Dow down 1000.

Republicans, breaking sharply with President George W. Bush as his term draws to a close, refused to back federal aid for Detroit’s beleaguered Big Three without a guarantee that the United Auto Workers would agree by the end of next year to wage cuts to bring their pay into line with U.S. plants of Japanese carmakers. The UAW refused to do so before its current contract with the automakers expires in 2011.

The breakdown left the fate of the auto industry – and the 3 million jobs it touches – in limbo at a time of growing economic turmoil. General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC have said they could be weeks from collapse. Ford Motor Co. says it does not need federal help now, but its survival is far from certain.

Wall Street economists expect retail sales in November fell 1.9 percent, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters.

That would be an improvement over October’s record 2.8 percent drop, but still the fifth straight monthly decline reported by the Commerce Department.

More dire economic data from the U.S. – a vital export market – and news of deep job cuts at Bank of America also added to the gloom.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 stock average tumbled 484.68 points, or 5.6 percent, to 8,235.87, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index slid 6.7 percent to 14,577.67. South Korea’s Kospi fell 4.4 percent while markets in Singapore, Australia, China and India fell between 2 percent and 4 percent.

Bernard L. Madoff, his silver hair reflecting the lights of a federal courtroom, was released on $10 million bail secured by his signature and that of his wife. He declined to comment as he walked out of U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

Madoff, 70, the founder of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, maintained a separate and secretive investment-advising business that served between 11 and 25 clients and had a total of about $17.1 billion in assets under management, prosecutors said.

Yet even a truckload of penny-pinching might not be enough.

GM has already cut its U.S. work force by almost 80,000 people this decade, reducing it to 96,000, and it has idled five factories and laid off 11,000 domestic workers this year alone.

In an interview with The Associated Press Thursday night, Vice Chairman Tom LaSorda and Chief Financial Officer Ron Kolka also said some parts suppliers and other vendors have demanded cash on delivery but the company is fending them off.

Chrysler has said its cash will drop to $2.5 billion by Dec. 31, the minimum needed to meet payroll, pay suppliers and run the company. With the U.S. sales slump expected to continue into January, one of the slowest sales months of the year, the company has little revenue coming in and must pay suppliers $7 billion every 45 days, Kolka said.

The credit card industry had been under pressure from Britain’s center-left government to change the practice of “risk-based repricing,” which targets those who are in danger of defaulting on their loans by jacking up interest rates on troubled borrowers by as much as 10 percentage points or more.

The U.K. has the highest level of credit card debt of 14 European countries studied by the Datamonitor research group, and the government is hoping to avoid a rash of personal bankruptcies and credit problems that could deepen the effects of the economic downturn.

The 86-year-old company said in a filing that its debt is “directly attributable to a sudden and sharp decline in consumer sales” because of the poor economy.

That a toy retailer filed for bankruptcy just before Christmas shows how bleak things have become, since such stores make up to half of their sales during the holidays. But analysts expect toy sales this holiday season to be flat or down slightly from last year’s total of $10.4 billion, according to market research firm NPD Group, because consumers are cutting back amid the recession.

The maker of such products as Tide detergent, Pampers diapers and Gillette shavers, P&G said organic sales – that is, sales not linked to acquisitions – won’t meet the 4 percent to 6 percent growth goal in the quarter ending in December. But the Cincinnati-based company still expects organic sales to grow between 4 percent and 6 percent over its fiscal 2009, which ends in June.

P&G leaders, in a meeting with Wall Street analysts, said households, retailers and distributors are cutting back worldwide.

Major European stock markets were expected to fall as much as 5.3 percent in early trade, according to UK financial bookmakers, as the unraveling rescue plan worsened investor sentiment around the world. (.EU)

The suddenness of the move in the dollar/yen, which pushed the U.S. dollar below the sensitive level of 90 yen, fed concern that Japanese officials would enter the market to stabilize their currency.

After the U.S. Senate failed late on Thursday night to reach a last-ditch compromise to help troubled U.S. automakers with $14 billion in bridge loans, calls swelled for Treasury to tap its so-called TARP, or Troubled Asset Relief Program, funds to help the auto industry.

