It was another roller coaster of a day on Wall Street. After falling more than 400 points this morning, the Dow rebounded in the last three hours of trading, closing up 552 points, making it the third best single-session point gain in history. (Both the S&P and Nasdaq were up more than 6 percent.) Don't let the momentary boost get your hopes up: The outlook is still pretty bleak, as the hedge fund kings who turned up on Capitol Hill today made clear. And there's always the stream of layoffs to remind us. Dow Jones said today it plans to lay off an unspecified number of employees, the law firm of Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe let 40 lawyers go, National Geographic cut staff, Entertainment Weekly dismissed 25 staffers, and one in ten employees at Morgan Stanley were given notice today. Any good news? Not really. But Dick Fuld didn't seem too depressed when he was spotted buying some yogurt and granola for breakfast this morning, if that's any consolation.

♦ Dick Parsons is the frontrunner to replace Sir Win Bischoff as chairman of Citigroup. [Reuters]
♦ Steve Rattner is shutting down the Quadrangle Group's hedge fund amid weak performance and investor redemptions. [WSJ]
♦ Phil Falcone, Ken Griffin, John Paulson, Jim Simons and George Soros will appear in front of a House panel today. [DB]
♦ Hank Paulson is taking a beating following the news that the Treasury will now focus on struggling consumers, instead of financial institutions. Paulson has become "a reduced figure, damaged by the financial-market meltdown that happened on his watch and by the government's struggles to respond to it." [WSJ, DB, Bloomberg]

Worth reading if you have the time (and you're interested in this sort of stuff): Michael Lewis's lengthy take on the financial crisis, especially the part when he meets up with John Gutfreund twenty years after the publication of Liar's Poker: "Your fucking book destroyed my career, and it made yours." [Portfolio]

Oh Dov Charney, when will you stop being sued for various sexual and financial shenanigans? The pervy, pacing American Apparel boss has been sued yet again. Just last month he was dealing with a sexual harassment case from an old employee; now, another former employee says that Dov tried to get him to inflate the company's books in order to draw in outside investors. Just your average financial fraud allegation, until Dov trotted out his accuser's old "lover":

♦ American Express may be looking for as much as $3.5 billion in government assistance as the company struggles with reduced consumer spending and rising defaults. [WSJ]
♦ Hope is fading fast at GM. Shares fell to $2.92 on Tuesday, the lowest level in 65 years, and the company does not expect "to continue as a going concern" without a rescue plan in place by the end of the year. Meanwhile, Democrats are pushing ahead with a plan to save the automaker. [NYT, Bloomberg]
♦ Who doesn't want a piece of the bailout? The line outside the Treasury Department in Washington is a long one. [NYT]

With the stock market officially crashed and the economy collapsed, everyone wants a piece of the Treasury Department's $700 billion bailout package, especially now that there's only $60 billion left. The cash line includes automakers, insurers, credit card issuers, boat financers, blah blah blah the important part is they all have to go beg as supplicants to a strapping man in a cowboy hat, who says no, and spanks them. Forget bald, hunky Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson or his young ski bum deputy Neel Kashkari: Jeb Mason will neg you for the win. Reports the Times:

It was another down day on Wall Street. The Dow fell 176 points, or 2 percent, and both the S&P and Nasdaq shed 2.2 percent. Naturally, a handful of companies announced a round of fresh layoffs: As many as 60 employees of Condé Nast's Internet division were reportedly let go; an estimated 20 percent of CurrentTV's staff were given notice; the law firm of White & Case announced plans to shed 3 percent of its staff; and Time Inc. bosses in New York are now reportedly planning to lay off lots of European staffers, too. Oh, and don't bother looking for a job if you've already lost yours: Online job sites are reporting that new listings have hit a new low.

The Post is hearing rumors that Morgan Stanley plans to lay off 10 percent of the company's 50,000 workforce on Thursday and that "those given the ax shouldn't expect a very generous severance package." [NYP via Dealbreaker]

♦ With so many companies looking to tap into the $700 billion bailout, it's clear there won't be enough to go around, and a lot more work (and cash) is going to be needed to fix the problem. [WSJ]
♦ The latest company to convert itself into a bank to tap into government funds: American Express, which earned approval from the Fed to become a commercial bank yesterday as it seeks to cover rising credit card defaults. [Bloomberg]
♦ GM's possible bankruptcy was a major topic of conversation at the White House yesterday when Barack Obama met with George Bush. Meanwhile, shares of GM fell to $3.36 yesterday, its lowest level since 1949. [WSJ, Bloomberg]

