Before the Bell news ..

It seems like financial sector woes have been dragging on longer than the Democratic primary. Why should today be any different?

Stock futures are pointing down after The Wall Street Journal said Lehman was looking to raise capital from overseas. Merrill Lynch has cut its earnings estimates and price target for Bank of America, which it says could end up with write-downs of as much as $12 billion because of loans acquired with its planned purchase of Countrywide Financial.

And it's looking more and more as if the future direction of interest rates is going to be up, rather than down.

U.S. Treasuries are flat to higher. The dollar is holding steady as it keeps glowing from the attention it got yesterday from Fed chief Ben Bernanke, who warned that its weakness posed an inflationary threat.

As many quiver at the prospect of stagflation, Bernanke is speaking at Harvard on "Economic Challenges: 1975 and Now."

On the data front, we've got figures on employment from Challenger Gray & Christmas and Automatic Data Processing, a reading on the service sector from the Institute for Supply Management and a productivity report from the Labor Department.

Oil prices are slightly lower, with U.S. crude above $124 a barrel, following a fuel price hike in India.

The crummy housing market keeps taking its toll. Builder Hovnanian Enterprises has posted a much bigger quarterly loss, while profit fell at home furnishing retailer Williams-Sonoma.