At least that appeared to be the consensus emerging among analysts Monday as Wall Street awaited Yahoo's response to last week's unsolicited offer from Microsoft.

Yahoo says its board is going to take its time reviewing Microsoft's bid along with other options that could keep the Sunnyvale-based company independent.

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WASHINGTON — U.S. factories saw demand for their products rise in December by the largest amount in five months, a spot of welcome news that failed to change the picture of an economy struggling to stay afloat.

The Commerce Department reported Monday that orders placed with U.S. factories rose by 2.3 percent in December. That was an improvement from the 1.7 percent gain posted in November and marked the biggest increase since July.

For all of last year, total orders — durable and nondurable goods — placed with U.S. factories went up by just 1.4 percent. It was the worst performance since 2002, when the economy was struggling to recover from the 2001 recession. In 2006, factory orders rose by 5.1 percent.

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WASHINGTON — The record $3.1 trillion budget proposed by President Bush on Monday would produce eye-popping federal deficits, despite his attempts to impose politically wrenching curbs on Medicare and eliminate scores of popular domestic programs.

The Pentagon would receive a $36 billion, 8 percent boost for the 2009 budget year beginning Oct. 1, even as programs aimed at the poor would be cut back or eliminated. Half of domestic Cabinet departments would see their budgets cut outright.

Slumping revenues and the cost of an economic rescue package will combine to produce a huge jump in the deficit to $410 billion this year and $407 billion in 2009, the White House says, just shy of the record $413 billion set four years ago.

But even those figures are optimistic since they depend on rosy economic forecasts and leave out the full costs of the war in Iraq.

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NEW YORK — Improved results from the Fox broadcast network and Fox News Channel lifted second-quarter earnings at Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., outweighing lighter returns from movies and TV production, the media conglomerate reported Monday.

News Corp., which bought Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co. in December, earned $832 million in the final three months of 2007, up 1 percent from the $822 million it earned in the same period a year earlier.

The results for News Corp.'s second fiscal quarter were equivalent to 27 cents per Class A share, in line with estimates of analysts polled by Thomson Financial.

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WASHINGTON — Many U.S. banks have made it harder for creditworthy borrowers to get a mortgage, according to a Federal Reserve survey released Monday that underscored the spread of a painful credit crunch.

"About 55 percent of domestic respondents indicated that they had tightened their lending standards on prime mortgages," the Fed survey said. That was up from about 40 percent in a previous survey released in November.

Problems first cropped up in the market for risky "subprime" mortgages made to people with tarnished credit or low incomes and have been spreading to more creditworthy borrowers. Foreclosures have hit record highs.

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WASHINGTON — The Securities and Exchange Commission is examining stock sales by an American board member of Societe Generale, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

The SEC inquiry, an expansion of one by French regulators, is investigating stock sales investor Robert Day and two foundations linked to him made days before the bank announced a $7 billion loss caused by a rogue trader. A spokesman for Day said he had promised to cooperate with any investigations.

In a story on its Web site, The Journal cited unnamed people familiar with the matter.

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NEW YORK — The New York Giants' thrilling win over New England was the most-watched Super Bowl ever with 97.5 million viewers, a total that is second only to the "M-A-S-H" finale audience, Nielsen Media Research said Monday.

The game eclipsed the previous Super Bowl record of 94.08 million, set when Dallas defeated Pittsburgh in 1996. The final "M-A-S-H" episode, which drew 106 million viewers in 1983, is the only other show in American broadcast history watched by more people.

Sunday's game had almost all the ingredients Fox could have hoped for: a tight contest with an exciting finish involving a team that was attempting to make history as the NFL's first unbeaten team since 1972.

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NEW YORK — Oil futures rose Monday after the government reported strong data on factory orders, giving investors some hope that the economy will dodge a recession that would curtail demand for energy.

The Commerce Department said factory orders jumped by 2.3 percent in December, more than analysts expected. Oil prices jumped on the news.

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DETROIT — A dispute between Chrysler LLC and parts supplier Plastech Engineered Products Inc. forced Chrysler to shut down or cancel a shift at five factories Monday, and the automaker said it could idle all 14 of its assembly factories.

Plastech supplies Chrysler with about 500 plastic interior, exterior and powertrain components for nearly all of its vehicles, according to a lawsuit Chrysler filed Friday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Detroit.