A sobering fourth-quarter report from Centex (CTX) shows why the Fed’s rate-cutting days probably aren’t over. The Dallas-based homebuilder lost $908 million, or $7.34 a share, from continuing operations in the latest quarter, compared with a year-ago loss of $23 million, or 19 cents a share. Revenue dropped 36% from a year ago to $2.31 billion, as house-sale closings dropped 33% from a year ago and prices tumbled 15%. The stark numbers left CEO Tim Eller pointing to lower inventories, a big land sale (made at a $395 million loss) and some debt reduction as the quarter’s main accomplishments.

“We were disappointed with our lack of operating earnings, but believe these actions position us to continue to build an even stronger cash position and to restore operational profitability in the future,” Eller said. “Notwithstanding the outlook for a weak housing market, we are committed to delivering quality homes for our customers and to building a better Centex.”

Problems in the housing market, where inventories remain elevated despite a sharp drop in prices over the past year, have been a significant factor in the Fed’s decision to cut interest rates by 3.25 percentage points since September. And though the Fed signaled Wednesday that it will remain vigilant about fighting inflation, suggesting a pause in the rate-cutting campaign, observers such as Westwood Capital managing director Len Blum are projecting more cuts by year-end, as the economy continues to struggle along. He doesn’t expect to see investors return in numbers to the debt markets until house prices fall in line with rental rates. That could mean a further house-price decline of at least 10%, he says - which would be more bad news for capital-strained banks, and for housebuilders like Centex.

Internet service provider United Online (UNTD) is branching out in a most unexpected direction. The Woodland Hills, Calif.-based operator of the NetZero and Juno ISPs and the Classmates and MyPoints online loyalty marketing services is buying FTD (FTD), the Downers Grove, Ill., flower company. The deal is worth $456 million in cash, stock and United Online notes. Though United Online says the deal is worth more than $15 a share to FTD shareholders, FTD shares were up just over 1% in midafternoon trading Wednesday at $13.69.

An Internet company buying a flower company smacks of desperation, a la telco Level 3’s (LVLT) March 2002 purchase of a big software reseller in a bid to stay in compliance with its debt covenants. That isn’t stopping United Online chief Mark Goldston from offering up the hard sell, though.

“As one of the premier branded marketing companies in the U.S., United Online anticipates being able to further enhance a world-class brand name, FTD, and build upon the fine work done by FTD’s management team in creating a highly profitable business,” Goldston says. “This transaction will meaningfully diversify our revenue base within a large global market experiencing significant migration to the Internet.”

But it isn’t just the expanded revenue base that makes this deal smell so sweet to Goldston. “After spending many years marketing major retail brands in the fragrance, cosmetic and other image product industries and managing consumer retail businesses,” he says, “I am especially looking forward to working with the thousands of FTD affiliated florists and the potential for developing specific programs designed to further invigorate the FTD florist channel and increase the number of orders delivered to that trade channel.” So Goldston is clearly hoping this will be the rare acquisition that drives, ahem, organic growth.

General Motors (GM) posted another quarterly loss Wednesday, and the automaker trimmed its industrywide sales forecast for 2008. GM reported a net loss of $3.3 billion, or $5.74 per share, compared with a year-ago loss from continuing operations of $42 million, or 7 cents a share. The latest quarter included a $1.45 billion charge reflecting the impairment of the company’s investment in its 49%-owned GMAC affiliate, a $731 million charge related to costs tied to the restructuring of auto parts maker Delphi, and $718 million in other items tied to North American and European operations. Excluding the charges, the latest-quarter loss was $350 million, or 62 cents a share.

GM’s adjusted loss is substantially narrower than analysts had been expecting. “We continue to leverage our global product portfolio to take advantage of tremendous growth in key emerging markets, while at the same time taking the appropriate actions to deal with the challenging economic conditions in the U.S.,” CEO Rick Wagoner said. But citing “the current state of the U.S. economy and automotive industry,” GM cut its 2008 U.S. total industry seasonally adjusted annual rate outlook to the mid to high 15 million unit range, down from the low 16 million unit range. GM said earlier this week that it would eliminate a shift of production at four assembly plants, and the company told reporters Wednesday that the economic outlook has “deteriorated” since the beginning of the year. Nonetheless, shares were up around 2% in early trading Wednesday.

