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The airlines are now in such great trouble that they are going to their lenders and asking for better terms on their debt. It seems to be working. UAL (NASDAQ: UAUA), parent of United, says it has gotten an improved deal from some of its banks.

According to The Wall Street Journal, "The company said this week its lenders approved a waiver of the so-called fixed-charge coverage ratio covenant on its credit line through the first quarter of 2009." The ratio requires cash flow to stay at certain levels.

The banks are damned if the do and damned if they don't. Other large airlines will likely ask for similar deals. Banks have little options but to agree to improve lending terms.

The debt-holders at the major airlines know that high fuel prices make losses likely and those losses could go on for several quarters. Loan restrictions could cause the companies to move into default.

But the risk of changing loan terms is that the airlines will move into Chapter 11 anyway. Fuel costs could cripple them that much. The banks would have given better deals and have nothing to show for it but worthless paper.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com and the author of the Ten Stocks Under $10 newsletter.

One of the messages out of the Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) shareholder meeting was that management plans to make more money on huge video-sharing site YouTube. Without going into detail, the search company said it would bring out sets of software tools which would make it easier for marketers to use the site more effectively.

According to Reuters, Eric Schmidt, the company's CEO "said getting the video sharing site to make money is the Web search company's top priority for the year." It is a nice promise, but it is hard to see how it will work.

Unlike new video sites including Hulu, a premium content web destination used by the large media companies to showcase their video, most of the YouTube content is posted by the ordinary citizen. The clips are primarily short and of poor quality. For some time, one of the most popular videos on YouTube was "The Farting Preacher." That may not be the kind of content big marketers find appropriate to use to draw new customers.

YouTube's problem is not its size. It is the largest video site in the world, based on visitors. But, it is also a website based on a community of people who see its as a place to homestead with the own content. Advertisers may never be comfortable with that.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com and the author of the Ten Stocks Over $10 letter.

The Boeing (NYSE: BA) 787 Dreamliner has been delayed three times, mostly because of problems with suppliers.The situation has gotten so bad that some of the company's customers, large airlines, say they will ask Boeing for compensation. That could cost Boeing a lot of money.

Boeing management has promised that there will be no more delays and that everyone who wants a plane will get one, on time. But, the best laid plans...

The company's large unions may stage work slowdowns. They argue that the work given to suppliers should have gone to them. They claim that delays could have been cut. Of course, now they want to delay the program further all on their own.

"Unions have the upper hand now,'' said Richard Aboulafia, an analyst with Teal Group, an aviation consulting firm in Fairfax, Virginia, told Bloomberg. "They're determined to get their share of the good times."

Boeing management now faces more criticism because its own labor force can't be held in line. The company's stock has already dropped due to the delays. First suppliers, now its own people.

The news shows that incompetent management usually stays incompetent. Boeing did not control its supply chain, and did not know it had component problems until too late. Now it will be accused of not even keeping tabs on its own unions.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Priceline (NASDAQ:PCLN) is up 13% on strong earnings.

RealNetworks (NASDAQ:RNWK) is up 8% on a solid quarter.

AIG (NYSE:AIG) is trading down 7% on a bad quarter and plans to raise $12.5 billion.

Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) is off 3% after posting a worse-than-expected quarter.

Stocks may trade differently in the pre-market than they do in the regular session.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

AIG (NYE: AIG) was the most respected insurance firm in the world when it was run by Hank Greenberg. But he is gone, along with the respect.

AIG managed to lose $7.8 billion in the last quarter, an impressive amount even by the standards of current bank and brokerage deficits. According to The Wall Street Journal, "The giant insurer also announced that it would raise $12.5 billion in capital to replenish its balance sheet."

Of course, the reason for the losses was, among other things, investment in instruments based on mortgages.

One odd piece of news that came out of the awful quarter from the insurance firm was that it would raise its dividend. It is hard to imagine where that cash will come from.

