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SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- The U.S. Federal Reserve added $17.5 billion in temporary reserves to the banking system Monday through overnight repurchase agreements, or repos, through the New York Fed's Open Market Desk. "The large operations this morning are intended to offset the drain to reserves arising from an elevated balance in the Treasury's account at the Fed," the New York Fed said in a statement on its Web site. The Fed injected $13.5 billion through a 4-day repo, and $4 billion through a 2-day repo. "Clearly the Desk is looking to provide a lot of liquidity into the system for the turn of the year," wrote analysts at Action Economics.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Delta Air Lines and ExpressJet Holdings saw their shares rise 2.1% and 3.6%, respectively, to pace a broad advance in the airline sector on the last trading day of the year. The Amex Airline Index added almost 1% to 34.69 points on Monday even as crude advanced toward $97 a barrel. Frontier Airlines , Mesa Air Group and JetBlue Airways were the only decliners among the 14 components in the benchmark index.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - Two of the biggest rivals in the market for digital downloads of music and videos went at each other Thursday as Amazon.com Inc. added to to its online music arsenal and reports surfaced about a new video-renting deal involving Apple Inc.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Airline shares added to the prior session's gains in early trading Thursday. The Amex Airline Index rose 0.7% with nine of 14 stocks in the benchmark index trading higher. American Airlines parent AMR Corp. led gainers with a 2% rise. Alaska Airways Group shares climbed 1.7% after the company told investors it expected fourth-quarter capacity at its main Alaska Airlines carrier to rise 4% to nearly 6 billion available seat miles while costs per available seat mile come in flat with the same period last year, or fall 1% to 2% excluding fuel. The major indexes rose modestly, while crude oil futures slipped.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Moody's Investors Service warned that AAA ratings of four leading bond insurers could be downgraded after the agency re-evaluated the companies' exposure to potential subprime mortgage losses. The AAA ratings of Financial Guaranty Insurance Company and XL Capital Assurance, a unit of Security Capital , were placed on review for possible downgrade, Moody's said. The AAA ratings of MBIA Insurance and CIFG Guaranty were affirmed, but the rating outlooks changed to negative. The AAA ratings of Ambac , Assured Guaranty , and Financial Security Assurance were affirmed with a stable outlook, Moody's added. Radian's Aa3 rating was also affirmed. AAA ratings are crucial for bond insurers, but investors and analysts have become increasingly worried this year that some bond insurers could lose them.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- SLM Corp. said late Friday Chairman Albert Lord will take on the added title and responsibilities of chief executive officer. C.E. Andrews, the previous CEO, will become president, SLM said.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Fannie Mae said late Tuesday that it will cut its dividend by 30% and raise $7 billion by selling new stock as the mortgage giant tries to bolster capital after recent subprime losses. Fannie shares fell 3.9% to $33.91 during late trading. The company said it plans to sell $7 billion of non-convertible preferred stock in one or more offerings this month. The quarterly common stock dividend will be cut to 35 cents a share from 50 cents a share beginning in the first quarter of 2008, Fannie added. The company also warned on its 2008 results. Conditions in the housing and credit markets, including expected further declines in home prices, will negatively affect the company's financial condition, and results of operations in 2008, Fannie said. Overall economic conditions in 2008 could also materially affect future performance, the company warned.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Citigroup Inc. said late Friday that it has reduced the assets of so-called structured investment vehicles (SIVs) the bank sponsors. Assets in the SIVs the company advises have declined to $66 billion as of Nov. 30 from $83 billion at the end of September, a Citigroup spokesman said in an e-mailed statement. "The funding strategy for Citi-advised SIVs remains unchanged from the disclosures in our third quarter 10Q filing," he added. "We continue to focus on liquidity and reducing leverage." Moody's Investors Service said earlier on Friday that it may downgrade the ratings of some SIVs sponsored by Citi, including Sedna Finance and Zela Finance.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Airline stocks opened Monday's session mostly in the red despite a pullback in the price of crude following one of the biggest holiday travel periods of the year. The Amex Airline Index shed 0.5% to 39 points, with ExpressJet Holdings leading decliners, down 3%. Alaska Air Group and JetBlue Airways were the biggest winners, but added less than 1% each. Crude fell 47 cents to $97.71 a barrel.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- AMR Corp. and ExpressJet Holdings shares both jumped more than 4% early Friday, pacing a broad advance in the airline sector as crude oil prices declined. The Amex Airline Index added 2.1% to 39 points, with every issue in the 14-component benchmark moving higher. Crude oil prices slipped 54 cents to $96.75 a barrel. A report that UAL Corp. is open to the idea of a merger with another carrier also helped bring buyers to the table during Friday's holiday-shortened trading session.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- NYSE Euronext will pay in-coming Chief Executive Duncan Niederauer a $1 million annual salary and a 2008 bonus of up to $5 million, according to a regulatory filing by the exchange operator. The bonus will be split evenly between cash and equity and the form of equity will be determined by the board's human resource and compensation committe, the NYSE explained. The performance criteria for Niederauer's bonus will be set each year by the board, the company added in the filing.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Bank of America Corp. said on Friday that dislocations in the market for collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) will knock the bank's fourth-quarter results. "It may take more time for the markets to return to a more normal environment with tighter credit spreads and greater liquidity," the bank said in its quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Bank of America disclosed that it provided more than $15 billion of liquidity support for commercial paper sold by CDOs. A net $9.8 billion of that is mainly backed by subprime residential mortgage securities, it added. The bank also has more than $3 billion of exposure to CDOs through its structuring, warehousing and trading activities, it said in the filing.

