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$35
By Beverly Gage
$18.45
$23
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AP photo / Manuel Balce Ceneta
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There will hopefully come a day when the news from Wall Street is actually good (at the moment, anything better than utterly terrifying news would be nice), but Tuesday was not that day, despite Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s intimations that help could soon be on the way.
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0-60mag.com
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Sure, we’ve all heard the stories about Wall Street bigwigs lining their pockets with gold dubloons while the rest of us scramble to save pennies, but The New York Times has drawn out that contrast in graphic detail with a handy series of charts showing the total earnings (including bonuses) of 12 top executives from 2003-2007.
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commons.wikimedia.org
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To help all those still reeling from sudden onset econo-tastrophe syndrome, the BBC has put together a handy timeline, which connects the dots between events over the last couple years but doesn’t quite take the long view, thus leaving out a few key moments and players from, say, the 1990s (paging Phil Gramm).
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Newsday
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Leaders from France, Italy, Great Britain and Germany are planning to meet on Saturday in preparation for a European finance summit to be held in Washington next week. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who shot down reports on Thursday that France was proposing a hefty European bailout package, invited the other three heads of state to the pre-summit huddle in Paris.
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By Eugene Robinson — A new internal report confirms our fears about the politicization of the Justice Department. That same contempt for government can be found in the current financial crisis as well as the meteoric rise of the former mayor of Wasilla.
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By Robert Fisk — By grotesque mischance, $700 billion—the cost of George Bush’s Wall Street rescue plan—is about the same figure the president has squandered on his preposterous war in Iraq, the war we have now apparently “won” thanks to the “surge.”
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desmoinescatholicworker.org
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By Chris Hedges — The coals of radical social change smolder among the poor, the homeless and the destitute. As the numbers of disenfranchised dramatically increase, our hope, our only hope, is to connect intimately with the daily injustices visited upon them. Out of this contact we can resurrect, from the ground up, a social ethic, a new movement.
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A spate of bombings around Baghdad on Sunday killed 34 people, including at least four Iraqi policemen, three soldiers and several civilians shopping in local markets and preparing to break their fasts to mark the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
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abcnews.go.com
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Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson certainly has his Democratic detractors, but they aren’t the only ones who have some serious doubts about his controversial $700-billion bailout plan. In an appearance on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopolous” on Sunday, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich blasted Paulson’s plan, calling it “un-American” and even opining that Paulson should have resigned.
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AP photo / Lauren Victoria Burke
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Early Sunday morning brought word that the end of the drawn-out bailout negotiations between warring factions of the federal government might finally be at hand, although the House and Senate had not yet officially approved terms of the proposed plan. Updated
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On Monday morning, as the aftershocks from Wall Street’s worst week in decades continued to rock the national and global economy and the Bush administration scrambled to contain the fallout with a bailout plan that could cost American taxpayers over a trillion dollars, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Robert Scheer and Dean Baker joined “Democracy Now!” host Amy Goodman (above) to sort through the rubble and speculate about what might come next.
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onechoicehealthcare.com
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Whoops! As New York Times columnist Paul Krugman pointed out Friday, presidential nominees Barack Obama and John McCain both have articles in the latest edition of Contingencies magazine about how they would reform America’s health care industry. In light of certain recent events in the banking world, McCain may want to reconsider his position.
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Hey, now that Jon Stewart mentions it, that whole government bailout thing starts to sound a lot better: We, the taxpayers, just bought a really, really big insurance company. That’s like having two hotels each on Boardwalk and Park Place in Monopoly, right?
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Whither Lehman Brothers? Et tu, Merrill Lynch? What’s going on on Wall Street? Jon Stewart breaks down the financial meltdown on Tuesday night’s edition of “The Daily Show”—complete with ‘80s monster movie allusions. Sweet!
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AP photo / LM Otero
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By Bill Boyarsky — While it’s fashionable for the media and some of his own supporters to be mourning the demise of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, they may well be overlooking an important point—that the vaunted McCain-Palin ticket has peaked. What else but such blind optimism could be motivating the unflagging energy of thousands of Obama grass-roots workers?
