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By Sarah Stillman
$19.90
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By Chris Abani
$11.70
$13
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Flickr / antiparticle
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It’s not the only financial institution involved, but Goldman Sachs features prominently among the companies that the Federal Reserve is investigating in relation to Greece’s recent debt calamity, Fed chief Ben Bernanke told the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday.
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Martin Sutovec, Slovakia —
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Flickr / World Economic Forum
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The logic of global capitalism is everywhere. New investigations are showing that the same Wall Street tactics—and companies—that ushered our own economy to economic collapse have emerged to exacerbate Greece’s current financial crisis.
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AP / Gregory Bull
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Call it pity or call it sensible politics, the G-7 nations have together pledged to cancel $1.2 billion in debt that Haiti owes them, something Global South activists have been requesting for all developing countries—not just those hit by horrible earthquakes.
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Flickr / Ryanpyle.com
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China is heading into the Year of the Tiger with a roar. Last week it was announced that China has surpassed the U.S. as the world’s biggest auto market, and this week Chinese state media is reporting that the country’s exports leaped 17.7 percent in December, overtaking Germany as the global leader.
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bbc.co.uk
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It was going to be known as the Burj Dubai (Dubai Tower), but given Dubai’s recent economic woes and given that its UAE neighbor, Abu Dhabi, came to the rescue with $10 billion last month, it’s both a fitting tribute and a sign of the times that the world’s tallest building is now called the Burj Khalifa in honor of Abu Dhabi’s leader.
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AP / Kamran Jebreili
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By Robert Fisk — There are two basic truths about Dubai which, predictably, have not found their way into market speculation or newspaper analysis. The first is that Dubai may soon find itself a satellite not of its Abu Dhabi capital but of India.
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Flickr / omar_chatriwala
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Dubai’s debt issues caused trouble in other parts of the world Friday. Stock markets from Europe to Asia to the U.S. registered the effects of the city-state’s announcement that it would need to put off paying back $60 billion in debt incurred from investments, according to The Wall Street Journal.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The president’s mix-and-match approach to Afghanistan will make no one very happy. Yet it might be the least dangerous choice.
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By William Pfaff — I have never understood the widely touted idea or assumption of China-U.S. equality or partnership or joint rule of the world or superpower partnership that has dominated the press coverage of Barack Obama’s trip to Asia.
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AP / Gene J. Puskar
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By Chris Hedges — The rage of the disposed is fracturing the country, dividing it into camps that are unmoored from the political mainstream. Movements are building on the ends of the political spectrum that have lost faith in the mechanisms of democratic change. You can’t blame them. But unless we on the left move quickly, this rage will be captured by a virulent and racist right wing, one that seeks a disturbing proto-fascism.
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Should this ever actually happen, The Onion gets credit for its prescient mock-up of a hostile takeover of the American government by a militant, yet strangely familiar, enemy organization bent on ... completely obliterating the ever-increasing U.S. debt.
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AP / Gerald Herbert
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By Robert Scheer — What a hoot. The Chinese Communists invaded Washington on Monday demanding not that we sacrifice our freedoms but rather that we balance our budget. Creditors get to make that kind of call. And the Marxists of Beijing, who have turned out to be the world’s most prudent bankers, are worried about their assets invested in our banana republic.
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mariopiperni.com / Mario Piperni
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The current year’s federal budget deficit, according to congressional economists, will top $1.8 trillion, the biggest ever by far. And their projection for the fiscal 2010 budget shortfall is tickling $1.4 trillion, putting both estimates much higher than they were in forecasts back in January.
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By Joe Conason — Having allowed his Republican opponents to dominate the economic debate, Obama used his first news conference to rebut them—coolly and civilly, yet without leaving any doubt that he can strike back harder if necessary.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The substantive issues surrounding an economic stimulus are clearer than the politics of getting it passed fast. Here’s how Obama is trying to weave the politics and the substance together.
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news.bbc.co.uk
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After seven straight drops, the Dow landed at 8579.19 on Thursday, a year to the day after hitting a record of more than 14,000 points. The owners of the national debt clock in New York, meanwhile, announced they will add two digits to the board in order to display a quadrillion—because that’s where we’re headed.