Citi’s (C) latest capital-raising plan has failed to impress one of the bank’s most vocal skeptics. Oppenheimer analyst Meredith Whitney writes in a report out late Tuesday that the bank’s decision to sell $3 billion in common stock won’t keep Citi from having to raise more money via further stock sales and asset dispositions. “The fact that Citi raised capital at this time did not come as a surprise to us, but the fact that the company raised such a small amount of capital at this time confounds us,” she writes. She expects to see Citi raising an additional $10 billion to $15 billion in capital, on top of the nearly $40 billion it has raised since December. If she’s right - and she often has been since her call last fall that Citi would have to cut its dividend - the bank still has a ways to go to optimize its capital structure, as finance chief Gary Crittenden put it in Tuesday’s stock-sale announcement. Citi shares were down 3.5% in early trading in New York Wednesday.

Citi (C) is raising more cash. The bank said late Tuesday it would sell $3 billion in common stock to the public in a bid to “optimize our capital structure,” as finance chief Gary Crittenden put it. The news comes just weeks after Citi, hit by billions of dollars of losses on mortgage-related securities and rising credit losses in its consumer business, raised $6 billion by selling preferred stock.

Citi said the two most recent capital-raising efforts will boost its Tier One capital ratio, reflecting the ratio of core equity capital to total risk-weighted assets, to 8.5%. Shareholders tend to like preferred stock sales better than common ones, because they can mean less dilution of existing ownership stakes. But Citi indicates it is ”pleased with the strong interest we have already received regarding this issuance,” Crittenden said. Investors were less pleased, sending the stock down 3% in late trading.

Countrywide’s (CFC) finances keep getting worse, but not alarmingly so based on investor reaction Tuesday. The Calabasas, Calif., lender swung to a first-quarter loss of $893 million, or $1.60 a share, for the quarter ended March 31, reversing the year-ago profit of $434 million, or 72 cents a share. Loan fundings fell to $73 billion from $117 billion a year earlier, reflecting the sharp slowdown in the mortgage markets over the past year. The company also sharply boosted its provisions for future credit losses, as rising mortgage delinquencies and falling house prices figure to saddle the company with more bad loans.

There are plenty of ugly numbers in the latest quarter’s results, including a $1.5 billion provision for losses on residential loans, up nearly tenfold from last year’s $158 million. Charge-offs, reflecting realized loan losses, jumped to $606 million from $39 million a year ago. And Countrywide’s liability for estimated losses tied to home equity letter-of-credit rapid amortization - a quirk of loan securitization that arises when losses on the underlying mortgage pools rise above a certain level - rose to $798 million at March 31 from $704 million at year-end and zero a year ago.

Still, shares of Countrywide were up modestly mid-morning Tuesday, as investors bet the latest hits won’t derail the company’s planned merger with Bank of America (BAC). The spread between Countrywide’s share price and the amount Bank of America has agreed to pay - 0.1822 BofA share for each Countrywide share - was about 14% on Tuesday. While that suggests the market doesn’t exactly consider the transaction a done deal, the spread is much lower than it has been during recent periods of market stress. For now, it appears BofA’s offer - even at a steep discount to Countrywide’s book value - is priced about right.

Now Canadians can have the iPhone too. Toronto-based Rogers Communications (RCI), the biggest wireless service provider north of the border, said Tuesday that it has reached an agreement with Apple (AAPL) to bring the iPhone to Canada. The phone’s sole North American distributor until now has been AT&T (T), which last week reported stable demand for the high-priced, much sought-after smartphone in the first quarter of 2008. Rumors that Apple was about to roll out the iPhone in Canada have been swirling in tech circles this year.

The announcement comes just a week after Fortune’s Scott Moritz reported that efforts to bring a competitor to the iPhone onto the market have hit snags. The release of Waterloo, Ontario-based Research in Motion’s (RIMM) Meteor phone has been pushed to August from June, wrote Moritz, citing people close to RIM and Meteor distributor AT&T. Of course, any delay in competing offerings stands to benefit iPhone peddlers like Rogers.

