PRESS DIGEST - Wall Street Journal - Nov 21
Nov 21 (Reuters) - The following were the top stories in The Wall Street Journal on Friday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.
* Executives at Citigroup Inc (C.N), faced with a plunging stock price, began weighing the possibility of auctioning off pieces of the financial giant or even selling the company outright, according to people familiar with the matter.
* A growing number of directors with demanding day jobs are quitting the boards of troubled companies.
* The Dow industrials fell 444.99 points, or 5.6 percent, to 7552.29, while the S&P 500 slid 6.7 percent, breaching its low from the last bear market. Financial stocks continued their freefall.
* Congressional efforts to rescue Detroit's auto makers collapsed Thursday, with lawmakers saying the industry lacked credible plans to return to profitability.
* Dell Inc (DELL.O), struggling to weather the economic slowdown amid efforts to turn itself around, posted a 5 percent drop in net income and a 3 percent decline in revenue for its fiscal third quarter.
* Crude-oil prices sank below $50 a barrel, and the average cost of a gallon of gasoline at the pump hovered just above $2, a free fall in prices that is reverberating through the economy.
* Mortgage giants Fannie Mae (FNM.N) and Freddie Mac (FRE.N) will suspend foreclosure sales and evictions on certain properties until after the holiday season, as they prepare to implement a previously announced loan-modification program.
* It's a lost decade for Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N). On Thursday, shares of the 139-year-old bank, the most admired on Wall Street, fell below the $53 price when they were first sold to the public.
* In an unusual step, the U.S. Treasury announced it will help liquidate a money-market fund from Reserve Management Corp, whose travails touched off the recent turmoil in money funds that has rocked the investing world.
* Better Place, a start-up company developing technology to support electric cars, Thursday announced plans for a $1 billion network to charge electric cars in the San Francisco Bay Area as part of a broad push into the U.S.
* Google Inc (GOOG.O) Thursday began allowing users to re-rank and edit their search results through a new set of personalization features the company hopes will make its dominant search engine more useful.
* JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) began handing out pink slips to employees in its investment bank, becoming the latest Wall Street firm to slim its ranks amid a gloomy outlook for next year.