“I’d be shocked if the administration didn’t dip into TARP,” an unidentified senior Democratic aide said. “That is the only option now to keep these companies afloat.”

In papers filed in U.S. bankruptcy court in Manhattan, Trustee James Giddens said he needed “immediate and complete access” to information from the company and the current and former employees, to investigate the events and circumstances that led to Lehman’s collapse.

The law regarding brokerage liquidations, known as the Securities Investor Protection Act, specifically allows the trustee to “investigate the acts, conduct, property, liabilities and financial condition,” of the company, the court papers said.

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Looking ahead, the CEO said U.S. housing prices — which spawned the current credit crisis — could fall another 20 percent.

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At the CNBC interview, he said that, “if we’re lucky,” the market could start to recover after two more quarters.

Liechtenstein, a tiny principality of 35,000 people nestled between Austria and Switzerland, still discreetly advises the very wealthy around mahogany tables, even though it recently relaxed its bank secrecy laws under pressure from the United States.

Now, thanks to a U.S. tax probe into Swiss bank UBS (UBSN.VX)and other pressure, a quiet revolution is brewing in the $7 trillion world of offshore banking, as banks realize that holding untaxed money can ultimately sting them.

Shares of Wells Fargo were down 9 percent at $26.56 in afternoon trade on the New York Stock Exchange.

Bove expects Wells Fargo to post a profit of $2 per share in 2008, as the charge will not be reflected on the income statement. He also said, “In addition there is apparently another $11 billion in charges due to write downs that will not be shown on the income statement either.”

“We said all along that the board had considered bankruptcy and had concluded it was not a viable option,” GM spokesman Tony Cervone said.

“The board continues to meet frequently and to weigh all options and has retained appropriate advisers for all contingencies.”

The world’s largest maker of elevators and air conditioners is planning for continued weakness in world construction markets. The continued recovery of the dollar against the euro also will hurt its results.

“We expect the global recession to continue through most of ’09,” Louis Chenevert, chief executive officer, told investors in New York. “What’s remarkable in this environment is the speed at which we have seen the decline of the global economy. This is something that none of us have seen before.”

A separate report showed the U.S. trade deficit swelled unexpectedly in October as weak economies around the world imported less from the United States.

Analysts said the export pillar that had helped to support the fragile economy earlier in the year was now crumbling and many said the economy appeared headed for an even deeper contraction in the fourth quarter than they had thought.

The European Union was also divided on a proposed stimulus package as bad economic news kept mounting, with Bank of America slashing up to 35,000 jobs to weather the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Hours of late-night negotiations among US senators on salvaging Detroit’s Big Three collapsed late Thursday, despite news that General Motors had hired lawyers for a potential bankruptcy filing.

The six-month-postponement was the latest setback for the Dreamliner project that was launched in 2004 with a record order from All Nippon Airways.

Now the Japanese launch customer will not receive delivery until the first quarter of 2010, roughly two years later than initially promised.

“We should be prudent if we reach interest rate territory at some point that we have not explored yet,” Weber, who is also the German central bank governor, told the financial daily Boersen Zeitung.

The ECB has never taken its main rate below 2.0 percent, he noted.

Voters on Europe’s last feudal territory elected a full complement of candidates to Sark’s parliament for the first time in nearly five centuries on Wednesday, where previously it was made up primarily of unelected landowners.

The Barclay brothers, the proprietors of the Daily Telegraph newspaper who own land in Sark, were a major driving force behind the constitutional changes, and wanted them to go further.

Global technology titan IBM scored highest, 79 on a scale of 100, when it came to the fight against Earth-warming gases, according to a report titled “Corporate Governance and Climate Change: Consumer and Technology Companies.”

Britain-based grocery giant Tesco was ranked second most climate-conscious firm with 78 points and US computer maker Dell was third with 77.

The California online search titan — known for leaving new software offerings in beta, or test, modes for what seems like ages — says Chrome proved its merits, and in a relatively brief 100 days.

Google’s free web-based Gmail service still bears a “beta” label even though it was launched nearly five years ago.