The smoke signal sent up by AIG is that the crisis involving US financial firms is not over. AIG did not say that the future was bright and the sun was coming out from behind dark clouds. Pessimism was the emotion of the day.

Watch for more big losses from banks and brokerage in the second quarter. AIG is a canary in a coal mine.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Someone had to pay for the fact that Moody's (NYSE: MCO) is being blamed for not doing a better job predicting the mortgage securities crisis. The reasoning is that the credit ratings agency was too close with some of the companies that issued the paper and did not look hard enough at how the system might come apart in a subprime lending meltdown.

As usual, it is not the CEO who is leaving. Moody's is dumping its president, a sign that the company is contrite, sees the error of its ways, and wants to do better. According to The Wall Street Journal Brian Clarkson's departure "effective by July, marks the highest-profile casualty to date in the controversy over the complicity of credit-rating firms in the subprime meltdown."

Of course, Mr. Clarkson did not act alone. Moody's has scores of analysts who looked at the data on the subprime market. Clarkson was at the top of the pyramid. Of course, the company's CEO was even more so.

The great tradition in American management is that blame should always fall to one person, or a small group of people, when something significant goes off-track at a company. The thinking is usually muddled. Responsibility almost always extends over a wider number of persons.

But, having Clarkson leave is good window dressing.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

George Soros, the billionaire money manager, claims to be old and wise, and able to guess the market's turns better than most. Given the compensation he has collected on Wall Street over his lifetime, it is hard to quarrel with that.

Soros, who still manages several hedge funds, says that the U.S. is in a "bear market rally," according to The Wall Street Journal. Like many pundits, he stakes his claim primarily on the American housing market. If home prices keep up their sharp decline, how, he reasons, can the rest of the economy do well?

He may have a point. Much of what economists have said recently is based on a recession being avoided because consumer spending has slowed but not halted. People are still going to Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT). Thank goodness for that.

But Soros and his intellectual allies look at a housing market that will continue to decline into 2009 and say that this must force a deeper and deeper downturn.

No one wants to believe Soros. The thought is too grim. But the logic is hard to dispute.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com and the author of the Ten Stocks Under $10 letter.

News Corp (NYSE: NWS) did better than Wall Street expected. With one-time items backed out, the numbers were not quite as good, but were still impressive.

Hidden in among the numbers and news about the success of Fox and the company's cable operations were comments by chief Rupert Murdoch that the economic climate is going to start to bite advertising. "There's no doubt the consumer economy is stressed. You're seeing it affected in advertising, more short-term planning and booking," said the News Corp chairman and chief executive is quoted by Reuters as saying.

The observation should give pause to investors in News Corp and shareholders in other global media companies and advertising agencies. Murdoch's operation are structured very much like Viacom (NYSE: VIA), Disney (NYSE: DIS), and Time Warner (NYSE: TWX).

There had been some hope that advertising expenditures would not fall as the economy slowed. First quarter results from several media shops were decent. But the unlucky consumer, hit by rising fuel and food prices cannot spend on forever. Murdoch knows that and just wanted to pass it along.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com and editor of the Ten Stocks Under $10 newsletter.

Crocs (NASDAQ: CROX) is up 16% on word of good earnings.

Energy Conversion Devices (NASDAQ: ENER) is up over 15% on a strong quarter.

Hansen Natural (NASDAQ: HANS) is off almost 19% on poor quarterly numbers.

Pacific Sunwear (NASDAQ: PSUN) is off about 3% on weak same-store sales figures.

Stocks may trade differently in the pre-market than they do in the regular session.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com and author of the Ten Stocks Under $10 letter.

Merrill Lynch downgraded shares of Delta (NYSE: DAL), United (NASDAQ: UAUA), US Airways (NYSE: LCC), AMR (NYSE: AMR), and Continental (NYSE: CAL) from "buy" to "neutral," according to Briefing.com.

Deutsche Bank maintained a "buy" on News Corp (NYSE: NWS) saying the company is less expensive than its peers, according to the AP.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com and author of the Ten Stocks Under $10 letter.

