• The last-minute rejection of the auto bailout yesterday has pretty much guaranteed that this will be a miserable day on Wall Street. [NYT, WSJ]
• Marc Dreier, the lawyer accused of stealing hundreds of millions from investors, was denied bail yesterday. The Post suggests "suicide hotlines in Greenwich could be lit up today as investors begin to realize how much they've lost in the rip-off scheme." [NYT, NYP]
• U.S. retail sales dropped 1.8 percent last month. [WSJ]
• Goldman Sachs has set aside $12 billion for bonuses, down from $20 billion last year. [Reuters]
• Bonuses on Wall Street are expected to be down 50 percent this year. [DB]
• Good news for ex-Merrill CEO Stan O'Neal: He may have a new job. [FIN]

♦ Detroit's Big Three automakers presented new turnaround plans (and their request for $34 billion) to Congress yesterday. [WSJ, Bloomberg]
♦ Merrill Lynch plans to cut year-end bonuses in half. [Bloomberg]
♦ Now that it's turned itself into a commercial bank, Goldman Sachs is thinking about starting an online banking operation, too. [DB]
♦ Goldman is tapping Gerald Corrigan, a former head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, to serve as chairman of its bank holding company. [FT]
♦ Billionaire financier face-off: One of Carl Icahn's companies is suing a firm owned by Leon Black. [NYT, NYP]
♦ Ramius Capital, the struggling hedge fund operated by Peter Cohen, is closing four of its funds. [WSJ]

♦ Stocks are poised to move higher today after yesterday's bloodbath. [CNN]
♦ Goldman Sachs may report a loss of as much as $5 billion this quarter, the firm's first quarterly loss since it went public in 1999. [WSJ]
♦ Credit Suisse and HSBC have announced another round of job cuts. [Reuters]
♦ Highbridge Capital, founded by Glenn Dubin and Henry Swieca and owned by JPMorgan, is the latest hedge to suffer a fall. More than a third of its investors are looking to withdraw cash and the flagship fund is down 25%. [WSJ]
♦ One hedge funder doing fine: John Paulson. His firm has already cleared profits of more than $1 billion this year betting that the housing market would crumble and banks would fail. [Bloomberg]
♦ What does the head of a new Congressional panel set up to monitor the bailout have to say about Hank Paulson's strategy? That it does appear Paulson has a strategy. [NYT]

♦ The Big Three automakers are putting finishing touches on new business plans to take to Congress this week, part of a last-ditch effort to secure a federal bailout. [WSJ, Bloomberg, NYT]
♦ Shoppers spent $41 billion over the four-day weekend, up 7.2 percent from the year before. That was better than expected, but retail experts are still pessimistic about the holiday season outlook. [CNNMoney, WSJ]
♦ Hedge funder Paul Tudor Jones has suspended withdrawals as he splits his $10 billion flagship fund into two. [FT]
♦ The bailout has already cost more than World War II, in case you're keeping count at home. [Clusterstock]

♦ News of the government's rescue package for Citigroup provided the market with boost yesterday, but Citi CEO Vikram Pandit (who still has his job for the time being) has many long days and nights ahead if he's going to turn the bank around. "This is a reprieve, but it's not a complete pardon." [WSJ]
♦ On CNBC, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, one of the bank's biggest shareholders, expressed confidence in "Mr. Vikram" while "stroking a strand of beads and wearing red-tinted glasses." Then he blamed the bank's problems on Chuck Prince. [NYP]
♦ Tim Geithner may be the man of the hour, but shouldn't he be shouldering some of the blame for the government's missteps thus far? [NYT]
♦ Banks are concerned they may have a credibility problem on their hands. You think? [Reuters]

♦ Following a weekend of non-stop negotiations, a deal is now in place to stabilize Citigroup: The bank will get a $20 billion cash injection from the Treasury Department and the government will guarantee $306 billion worth of toxic assets. [Bloomberg, NYT, WSJ]
♦ The next group in line for a bailout? Home builders, who are now lobbying Congress for a $250 billion stimulus package. [WSJ]
♦ The U.S. economy may need $300 billion and $600 billion more to survive the crisis, says George Soros. [DB]

Wall Street won't have much to celebrate this holiday season. Most firms have announced record losses in recent weeks, thousands of employees have been let go, and even that banking birthright, the annual bonus, appears to be in jeopardy this year. Goldman Sachs announced yesterday that its top seven execs would forgo multi-million bonus checks. UBS followed suit hours later, and there's word that other banks will make similar moves in the coming days. Of course, the impact of the downturn isn't just felt by the bankers themselves. Some unlucky wives, for example, are just finding out that they're going to spend Christmas at the Four Seasons in Maui, instead of the Altamer in St. Barths, since someone decided that $10,000 for a beachfront suite was a little too much money to spend on a vacation right now. Fortunately, we're here to help. Friends, Wall Street cannot lift itself out of this mess alone, even if they happen to have tens of billions of taypayer dollars. If they're going to pull themselves up, we're all going to need to chip in, and then we'll all be rewarded when these financial titans return to their frivolous lives and start spending ridiculous amounts of money on real estate, clothes, and dinners once again. We may not be able to send them big bundles of cash (they've got the Treasury Department for that anyway), but there are countless other ways to help, little gestures that can make life easier for men who could use a little comfort as they experience sudden lifestyle changes, like having to fly commercial for the first time in years. Below: How we're going to lend some assistance to Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs.

