Investors, Uncle Sam Needs You!

Private investors are needed to buy as much as $1 trillion in bad bank loans, dubious mortgages, and other toxic debt. That's the frank plea the White House has been broadcasting this weekend, on the eve of "the administration’s long-awaited plan to purchase troubled assets, meant to remove them from the balance sheets of banks and, in turn, spur banks to lend more money to consumers and companies," the New York Times reports. In other words, the linchpin of the Geithner plan is for the Treasury to round up enough deep-pocketed investors to buy up as much as $500 billion, and possibly more, corrosive debt. "We don't want the government to assume all the risk. We want the private sector to work with us," Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told the Wall Street Journal. The newspaper cannot help but point out the irony that Washington desperately needs Wall Street "even at a time when Wall Street moneymakers are being vilified by the public and politicians."

The NYT points out the unsavory truth that there simply isn't much demand for these assets because "of their uncertain risk." So, to sweeten the deal, "the government plans to offer subsidies, in the form of low-interest loans, to coax private funds to form partnerships with the government to buy troubled assets from banks." In a promising sign, the Asian markets responded favorably to the Geithner plan details, lifting Japan's Nikkei 3.4 percent, CNN reports.

As of this morning, the largest shareholder in German automaker Daimler AG, owner of the Mercedes-Benz brand, is Abu Dhabi's Aabar Investments PJSC. The WSJ reports that Daimler sold a $2.65 billion piece of the company—equal to a 9.1 percent stake—to Aabar "in a move that shores up its balance sheet and tamps down fear that activist shareholders could push for a strategic shift." The second-largest shareholder is Kuwait. A gloating Khadem al-Qubaisi, chairman of Aabar, told the WSJ that "the best time to invest is when people panic." If only General Motors could strike such a deal. On Sunday, GM's bondholders threw into doubt the tenuous negotiations, complaining that GM has failed even to respond to its proposal to restructure some of the $28 billion in GM debt and stay out of bankruptcy, the Detroit Free Press reports. The bondholders weren't done there. The group told the federal auto task force that GM's current restructuring plan is not aggressive enough to ward off bankruptcy, a scenario bondholders are desperately trying to avoid to avert the possibility that their already dwindling investment will fall even further, the NYT writes.

It looks as if the oil sands of time have run out for Petro-Canada. The WSJ reports that arch rival Suncor is planning to snap up Petro-Canada for $15 billion in stock—roughly a 30 percent premium over its current languishing share price. Both oil producers thrived in recent years as the high price of crude oil justified massive speculation in the potentially lucrative oil sands fields of Athabasca Basin in Canada's Alberta province. Yet extracting crude oil from the sands is an expensive (not to mention environmentally exacting) process, and as oil prices collapse, so have the dreams of Canada's oil companies. The merger, which could be announced as early as today, may yet spark a new wave of oil-industry mergers as the so-called supermajors look to pick off smaller oil producers in their search for new sources of oil to bolster their flattening inventories.

To the mystery of copper now. In the last three months, there has been an impressive rally of 28 percent in the price of the metal—a potential bellwether of better economic times, given how intertwined copper is with the global industrial cycle. But now the Financial Times reports that the spike in prices comes not from a global economic upturn but rather some aggressive buying by the Beijing State Reserves Bureau, a "secretive" organization that "manages the country’s strategic stockpiles." Traders believe China is rebuilding its strategic stocks now as "the current price is less than half last year’s record $8,940 a tonne and also to support its struggling local copper smelters and avoid job losses," writes the FT.

And, finally, DVD sales have been plateauing for some time—not good news for Hollywood. So in the latest attempt by a major film studio to recoup sales from its brimming archive, Warner Bros. is unveiling today a new plan to sell directly to consumers classic titles previously unreleased on DVD, the WSJ reports. The films include Once Upon a Honeymoon, the 1942 movie with Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers, and Possessed, the 1931 movie with Clark Gable and Joan Crawford. The pricing suggests this latest gambit is targeted for die-hard film buffs. DVDs will be priced at $19.95 and downloads at $14.95.