Futures point up as Fed meeting eyed
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stock index futures pointed to a higher market open on Monday as investors looked forward to the Federal Reserve’s Tuesday meeting expected to bring an interest rate cut.

Employers add jobs but consumers gloomy
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. employers added 94,000 jobs in November and the unemployment rate held steady, the government said on Friday in a report suggesting the U.S. economy was slowing, but not tumbling into recession.

Henry Paulson’s Priorities (by Paul Krugman)
[Treasury Secretary Henry] Paulson’s actions reflect the priorities of the administration he serves. And that, ultimately, is what’s wrong with the mortgage relief plan he unveiled last week. The plan is, as a Times editorial put it yesterday, “too little, too late and too voluntary.” But from the administration’s point of view these failings aren’t bugs, they’re features. In fact, there’s a growing consensus among financial observers that the Paulson plan isn’t mainly intended to achieve real results. The point is, instead, to create the appearance of action, thereby undercutting political support for actual attempts to help families in trouble.

The trouble with the Paulson plan (by Clive Crook, Financial Times)
As [Barney Frank] points out, the [Paulson mortgage relief] plan bizarrely confines its promised assistance to borrowers with poor credit histories… Merely to address the most obvious anomalies in the new arrangements, more comprehensive and more generous assistance seems likely before long. In other words, the massively distorted and mismanaged US housing-finance market is going to get more so. And taxpayers had better prepare to be mugged.