♦ Goldman Sachs' seven most senior execs have decided to forgo their 2008 bonuses. The move was simply "the right thing to do," said a Goldman spokesman. [WSJ, NYT]
♦ JP Morgan may cut up to 3,000 people, or 10 percent of its global workforce, in the coming months. [Telegraph]
♦ Citigroup's CEO, Vikram Pandit, says the bank plans to eliminate another 50,000 jobs, and cut expenses by as much as 20 percent. [Bloomberg]
♦ UBS reportedly plans to lay off 30 percent of its investment banking division. [Dealbreaker]
♦ Japan has announced that it is officially in a recession. [Bloomberg]
♦ As for the U.S., 96 percent of the economists surveyed in a recent poll believe the economy is in a recession, and nearly three-fourths think it could persist beyond the first quarter of next year. [CNNMoney]

While New York women hoping to bag themselves an investment banker have seen the pool of potentials tragically dry up, take a moment to spare a thought for the girls in Tokyo—at least the ones whose lives revolved around dating Wall Streeters who'd been transferred to work in the city's Roppongi Hills complex. Now, as 25-year-old Haruna Hiraki gloomily says to her friend at a bar that had once been a prime spot: "I told you this place was finished. Lehman, Goldman: They've all been sacked or gone back to America."

♦ American Express may be looking for as much as $3.5 billion in government assistance as the company struggles with reduced consumer spending and rising defaults. [WSJ]
♦ Hope is fading fast at GM. Shares fell to $2.92 on Tuesday, the lowest level in 65 years, and the company does not expect "to continue as a going concern" without a rescue plan in place by the end of the year. Meanwhile, Democrats are pushing ahead with a plan to save the automaker. [NYT, Bloomberg]
♦ Who doesn't want a piece of the bailout? The line outside the Treasury Department in Washington is a long one. [NYT]

Uh, while we're on the topic of layoffs today, we hear Goldman Sachs is currently a "SHIT SHOW" because the fancy bank has started its layoffs of what could eventually be 10% of its total work force. We hear people have already been put out of the GS building, and are upset, naturally. Been laid off from Wall Street today and want to bitch? Email us!

Word has it there's been a bloodbath at Goldman Sachs today: "No big names have been told to pack up their staplers yet, but they may actually be praying to be given the boot. We're told there will basically be no bonuses this year, especially at senior levels." [Dealbreaker]

Remember David Pajcin, the Goldman Sachs analyst who conspired with a bunch of other bankers (as well as workers at a BusinessWeek printing plant) to carry out an insider trading scheme that earned him $6.7 million? He appears to have fled the country! [Bloomberg]

♦ Horror of horrors: The average Goldman partner may take home a bonus of $1 million or less this year. [FT]
♦ One of Goldman's flagship hedge funds, Goldman Sachs Investment Partners, has lost close to $1 billion since January. [FT]
♦ UBS posted a third-quarter profit, but it still laid off 700 U.S.-based employees last week. [CNNMoney, NYP]

♦ AIG is already running out of the $123 billion in cash it was provided by the Federal Reserve, which means the authorities are slowly waking up to idea that something else might be going on. [NYT]
♦ The U.S. economy shrank at a 0.3 percent annualized rate in the third quarter as consumer spending declined at the fastest rate in 28 years. [MW]
♦ The Fed's half-point rate cut yesterday? It won't do much to prop up the economy. [NYP]
♦ Andrew Cuomo has asked banks to provide his office with bonus data. [NYT]
♦ Some hedge funds are still raking in cash from investors. Steve Cohen's SAC is down 5.5 percent in 2008 (and he's moved most of his funds into cash), but he's accepting new funds beginning in January. [Bloomberg]

Goldman Sachs named 94 new partners today, down from the 115 new partners named during the last round two years ago. Clusterstock has the list of the very few people who work on Wall Street who will drinking champagne tonight. [Clusterstock]

♦ Better news from abroad today: global stocks rebounded overnight, with shares in Hong Kong climbing more than 14 percent. [CNNMoney]
♦ Goldman Sachs will name its new partners today; it's expected to be the smallest such group in the firm's history. [Telegraph, Clusterstock]
♦ The average hedge fund was down 8.4 percent in October. Layoffs in the industry are mounting: Glenn Dubin's Highbridge Capital is the latest fund to announce cuts, trimming 10 percent of the company's staff. [NYP]
♦ Barclays is seeking to raise $10 billion from Russian banks. [WSJ]
♦ Fidelity may lay off 4,000 employees. [Boston Globe]

Think the meltdown on Wall Street will ruin bonus season for bankers in town? Not necessarily! Merrill Lynch has set aside $6.7 billion to pay annual bonuses. Goldman Sachs plans to dole out $6.85 billion in total, an average of $210,300 for each employee. And Morgan Stanley has $6.44 billion for bonuses, or $138,700 per person. And you were concerned the $700 billion bailout would be misspent. [Bloomberg]

♦ Another bad day ahead? U.S. futures are down sharply after losses in Asia and Europe. [Marketwatch]
♦ The Fed starts making loans to American companies today. [WSJ]
♦ Turns out there were some pretty dark days at Goldman last month: Lloyd Blankfein called Citi chief Vikram Pandit to discuss a merger just after Lehman went bankrupt. [FT, WSJ]
♦ Citadel's Ken Griffin remains in the hot seat after rumors of steep losses led him to hold a rare conference call on Friday evening. [NYP, NYT]

♦ Yesterday's sell-off is expected to continue today. [WSJ]
♦ Even Goldman Sachs is cutting. The firm plans to cut 10 percent of its 32,000 employees. [WSJ]
♦ The glory days of hedge funds are over, as you're probably aware. [NYT]
♦ Credit Suisse reported a $1.08 billion loss during the third quarter. [DB]
♦ The inquiry into the financial crisis on Capitol Hill continues. Today's guest piñata will be Alan Greenspan. [NYT]