Even a global company like Toyota (NYSE:TM) cannot escape the slowdown in the US market. The Japanese auto company reported it Q4 profits dropped 27%, more than expected.

Bloomberg reports, "The slowdown in the U.S. really hit Toyota,'' said Koichi Ogawa, chief portfolio manager at Daiwa SB Investments Ltd. in Tokyo, which oversees $28 billion in assets. "The market has yet to hit bottom.'' Indeed, for most car companies, US sales fell by double digits in April. Toyota did somewhat better, but "somewhat" is not enough.

The news reflects how difficult it is for multinationals to do well when the world's largest consumer market is doing poorly. It raises the question about what the financial results from large companies in Europe and Asia will look like as the year goes on.

The Toyota earnings are a sign that the US slowdown could move to export companies in places such as China and Vietnam, which rely heavily on selling goods into the American market. The bad news from America is starting to send waves to foreign shores.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com and author of the Ten Stocks Under $10 letter.

Take-Two Interactive (NASDAQ: TTWO) announced that its ultra-violent game Grand Theft Auto IV took in $500 million in sales in its first week. According to The New York Times "The report exceeded the sales expectations of analysts." It would mean that the company pushed out six million copies." As it turned out, estimates were right on the ball.

The market will say that the numbers will make it harder for larger video-game publisher Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: ERTS) to take over Take-Two. The offer sits at $25.74. The stock trades about $1 less than that.

The problem with Wall Street's view of the offer from EA is that it is not unlike Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT)'s bid for Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO). The board at the portal may have viewed it as undervalued, but there are no other buyers. The bid went away and Yahoo!'s shares fell. If EA walks, TTWO shares drop.

Take-Two will tell the world that the Grand Theft Auto IV numbers warrant a higher offer from EA. If the larger company has any sense, it will walk away. That would move TTWO shares back to $17 where they traded before the offer. Management at the smaller company will look like a fool.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com and author of the Ten Stocks Under $10 letter.

Countrywide (NYSE:CFC) got called before Congress. All of the elected officials and their staff members wanted to know how the mortgage firm screwed up by lending people without the resources money to buy homes. Was there fraud involved? Did brokers inflate buyers' salaries? Did they take down any pertinent information at all?

As would be expected, Countrywide said it had not done anything illegal. All that happened was that its people made a few mistakes. All that has been fixed and everything is fine.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Countrywide "told a U.S. Senate Judiciary subcommittee Tuesday that the company is taking steps to address concerns that misconduct in bankruptcy proceedings by mortgage companies is exacerbating the nation's foreclosure crisis." In other words, the company gave out loans which people could not pay and then beat them up with fees which they could hardly afford when they got behind on payments.

The FBI and a number of other agencies looking into Countrywide's practices. They obviously are not willing to settle for the company's comments before Congress. These investigators think that the mortgage operation knew a great deal about what it was doing and was doing it on purpose to make more money.

Countrywide can testify all it wants. There is no poll of home buyers, federal investigators. or Congressmen that will show anything other than the belief that the company is not telling the truth. Not even close.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com and author of the Ten Stocks Under $10 letter.

Sprint (NYSE:S) is upi 5% on news that it will form an alliance to build out it WiMax broadband network.

Clearwire (NASDAQ:CLWR) is up over 10% on news that it will be part of the Sprint initiative.

Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO) is down 1.2% on news that Bill Gates says his company will not pursue its takeover bid.

Motorola (NYSE:MOT) is up 1.2% on news that Carl Icahn has raised his stake in the company.

Stocks may trade differently in the pre-market than they do in the regular session.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Kaufman initated Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) with a "buy" and set a $680 price target according to Briefing.com. The news service also reports that Lehman resumed coverage of Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) with an "equal-weght" rating and a price target of $34.

Thomas Weisel maintained at "overweight" rating on Cephalon (NASDAQ:CEPH) although the FDA rejected broader use of its pain drug Fentora according to the AP.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.