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Two-thirds of Congress' most vulnerable members — Republicans and Democrats alike — chose to protect their seats on Election Day rather than follow their party leaders and vote for an unpopular economic bailout plan.

Their votes helped doom the plan President Bush, congressional leaders and top economic officials said was critical.

"We're all worried about losing our jobs," Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said, endorsing the bill and voting for it after leading a rebellion against an earlier version last week. "Mo

The cost of borrowing in dollars overnight rose the most on record after the U.S. Congress rejected a $700 billion bank-rescue plan, putting an unprecedented squeeze on the global financial system.

The London interbank offered rate, or Libor, tha

Filed under: Analyst reports, Analyst upgrades and downgrades, Analyst initiations

Analyst upgrades:

• Jefferies upgraded shares of GrafTech (NYSE: GTI) to Buy from Hold as they believe electrode pricing increases should more than offset the increase in raw material costs over the next year. The firm raised their target to $30 from $22.
  
• JP Morgan upgraded Navistar (NYSE: NAV) to Overweight from Neutral following the strong Q3 report and raised outlook.
  
• Goldman added Devon Energy (NYSE: DVN), Quest Software (NASDAQ: QSFT) and Transocean (NYSE: RIG) to the Conviction Buy List.
  
• Mon

A. Overview:

These many months of panic in the prices of U.S. bank stocks have been equally savage among some European bank stocks. One diamond in the rough is Allied Irish Banks (AIB), not to be confused with Anglo-Irish Bank, which is also publicly traded. Allied Irish is a well-run institution with a dominant position in the attractive Irish economy and with a well-covered dividend currently yielding over 9%. Importantly, the company has a long history of maintaining and steadily growing the dividend -- a point which distinguishes it from most other European firms.

Here are the highest yielding stocks that trade on the New York Stock Exchange, with PE ratios below 20, PEG ratios below 1, and market caps above $500 million. You will notice that there are many European companies on the list, including a couple Irish banks.

Northstar Realty Finance Corp. (NRF) a debt oriented real estate investment trust yielding 15.91%

KKR Financial Holdings LLC (KFN) a mortgage oriented real estate investment trust yielding 15.31%

Barclays PLC (BCS) the London based bank holding company yielding 12.83%

Bank of Ireland (IRE) Ireland based ban yielding 12.55%

Allied Irish