to "A+" from "AA-," citing high public debts, low growth and politically technical and complex solution necessary to fix the country's financial situation. The agency also downgraded Spain's long-term credit rating to “AA-" from "AA+."

• Moody's downgraded Britain's part-nationalized banks Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland on Friday.

• Japan's benchmark coincident composite index gained 0.3 point to 107.4 in August.

• German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Europe's banks should look first to raise money in the private sector before turning to governments to bolster their financial cushions against potential losses from the continent's sovereign debt crisis.

• Bankers, not taxpayers, should have to shoulder the losses in case of massive financial firm failures, a top Federal Reserve official said on Friday as growing discontent with Wall Street drove protests around the country.

• The Dutch government said Friday it would move to classify high-potency marijuana alongside hard drugs such as cocaine and ecstasy, the latest step in the country's ongoing reversal of its famed tolerance policies.