“We’re thrilled to announce that we have a deal with Apple to bring the iPhone to Canada later this year,” said Rogers Communications CEO Ted Rogers. “We can’t tell you any more about it right now, but stay tuned.”

The commodities boom has been good to Archer Daniels Midland (ADM). The Decatur, Ill., grain processor posted a 42% rise in fiscal third-quarter profit Tuesday, as sales surged 64% from a year ago, driven by soaring prices of agricultural goods. ADM made $517 million, or 80 cents a share, for the quarter ended March 31, up from the year-ago $363 million, or 56 cents a share. The latest quarter profit beat analysts’ estimate by a dime a share, and sales - which jumped to $18.7 billion from $11.4 billion a year earlier - outpaced the Wall Street consensus by more than $5 billion.

“ADM’s third-quarter performance demonstrates the ability of our balanced operations, global network and solid balance sheet to deliver strong results amid fluid markets,” said CEO Patricia Woertz, one of only 12 Fortune 500 women CEOs. ”Volatility in commodity markets presented unprecedented opportunities. Once again, our team leveraged our financial flexibility and global asset base to capture those opportunities to deliver shareholder value.”

For the first nine months of the year, ADM said increased selling prices resulting primarily from sharp rises in commodity prices accounted for approximately 85% of its sales increase, while higher sales volumes - principally vegetable oil and meal, feed grains and wheat - accounted for the rest.

The slowing economy isn’t hurting Corning (GLW). The maker display glass for televisions and computers posted a strong first quarter and guided to more of the same for the second quarter, citing robust demand for liquid crystal display televisions. The Corning, N.Y., company made $1.03 billion, or 64 cents a share, for the quarter ended March 31, up from the year-ago $717 million, or 45 cents a share. Excluding a gain tied to the bankruptcy of its Pittsburgh Corning affiliate, Corning made 44 cents a share in the latest quarter, two cents better than the Wall Street estimate.

“This was a tremendously strong quarter for Corning,” said CEO Wendell Weeks. “Display glass demand remains robust and we continue to operate our LCD glass substrate facilities at full capacity. The global consumer appetite for LCD televisions continues to grow.” Weeks said Corning now expects the global LCD glass market to grow at the upper end of its previously targeted 25% to 30% range.

The company said it expects the strong demand to translate into better-than-expected results for the second quarter. Corning expects to make 47 to 50 cents a share on sales of $1.71 billion to $1.75 billion. Analysts were looking for a 43-cent profit on sales of $1.67 billion. “Global demand for LCD televisions and laptop computers remains strong going into the second quarter,” said finance chief James Flaws. “We continue to closely monitor the U.S. retail market, but we have not seen any indication that the U.S. slowdown is impacting our LCD glass business.”

Corning ranks No. 12 among Fortune’s 20 most profitable big techs.

The former head of JPMorgan Chase’s (JPM) municipal derivatives sales is the target of a federal criminal investigation of possible anticompetitive actions in the municipal bond market, Bloomberg reports. Douglas MacFaddin was fired last month, Financial Industry Regulatory Authority records show, after he revealed he was a target of a Justice Department probe into Wall Street’s sales of derivatives and investment contracts to state and local governments, Bloomberg reports. MacFaddin is one of 10 current and former traders at JPMorgan and other banks who are being investigated.

The report doesn’t cite any specific deals as having drawn the scrutiny of prosecutors. But a number of cases have come to light recently in which small-town financial officials seem to have gotten in over their heads with exotic Wall Street financing methods. Back in February, Bloomberg reported that the Erie school board had to pay JPMorgan $2.9 million to get out of an interest-rate swap that went sour earlier this decade. And just this month, officials from Jefferson County, Ala., met with federal officials in a bid to stave off a bankruptcy filing, after the county ran into trouble tied to its own bad bets on interest-rate swaps. The good news, such as it is, is that so far the county - home to the state’s biggest city, Birmingham - hasn’t had to resort to a bankruptcy filing.