Last Updated: January 28th, 2009: 12:40 PM ET---The major US equity indices are sporting substantial gains midday, near session highs, as investors applaud the Obama administration's new "bad bank" plan to buy toxic assets from banks. The financial sector is soaring with the Financial Select Sector SPDR (NYSE:XLF) up almost 11%. According to Bloomberg reports, the bad bank plan would be managed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC) and could buy up to $1 trillion in bad assets. Dow component Boeing (NYSE:BA) swung to a surprising fourth-quarter loss due to the labor strike and disrupted deliveries, and announced that they expect cuts of up to 10,000 positions as the company tries to cope with worsening economic conditions. The world's second-largest airplane maker reported a quarterly loss of $56 million, or 8 cents per share, versus a profit of $1.03 billion or $1.36 per share during the year-ago period. Excluding nonrecurring items like 747 costs and litigation charge, Boeing reported a quarterly profit of 62 cents per share, still below street estimates of 78 cents per share. In financial sector action, Legg Mason (NYSE:LM) reported a Q3 ex-items loss of $4.52 per share, missing consensus estimates of $4.01 per share loss. Revenue fell 39% year-over-year to $719.89 million, falling short of consensus estimates of $826.35 million. Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) and Wachovia also reported a fourth-quarter loss of $11.2 billion, which includes a $2.8 billion tax asset write-down. ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP) reported a Q4 ex-items profit $1.28 per share, beating consensus estimates of $1.22 per share. Revenue fell 15.5% to $44.5 billion vs. estimates of $36.27 billion. In other corporate news, General Motors (NYSE:GM) announced midmorning that it was finally suspending its highly criticized Jobs Bank program, which essentially pays employees to not work. At the time of this report, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 126 points to 8,301, the S&P 500 is trading 22 points higher to 867 and the Nasdaq is trading 46 points higher to 1,551.

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