Wall St set for weak open as economy weighs
LONDON (Reuters) – Stocks were set to open lower on Tuesday, with investors wary of any more signs of trouble for the economy and the banking system, though diaried events were thin on the ground.

Rocky markets highlight retirement insecurity
NEW YORK (Reuters) – With Americans relying more heavily than ever on the stock market to fund their retirements, Wall Street’s slide has some starting to worry they will struggle financially in old age.
But there’s another problem overlooked by the financial media, and that is that many retirees don’t own stock at all, but keep their savings in CDs, split up among banks so that the money is insured by the FDIC.  As the Fed reduces interest rates, it cuts deeply into the incomes of these people.  So interest rate gyrations are important, too.

OPEC unlikely to raise output
VIENNA, Austria – OPEC has virtually ruled out pumping more oil to ease record-high prices, key oil ministers signaled Tuesday on the eve of a cartel meeting.

Insight: Petrodollar tsunami to hit euro and dollar (by Stephen Jen, Chief Currency Economist at Morgan Stanley, writing at the Financial Times)
With crude oil at $100 a barrel, there is going to be a massive transfer of global financial wealth from oil consuming countries to oil exporters. Some of these windfalls will be absorbed by the economies of the oil producers, but a far larger amount will be invested outside them. Indeed, a petrodollar tsunami is coming, with significant consequences for global financial markets.

HSBC may have overcharged customers $600million (by Chris in Paris at AMERICAblog)
Yesterday the bank reported impressive profits for 2007 despite writing down $17 billion of bad (subprime) debt. Today, the story is a bit different though all too common. Bank fees have been receiving special attention in the UK lately and now the issue is starting to be raised in the US as well. The banks overcharge because they can so easily get away with it. When the money was flowing, no one paid much attention but now that times are tightening up, $600 million just might be enough to make governments move. Perhaps.

Citigroup’s Job Cuts Could Total Over 30,000
Citigroup’s job cuts could reach 30,000 or more over the next year and a half because of increasing writedowns from subprime-related debt, CNBC has learned. The layoffs would exceed the previously reported 24,000 job cuts that had been expected at the banking giant.

Traveling workers told to trim expenses
Faced with a weakening economy, more companies are targeting travel and entertainment expenses.