As noted in the article below, Swiss banks are expected to issue massive losses this week. This should put a damper on the financials unless approval of the stimulus plan is timed perfectly to override the expected selling. DOW futures are currently -70 pts with Asian markets being mixed.

Also, TSG recently uncovered that the Wall Street Journal has suspiciously stopped reporting corporate earnings because they have been so bad. Here is the story according to TSG...

"Last week we reported that the WSJ did not post the change in earnings from the same quarter last year. After contacting the Journal, we received the following explanation. Up until last week, net earnings on continuing operations were still positive for those companies that had reported so far and even with earnings having fallen 80% two weeks ago, companies were still making money.

However, last week that all changed when net income turned into a net loss. The paper has a policy not to post the percentage change when earnings turn negative (exceed a decline of 100%). But what happens when companies starting losing money? In the interests of continuing our reporting we are now doing the calculations of earnings changes using the formula employed by the Wall Street Journal.

And the results aren’t pretty. Last week with 1055 companies having reported Q4 earnings, net of continuing operations was -$42.769 billion down from +$97,074 billion in Q4-07 which works out to a drop of 144%. This week in the fifth week of Q4-08 reporting season and with a total of 1550 companies having reported, average earnings are now down 150.7% from Q4-07, versus -80% two weeks ago and -60% three weeks ago. This compares to -62% between Q3-08 and Q3-07."

Nice policy WSJ - VHF

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Swiss banks to announce massive losses: report

Breitbart

Feb 8 01:04 PM US/Eastern

Two of Switzerland's largest banks, UBS and Credit Suisse, are set to announce combined losses for 2008 of 29 billion Swiss francs later this week, the Sonntag newspaper reported Sunday.

According to the report, UBS will announce an annual loss of 21 billion Swiss francs (14 billion euros, 18 billion dollars) on Tuesday, the largest in Swiss history and reflecting the fact the company was one of the banks hardest hit by the US subprime loan crisis.

Last November, UBS posted a net profit of 296 million Swiss francs for the third quarter following a year of losses, but warned that a renewed loss was looming for the following quarter.

Under a rescue plan unveiled in October, the Swiss government injected six billion francs in new capital to UBS and lent 54 billion dollars to the bank to transfer its non-liquid assets into a separate fund.

The massive spread of so-called "toxic" assets -- mainly linked to financial instruments now worth very little because of the US home-loan crisis -- throughout the global banking system is at the core of the crisis.

Sonntag also reported that UBS would announce "5,000 to 8,000 new job cuts" adding to an earlier decision to cut 9,000 positions.

A company spokesman told AFP January 22 that further cuts would be made in bank's fixed income, currencies and commodities trading unit, without specifying the number to be made.

The German language daily also reported that Credit Suisse would announce a loss of eight billion Swiss francs for 2008, although the bank is not expected make any further job cuts.