Wall Street Flat at Opening

Wall Street had an indifferent opening this morning, as it digested poor corporate earnings and watched as Republican senators lined up to block President Obama's $900 billion stimulus plan.

In the first 15 minutes of trading, the Dow is up only a handful of points.

The same is true of the S&P 500.

The Nasdaq is the best of the blah bunch this morning, up about 0.7 percent.

Wall Street is probably not getting too bent out of shape about Obama's plan to limit executive compensation for firms getting federal bailout money to $500,000. The move is largely symbolic -- most companies will be able to bypass the limit by shareholder vote, if they choose.

The $500,000 cap looks like it will apply only to firms that took big one-off federal bailouts to stave off imminent death. By our count, that's AIG, Citigroup and Bank of America.

-- Frank Ahrens
The Ticker is Twittering!