♦ Citigroup is in talks to buy a regional bank, says the WSJ. Which bank it is they're planning to acquire isn't clear. [WSJ]
♦ The bailout of AIG that was originally going to cost $85 billion and was later revised to $123 billion? Yea, well, now it's $150 billion. [WSJ, Bloomberg]
♦ October was another down month for hedge funds: Since the beginning of September, the average fund has shed 10 percent. [NYP, Bloomberg]
♦ The man who may go down as the hedge fund industry's big winner in 2009: Jim Chanos, whose Ursus fund is up 50 percent so far this year. [NYP]
♦ Asian stocks rallied on Monday after China announced a $586 billion bailout package. [Bloomberg]

♦ Employers cut 240,000 jobs in October, bringing the year's total job losses to nearly 1.2 million. The unemployment rate is now 6.5%, up from from 6.1% in September. [CNNMoney]
♦ Why has the market been falling sharply in recent days? One reason is that hedge funds have been selling billions of their holdings to meet demands for cash from their investors and their lenders. [WSJ]
♦ Citigroup is reportedly planning another round of layoffs. [DB]
♦ Ken Griffin's Citadel says his fund lost about 22 percent last month. [NYP]
♦ The evidence is largely anecdotal, but it appears there's been an increase in suicides related to the financial crisis. [NYT]

The Times has new details about Eric Schurenberg's departure from Time Inc.'s Money: It is supposedly related to "talk within the company of a new editorial direction" for the 2 million-circulation title. Yes, the collapse of Western capitalism would seem to pose some, uh, new and unique challenges to a personal finance magazine, and it sounds like Money has already found more than its share of efficiencies on the business side, sharing an ad staff and website with other company brands. Who will be the Neel Kashkari of Money's editorial rescue plan? We hear the new editor might be Ellen McGirt, a former Money columnist and editor-at-large who later wrote for Fortune and Fast Company. (UPDATE: Not her, she says.) You may have seen her on the teevee!

Not only did the Dow plunge another 400 points today, the Department of Labor reported that the number of people collecting unemployment has reached a 25-year-high. Some of the local companies that announced layoffs today: Hearst, Time Inc., and Steve Cohen's SAC Capital. [CNNMoney]

♦ The Bank of England slashed its key interest rate to 3 percent. And it may go even lower. [Marketwatch]
♦ The short list for Treasury Secretary: Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Paul Volcker, and Bob Rubin. [WSJ]
♦ Steve Schwarzman's Blackstone Group reported a $502.5 million loss for the third quarter. [DB]
♦ More chatter about falling bonuses: One study says the drop could be 20 and 35 percent on average with a 70 percent fall-off for some top execs. [NYT]

Seriously, what is up with you "investors?" Yesterday, as everyone anticipated an Obama victory, the Dow Jones Industrial Average soared more than 300 points. Now that everyone is sure Obama will be the next President, the Dow has dropped almost 500 points. Make up your mind, people. The Wall Street Journal's analysis: "glum readings of service sector activity and employment" combined with a generally poor economic outlook combined with hedge funds selling off holdings to raise cash in anticipation of investors pulling their money out. The quick and dirty Yahoo Finance analysis: "The decline was driven by profit taking, and discouraging economic data on employment and the services sector." Our analysis: a bunch of real suckers went wild yesterday buying stuff up cause they love Obama. Now it's settling in that hey, he won't even be in office for another three months and even when does get there, he still has to deal with the same shitty economy we have today. So then they all were like, "Sell!" Or maybe they're all Republicans.

The market was up big yesterday as investors looked forward to an end to the political uncertainty in Washington. Now they're back to reality, apparently. The Dow tumbled 486 points today amid "renewed worries about the struggling economy." [CNNMoney]

Richard Fuld, the disgraced CEO of Lehman Brothers, will officially leave the firm by the end of the year. (With no bonus, not surprisingly.) In other Fuld family news, the couple's $20 million collection of Abstract Expressionist drawings will be auctioned off at Christie's a week from today. [Bloomberg]

Word has it there's been a bloodbath at Goldman Sachs today: "No big names have been told to pack up their staplers yet, but they may actually be praying to be given the boot. We're told there will basically be no bonuses this year, especially at senior levels." [Dealbreaker]

♦ Stock futures were down on Wednesday morning as investors focused on the challenges facing President-elect Obama. Yesterday's gain, however, was the largest Election Day rally in 24 years. [Reuters, NYT]
♦ The former chief risk officer at Bear Stearns is now a senior official at the Fed where he's part of the division that supervises U.S. banks. [DB]
♦ US companies cut 157,000 jobs in October. [Bloomberg]

Stocks were up as the uncertainty surrounding the race for the White House came to an end. The Dow was up 305 points; the S&P crossed the 1,000 mark for the first time since October 13. [Reuters]