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finfacts.ie
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Following days of hype-work by the Bush administration to scare taxpayers into paying for Wall Street’s failures, support for the $700-billion bailout seems to be gaining steam. Analysts believe the final bailout plan, expected in a day or two, may look eerily similar to Bush’s initial proposal, with some slight changes.
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By Marie Cocco — Obama shows more promise than McCain, if only because he correctly sees deregulatory zeal as a culprit. But Obama’s economic strategy simply can’t be implemented now: He wants to spend on necessary investments such as health care, but would have no money to do it.
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foreclosurewearhouse.com
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Although certain Washington denizens from both sides of the aisle might have been thrown when the two government-backed mortgage finance companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, hit the skids last week, several of their current and former colleagues had long seen the crisis coming.
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picasaweb / gohaitimission
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The U.S. is under heavy criticism by human rights groups for withholding funds for clean water projects in Haiti as leverage for U.S.-led political reform in the country. A total of $54 million in loans to Haitians—70 percent of whom already lack daily access to potable water—is being delayed.
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patdollard.com
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Barack Obama is reaching out to Hillary Clinton’s pocketbook, asking his finance team to help pay off at least $10 million of the debt Clinton accrued during her primary bid. The move comes after an announcement that Camp Obama had raised $287 million by the end of May and declined public funding of his campaign.
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Hillary Clinton formally stepped off the long road to the White House on Saturday, at least in terms of seeking the presidency herself, by standing before a throng of supporters in Washington, D.C., and announcing she was suspending her campaign. She congratulated former rival Barack Obama and asked the gathered well-wishers “to join me in working as hard for Barack Obama as you have for me.”
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AP photo / Susan Walsh
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The aftereffects of Tuesday’s Democratic primaries in North Carolina and Indiana are registering in the ongoing contest for superdelegate supporters: By late Friday, Barack Obama’s “super” group was just 166 short of the 2,025 delegates he needs to win the nomination.
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commons.wikimedia.org
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Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has asked his neighbors to forgive his nation’s debts: “Iraq cannot alone shoulder the debt arising from the military adventures of (Saddam Hussein’s) regime.” Hey, he might be onto something there. Maybe the U.S. should take the same approach with China after Bush is gone.
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The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years, a figure that includes interest for putting war costs on the proverbial credit card. To date, the two conflicts have cost more (adjusted for inflation) than the Korean and Vietnam wars combined.
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aftonbladet.se
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The White House’s latest request ($46 billion) for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was greeted with fighting words by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: “President Bush should not expect Congress to rubber-stamp his latest supplemental request. We’re not going to do that.” For those keeping track at home, Bush has now asked for $196.4 billion so far for the budget year that began in October.
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By Marie Cocco — The president’s strategy is to fake out the public so that it believes Democrats in Congress can’t perform basic governmental tasks. Is this any way to run a country?
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Being heavily in debt is prompting some U.S. military members to volunteer to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan. Take Air Force Capt. Nick Sloan, who admits that the need to get out of debt was a significant factor in his choice to go to Iraq.
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astoriafederal.com
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The annual savings rate dropped to the lowest level in 74 years, the Commerce Department has reported. On average, Americans saved a “negative 1 percent” in 2006, meaning people not only didn’t save but dipped into their savings and borrowed in order to spend more than their income.
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World Economic Forum
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The World Economic Forum has demoted the United States in its ranking of economic competitiveness, explaining that spiraling debt and persistent budget shortfalls forced the downgrade. Switzerland now holds the top spot, followed by much of Scandinavia.
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From Brad Blog
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His take on Bush’s appointment of Josh Bolten as chief of staff: “He just gave a promotion to the guy in charge of our $9-trillion debt. You know what? I really think if you walked into a cabinet meeting and started hurling your feces at the wall, Bush would name a state after you.”
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Congress just raised our debt ceiling—the amount we’re allow to borrow—by $781 billion. It was either that or default on our treasury notes. This is the fourth debt-ceiling increase since Bush took office—some $3 trillion in total. Dick Cheney may have said that deficits don’t matter, but try telling that to the next generation of Americans, who are going to have one helluva credit card bill to pay off.
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Just four years after defaulting on more than $100 billion in debt, Argentina is expected to completely re-pay its debt to the International Monetary Fund and strengthen its alliance with Venezuela’s populist leader, Hugo Chavez. Read the story.
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Greenland’s Great Melt Is Pinned On Climate Change
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