Things are still not looking too good for financial institutions. One of the nation’s leading credit card issuers, American Express (AXP), announced that it will be slashing nearly 4,000 jobs in an attempt to cut an additional $800 million in costs for the remainder of 2009. The layoffs represent 6% of the company’s global work force and is in addition to the 7,000 employees laid off in October. Despite this news, the Financial Select SPDR (XLF) gained nearly 1% in morning trading; AXP is 3.2%.
On the positive side, the Libor, which is the cost of borrowing in dollars between banks, had its biggest two-day drop in more than four months, indicating that credit is starting to unfreeze, the global economy is starting to revert back to normalcy and lending tensions between banks is starting to dissipate.
The Dow Jones Industrial Avereage remained relatively flat, dropping nearly 0.01%, the S&P 500 was down about 0.1% and the Nasdaq added 0.1% in morning trading.
Kevin Grewal contributed to this article.