Its leader. Once again, oil holding near a 5 1 2year low. Theyre recovering today after yesterdays sliding. Theyre still trading for less than 62 a barrel. Meantime, the drop in oil prices killing bonds. Bonds issued by the staterun industry have now fallen to 55 cents on the dollar. The yield is up to almost 50 , brendan. In washington, the house is set to pass a spending bill today that would avert a Government Shutdown. Yes. Lawmakers also plan to approve a twoday stop gap bill that would give them until saturday to vote on the bill. Heres house speaker, john boehner. This a marv just job. I wish it was done last week, but it wasnt, and so here we are. Im proud of the work that theyve done, look forward to it passing with bipartisan majority in the house and in the coming days. John boehner tanned, rested and ready. Many democrats are not happy with one provision of the bill that would roll back rules aimed at protecting taxpayers against bank losses caused by derivative trades. Democrats call that a giveaway to wall street banks. Still the spending bill is expected to pass in both houses. It is an i. P. O. Thats seen as a barometer for the alternative lending industry. Shares of lending clubs begin trading today. Last knits i. P. O. Raised 8 0 million with shares priced above the range. They arrange loans over the internet to individuals and Small Businesses. The money comes from investors who can commit as little as 25. Tom . In older news yesterday, this is stunning t. Is a loss for a federal prosecutor whos become the scourge of wall street with his crackdown on Insider Trading. A federal Appeals Court absolutely crushed, the proper word is reversed. They crushed two of his convictions. The court ruled it isnt always i will theyll trade on insider information, and the ruling raises the bar on the proof of how far the hand is in the cookie jar. He says he may appeal, absolutely stunning, brendan. You followed this very closely for Bloomberg Business week. I just did not expect this. It requires the suspension of disbelief, the way that the ourt has interpreted this. Actually, we filed a story, did yeomans work at 12 30 this morning, she talked to a man who used to be an f. T. C. Lawyer, and he says it makes it harder to convict those down stream who got it second or third hand. Now the government is going to also convict the insider who passed the tip, otherwise dont bring a case. Brilliantly done, essential the hand in the cookie jar. You got to get the hand that is in the cookie jar. Well continue this discussion. We look at equities, bonds, urrencies. West texas intermediate, the next screen, the v. I. X. From 12 to 16 to 18. 53. I put euroyen up, because euroyen is doing nothing. This is really important to understand that the oil complex with a vengeance is moving, ruble with a russian bank raising rates to defend the ruble against the higher inflation and in a collapsing real economy blows through 55. Brendan, eight weeks ago, somebody told were going to 55, and i said not a chance. Heres the wow right now. Shannon oneill joined from us last week. This is venezuela. Ears 2008. This is the ugliness of this lehman crash, and theyve absolutely blown through. This is one of the few charts thats blown through where we were six years ago. And this right here, right around here is when venezuela actually threatened to sue an analyst who was worried of default, and thats where they threatened to sue. Heres where we are a month later. Yeah, and you mentioned the yields on oil paper. 50 . And the full faith and credit venezuela, and thats a pun, is gone from 12 to 24. Well, rip up the script here. The quiet and joy of the Holiday Season has given way to a global staredown at your cell phone. What is the price of oil . Look at the negative rates in europe and equities rolling over. The founder of w. P. B. Is with us, the largest advertising company. Were thrilled to bring you this morning, welltimed, the senior policy advisor with a passing knowledge of commodities. Im going to go to you and be rude to sir martin. How dare you, no. What what do you think . This shows you really need to go back to the original you did not know the original basis of the insider information, then its not culpable. I think its a big blow, and it ally messes up what is the lot, the manipulation standard and relate it to Insider Trading. Its a big problem. Is it so dramatic that merrill lynch, goldman sachs, the f. S. A. And sir martins england, do they have to rip up all of their instructions on Insider Trading . No, no, but it means that the f. C. C. Is going to have to bring more cases and make sure that theyre strong, and the case law on this is going set the standard for the future. Theyre going to have to bring more cases and try to work on this. I dont have enough money for insider trade, so i dont know how it works, but help me understand. Is this plausible to think you can pass on information with no knowledge whatsoever of how the information or whether its going to be used. Well, i mean, its possible, i guess, but to some extent, if you think about it, you should be cautious as an investor before this. When you get information, you should have some sort of Due Diligence to know where the information came from. I think that gets to the gray line that may be looked at. Do people innocently pass on information with no plans whatsoever . Im going tell you about this company, do what you will. Its hard to say. You need to know the facts and circumstances, the individual circumstances. We saw, for example, the mark cuban thing that went away also. You have to look at these things individually. I hate to comment generally about it. What does this do for the man and for the office that he leaves in terms of their ability to be effective . It does send a chilling thing. People go, wait a minute, what are we doing . We worked all this time on it, and now weve been pushed back. But there are setbacks in government, and thats ok. You know, they just need to go forward. Lets go the other