The Democratic mayors of Los Angeles and San Francisco added their voices Wednesday to labor's campaign to portray Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's health reform plan as unaffordable to middle-class people.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Microsoft Corp. was upgraded to an outperform rating by Pacific Crest Friday morning. The move came after the software giant reported a 23% gain in first-quarter earnings, beating Wall Street's expectations. In a report to clients, analyst Brendan Barnicle cited the company's investments in building an on-demand platform. "While still heavily dependent on Windows and Office licenses, Microsoft is using the tremendous cash flow from those businesses to slowly reorient itself toward an on-demand software model," Barnicle wrote. He added that the company "is in the unique position, shared only with Google, to potentially dominate the on-demand phase of computing, as it has client-server." Barnicle set a $42 price target on Microsoft shares, which closed trading Thursday at $31.99.

There's less to Facebook and other social networks than meets the eye A NEW fad is sweeping across Silicon Valley, causing excitement, confusion and hyperbole not seen since the dotcom bubble. It began in May, when Mark Zuckerberg, ten days after turning 23, took the stage in a San Francisco warehouse and announced that he was opening up Facebook, the social network he founded at Harvard University, to outside programmers. Anyone can now build little programs, or "widgets", into the network. To illustrate his idea, Mr Zuckerberg projected onto the wall behind him a "social graph"--a pattern of nodes representing Facebook users and the links among them. Since then Facebook and the idea of the social graph have become the favourite, if not the only, topic of conversation among the valley's geeks, venture capitalists and internet moguls. Mr Zuckerberg compares his graphing of human connections to the work of Renaissance mapmakers. Facebook is growing furiously and may catch up with MySpace, the biggest social network. Outside programmers have added about 5,000 widgets.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Crude-oil futures finished at a new record high Friday, after earlier touching a new intraday trading record high, as supply concerns and bullish U.S. economic data boosted demand. November crude added 61 cents to settle at $83.69 a barrel, surpassing the old front-month closing high of $83.32 set on Sept. 20. Earlier Friday, oil also surpassed the old intraday high also set on that day, rising as high as $84.05.

The Big Apple is in the midst of a building boom that over the next 25 years will change the face of the city and create so many new office towers that the added space alone will be bigger than downtown San Francisco or Atlanta, a Post analysis...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Shares of scrap metal recycler Commercial Metals Co. jumped as much as 7% in opening trades Friday after Goldman Sachs added the company to its list of top U.S. stocks to own. The broker said the decision to add the Irving, Texas-based company to its Americas Conviction Buy List reflects strong overseas demand and a weak dollar. "Acquisition bids for two large U.S. scrap processors, a weak U.S. dollar, and our growing conviction that 2008 iron ore prices will rise by 30% or so, suggest a greater investment focus on the value of integrated raw material assets," the broker said in a note. Goldman raised its 12-month target on the stock to $40 a share from $38. Commercial Metals shares were up 6.7% in mid-morning trade at $33.52 after hitting an opening high of $33.64.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Technology stocks claimed the high ground in early trading Wednesday, with gains from bellwethers such as Apple Inc. , IBM Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. . Red Hat Inc. shares rose 66 cents, or 3.7%, to $19.60 after the open-source software developer on Tuesday reported a 65% increase in its second-quarter earning due to strong sales of its Linux operating system software. Research In Motion Ltd. shares added $3 to trade at $100 after Citigroup started its coverage of the BlackBerry maker with a buy rating. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index rose 10 points to 2,693.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Bear Stearns Chief Financial Officer Sam Molinaro said on Thursday that some of the firm's prime brokerage clients moved money to rival brokers in August at the height of the credit crisis. "The noise around us was more than some could handle from the standpoint of them dealing with their own investors," Molinaro explained during a conference call with analysts. "We did see some balance migration going to other prime brokers." Still, the CFO noted that this was "relatively limited" and the firm saw very few situations where clients moved their entire business away from Bear. "What we really saw were clients trying to be more defensive and moving balances in many cases into the hands of the banks where they felt there was a stronger hand, if you will," Molinaro added. Bear is now talking with many of these clients about bringing business back and most are "very receptive" to that, he said. Prime brokers lend securities and money to hedge funds and provide other services to managers in the industry. It's a lucrative business for Wall Street banks.