Buffett's Bad Moody's

Tough times continue for Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett's perennial cash cow, after Moody's cut its long-term issuer rating to Aa2 from its top Aaa rating. Moody's said the recession and investment losses at Berkshire's insurance interests "reduced its ability to support funding needs," CNN Money reports. Buffett is negotiating one of the worst markets since he took over Berkshire in 1965, and the holding company's shares have dropped 33 percent over the past year. Earlier this year Berkshire reported a 62 percent drop in profit, and just last month another ratings agency, Fitch, stripped Berkshire of its top rating. Berkshire has recorded big losses from investments in financial giants like American Express and Wells Fargo, but still the Moody's downgrade must sting—not least because Buffett has a 20 percent stake in the ratings agency, making him its biggest shareholder, notes the Wall Street Journal.

Psst ... wanna buy a bank ... or a piece of one at least? The New York Times reports that the Obama administration is toying with a plan to introduce "bailout bonds"—the credit crunch equivalent of the World War I Liberty bonds that were used to fund the mobilization of U.S. troops. The administration is talking to a number of investment companies to create something akin to mutual funds for bank equity that "would give ordinary Americans a chance to profit from the bailouts that are being financed by their tax dollars," the NYT writes, adding, "But there is another, deeply political motivation as well: to quiet accusations that all of these giant bailouts will benefit only Wall Street plutocrats." Perhaps then it's just as well that all 19 banks currently undergoing the Treaury Department's "stress test" likely will be passed fit for business. Indeed, explains another NYT story, "the banking industry, broadly speaking, seems to be in better shape than many people think." Don't get too excited, though, because, "many of the largest American lenders, despite all those bailouts, probably need to be bailed out again, either by private investors or, more likely, the federal government," the story continues.

Fresh allegations of Chinese product dumping are roiling the steel market this morning. The WSJ reports that the "U.S. steel industry filed an antidumping suit against China, covering $2.7 billion of imports, alleging that steelmakers there unfairly dumped specific types of tubular and pipe steel onto the U.S. market last year." It's one of the biggest anti-dumping cases the United States has ever filed against China, the newspaper notes, and it's likely to be just the beginning. According to Bloomberg, Chinese steel imports to the United States more than doubled between 2007 and 2008. This inflow, the United Steelworkers union says, is exacerbating an already brutal jobs market for its members. "Nearly one-third of the pipe manufacturing organizations we represent are experiencing layoffs," a union rep told the news wire.

If you're passing by the Javits Convention Center in Manhattan this week, you'll probably bump into a fair number of po-faced auto execs muttering about their future. The WSJ offers a curtain-raiser on the annual New York International Auto Show that reads like a tip sheet on how to throw a party on the cheap. In a sign of the austere times, General Motors has cut its auto show budget in half and is fitting its Cadillac stand with a cheaper aluminium material, not the fancy raised glass it usually favors. Honda is going with a fabric display, foregoing the flashier LED. And Chrysler this year is doing away with a popular test track in the basement of the Javits Center. How far have things soured in the auto industry? The Financial Times finds that in Britain, new cars are selling for cheaper than many used car models, in some cases £1,000 ($1,468) cheaper.

BusinessWeek, meanwhile, reports Chrysler is in a duel with the banks, unions, and the Treasury Department to whittle down its $7 billion debt load, a necessary step if it's going to cinch a deal with Fiat. "And without Fiat in the picture, Treasury won't give Chrysler $6 billion in government loans that the company needs to avoid bankruptcy," the magazine writes. In a more hopeful piece of reportage, the NYT offers an uplifting retrospective piece on Ford. The newspaper goes back to a bold (for the time) decision in 2006 when Ford sought and obtained $23.6 billion in private funding as a guarantee against unforeseen rough roads ahead. "The loans have kept it independent and on a course to survive the worst new-vehicle market in nearly 30 years," the newspaper writes, while its rivals GM and Chrysler are on life support.

Finally, both the NYT and WSJ have been on the hunt for recession-friendly new jobs and have hit on two remarkably different paths—DJing and selling hot dogs—with one common theme: the opportunity for the journalist to craft a truly cheesy lede sentence. "Channing Sanchez, who lost his job in January, has found a way to mix business with pleasure," puns the NYT, yet it can't outdo the WSJ (headline: "Dogged Pursuit"), which opens its piece with the immortal line, "In hard times, some small-town Americans are turning to a new livelihood with relish." Talk about a frank feature ...