side, and a public officer of a publicly traded company, sir martin. What do you do to make sure theres not Insider Trading . Well, we have street rules in terms whf people trade. The close period that we have, you know, we report quarterly, and no officers at the company or people can trade or they have to get permission if they want to trade even throughout the organization in those close periods between the end of the quarter and when we announce so. It knocks out actually about at the end of the day, it knocks out about three or four months of the year when you could trade and actual rules it out for senior officers. I feel that i should disclose that sir martin told me some things right before the show. We had a good gossip. What im going to do with them, hes ok. Have you ever been in a meeting in your illustrious career where people have said, oh, my god, this is not good, weave got to go to our lawyers to get advice on Insider Trading . No, i actually no. Ok, thats good. No, you dont you dont really know what people will be doing elsewhere. Well, remember the business week one . Wasnt there something on long island that was getting business week a night early . This was like a case study. It was pretty impressive, nibble queens or long island, it was printing business weeks cover. Im guessing it was business week. Do you remember . We used to get the copies were distributed from the printers before, not for Insider Trading, but to get knowledge of what was happening on a sunday rather than a monday. I use to be a magazine writer. Let us think back to a time when magazines had such power that you could inside trade based on something contained. Well, no, no, they had the power of the friday night, the tory late on a friday night. I remember that one. Now we have technology where youve got mobile tracking and all these things that can actually inside information. Its a new world, right . Its not about the economy a couple of days in. Its finding out right now something thats going to happen in five seconds,ed trading on it. What youre referring to goes against the grain in the sense that you have more information. You have more trails that you can follow, so you would think it would be easier to prosecute. Weve get a fivehour bloomberg surveillance this morning, so well continue. Let me republican up the script. Oil, with the brutal moves in oil, has it created dysfunction within the Commodity Markets . Do you look for margin call issues . Here we are, low nest five years. More so in the energy space. So radar subpoena right now. Yeah, and of Course Energy impacts agriculture and everything else. So yeah, there are big concerns. When you talk about the volatility were seeing, part tv is because of what you were talking about earlier, we dont know whats going to happen. When you dont know whats going to happen, theres less volume, and where theres less volume, theres more volatility. Have you seen a reduced billing because of the real economy effects of this crisis were in . Well, its a twoedged sword here. Lower oil prices is effectively a boost to the consumer. The Rich Companies will be less affected. You put them in that category, so its very difficult to figure out. Netnet, at the end of the day, it was the wall street journal conference, if i can ention that. Christine lagarde said its positive for the economys world. Come on, shes the queen. Mediocre queen, not mediocre growth. At the end of the day, there are two conflicting things here. Obviously opec countries are coming up pressure. Oil price falling, but on the other hand, in terms of the disposable income, actually a positive. Netnet for our business we got to go to commercials. Thank goodness for that. A long commercial. Back to the wall street journal. I just to want clarify something. Tom keene meant to call Christine Lagarde the queen of mediocre, not the mediocre queen. Its a correction, because thats im a minimally talented spoiled brat. We are going to cover more, including those emails. Were going to discuss lending club. Will it change the world of finance as we know it . Good morning, everyone. We welcome all of you to our new york city studio this morning. Let me get right to scarlet fu on an i. P. O. With the v. I. X. Climbing, weve got a highprofile i. P. O. To tell about you. Lending club is like a do it yourself bank. They arrange loans to individuals and Small Businesses over the internet using funds from investors. Brendan can put in as little sed as little as 25. Well, he doesnt have enough money for that. Lending club raised 870 million, more than anticipated. Whats interesting here is the highprofile backers of this company. John mack, former chairman and c. E. O. Of Morgan Stanley, sits on lending clubs board. His stake is worth about 36 million after the pricing. Mary meeker, the former Morgan Stanley analyst, also a backer of the company. And Larry Summers, former u. S. Treasury secretary, is a director of the company. Ive ve seen that always wondered about the regulations that prevented this in the past. Do you think they are designed to protect consumers, or do you think theyre designed to protect people who have more money and would rather be investing . Theyre designed to protect consumers, but markets are morphing all the time. Technology changes. Tougher government to keep ahead of the stick. Most of the time theyre reactive and trying to keep one the oldschool ways. So yeah, its a morphing market, and there are morphing technologies used. Do you worry about consumers lending 25, 1,000 to businesses, to startups . Yeah, i mean, at times. But overall, its fine. Look, its a Free Enterprise system, and theres got to be certain safeguards, absolutely. We cant figure out regulations. And that assumes the banks are lending to smaller and mediumsized companies. Providing an alternative source of finance, particularly when Large Companies are squeezing supplies and making it more difficult for liquidity. All these things to come. But in china, alibaba, the platform is a financing platform as well, because they give supply credit. Lending clubs main products are three and fiveyear unsecured consumer loans with an average Interest Rate of 14 . Its an experiment. Lets bring it up, which is a very highpriced consumer credit, which drew a lot of criticism. Church of england has actually been an investor in funds that invested in them. Thats an interesting background. Absolutely, raised lots of interesting questions. Coming up in our next hour as we look at a busy day well get perspective on china. Stephen roach on the fed as well. Peter orzag with us in that hour. I dont have a job, this is great. Its a hormone day much stay with us. Good morning, everyone. Bloomberg surveillance, your house for tabloid morning reading. We welcome all of you on economics, finance, and our celebrity from scarlet fus world of gossip. Brendan greeley gets started with our morning, and i mean it, its a must read. Brendan, help us out. I dont understand how you can expect me to do anything, im actually just flipping through the New York Post right now. We know that sony was hacked, and we know that some things were revealed. But now people are beginning to read emails, and were really understanding how sonny works and how hollywood works. Heres an email from scott rudin, a producer at sonny. Hes talking about Angelina Jolies cleopatra. He said im not remotely interested in presiding over an ego bath. And that was about the most presentable thing, the most printable thing that was said about any hollywood star. Brendan, you led us with this on the cyberthing. This is itment this is true in private industry as well. Theres this idea that you can pay someone to come in and make you cybersafe, but what you really need to do is change behavior. That was terrible behavior inside sony. You had things on servers they shouldnt have had on servers. They wrote things on email they shouldnt have put in email. This is sonys fault for having terrible people. Scarlet . Is it sonys fault or just the way communication has spawned . Individuals. People used to talk this way person to person, now theyre doing it this way. Company policy. You have to remind people that everything you write could end up on bloomberg or the front page of the wall street journal. Do you find yourself doing that at work on a daily basis . Thinking about it, certainly, yes. Now, in a business such as entertainment, of course passions run high. Emails. I cant believe i cant believe Prince William the things ive been dying sash no, dont get into that territory. You cant say that. Another thing that scott rudin wrote, which another principal excerpt of his email, shes a camp event and a celebrity, and thats all. The last thing anybody needs to make a giant bomb with her that any fool could see coming. Damning words, especially towards awards season. Theyre announcing the golden globe she said that Angelina Joel see in prime position, because she improvement she directed a movie. Shes getting ready for awards season. It makes me sad. If all of our internal emails were revealed, it wouldnt be nearly this juicy or fascinating. Of course, Angelina Jolie doesnt work here. This is like were learning the digital age painfully. Slow motion. But this is people used to write letters, and they used to write they would write views on people. I mean, nothing new in that sense. The only thing is, as we were saying in relation to insider information, is its much more immediate. Its much more accessible. Its much more dangerous. And it doesnt die. Unless it has to be forgotten. Im with you. I dont think people are any worse than they ever were. You can control your own papers in a way that you cant control well, no, no, that wasnt the case. People die, and papers get revealed. So no, statutes and limitations. You dont find out years and years after its done, and if youre dead, you dont care this much. Are people this careless in government . They have been in the past. Ive got a general rule, and i think it actually makes you better in general, and that is dont create the content. Amen. We all go back to think about the picture of mayor giuliani in drag. Maybe hes ok with that, but its a scary picture. If you dont create the content, youre better. The same with internal emails. Just dont Say Something that you dont want. Anything i have to say about scarlet fu is never typed. Yeah, but if bart youve got a block on your emails. If you use the word geithner or bear, it doesnt go out . No longer, because sheila behr is there. Shameless plug. Thats a shameless plug. Outrageous. Outrageous. All right, i want to bring in our twitter question here, because its apropos, and the cover of the New York Post and new york daily news, how do you trash talk at work . Sonyhack. You went through emails. I cant believe we hash tag here. Can we get us hash tagging together . Hash tag the other thing, is do you go around the water cooler . Do you go into the stairstpwhl do you go outside during the cigarette break . Or maybe you just dont. Yeah, everyone is talking. Just dont dont trash talk. Russian ruble through 55 with the central bank of Interest Rates, oil is fragile, 61. 39 per barrel. We go to hong kong where prodemocracy protests the twilight demonstrators making their last stand. Police have removed barricades and are taking away protesters who refused to leave. Student leaders say they will remain until they are arrested. Thousands of job cuts could come to ebay. Might reduceite its workforce as it prepares to split off its paypal unit. Hasjournal suggests ebay considered cutting 3000 jobs. The cuts would mainly affect the core marketplace division. Mcdonalds wants to streamline its menu. Chain will fast food cut eight items and five extra value meals, and hopes the move will speed up service no word on which items will be eliminated, earlier this week sales fell 4. 6 in november, the biggest drops 2001, when was a last time you went to mcdonalds . Keep pulling on that handle mcdonalds and see what it does. I dont have a thing against mcdonal