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Flickr / tshein
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While John McCain took heat for reasserting that “the fundamentals of the economy are strong,” two of the five biggest American investment banks folded on Monday. Bank of America bought out troubled Merrill Lynch while Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy. Update: Another big one stumbles
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Investors have been throwing money at stock markets the world over following the news that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been placed under federal conservatorship. Some analysts are confident that the move will stabilize the mortgage giants and, in turn, a tanking housing market. With hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on the line, let’s hope they’re right.
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AP file photo / Loay Hameed
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By Anna Badkhen — Walls have become ubiquitous in Baghdad, a place where barricades keep militias from one another and hungry shoppers from the nearest kebab. As Iraqis struggle with sovereignty, the barriers are a constant reminder of the American military occupation.
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AP photo / Lisa Poole
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The once-mighty U.S. dollar is full of hot air, or at least the rate of inflation is at a 26-year high due to the recent economic toils and astronomical energy prices. Prices U.S. consumers pay shot up 1.1 percent in June—or more directly, your paycheck just got 1.1 percent smaller.
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treehugger.com
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While environmentalists and opponents of foreign oil may have found common cause in the use of biofuels, a new, confidential World Bank report estimates that the recent increase in plant-based fuel production has actually contributed to a 75 percent rise in global food prices, sparking riots across the world and pushing millions beneath the poverty line.
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businessweek.com
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A recent advertising partnership between search giant Google and competitor Yahoo has antitrust authorities worried. Not only does a Google-Yahoo deal look ridiculous in name, but critics (such as Microsoft) say the partnership would consolidate Google’s control of Internet search ad revenue to a whopping 90 percent of U.S. market share.
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chasingthecool.wordpress.com
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Fine, so the headline was a bit much, but this was one time we didn’t mind saying venti instead of large: Turns out that even the top bananas at Starbucks finally realized that they’ve overextended themselves, and due to the sagging economy, they’re closing 600 U.S. retail locations. Great—so that means there’ll be only eight Starbucks stores on every block instead of nine.
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broadcatching.wordpress.com
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Seems like everything is a crisis these days, what with the subprime mortgage crisis, the oil crisis and, perhaps most troubling of all, the climate change crisis. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan acknowledged the complexity and interconnectedness of these unsettling trends Tuesday, stopping short of declaring that a major recession is on the way but without ruling out a recession of lesser magnitude.
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A suicide bomber set off a deadly explosion near a mosque in a popular marketplace in Zaranj, Afghanistan, Thursday evening as men were gathering for prayer, killing 20 people and injuring about 30.
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AP photo / Richard Drew
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Here’s a bit of news that’s sure to inspire some uncomfortable jokes on the trading floor: A Cambridge University research team found that stock traders’ performance, and their willingness to take risks, may be partly, well, hormonal.
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Bloomberg.com
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The International Monetary Fund, the darling lending institution of neoliberal capitalists, believes that the U.S.‘s current mortgage crisis is dragging down the world economy. The IMF is predicting at least a two-year global economic downturn, led by the U.S. credit crunch, that also has a gambling chance of turning into a “global recession.”
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By Joe Conason — For years, District Attorney Robert Morgenthau has warned that the nexus of capitalism and criminality poses a serious threat to America. With Bear Stearns now in ruins, maybe we will listen to him.
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By Marie Cocco — The housing crisis brings to mind Gordon Gekko, that fictitious ambassador of Wall Street whose words, then and now, remind us why uninhibited capitalism just doesn’t work.
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Flickr / epicharmus
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A sense of gloom still hangs over the economy, but there was cause for celebration Monday. Home sales are up for the first time in months, the dollar has regained some ground against the euro, and Wall Street had a triple-digit day. So why aren’t investors smiling?
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The New York Times / James Hill
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By Patrick Cockburn — All governments lie in wartime, but American and British propaganda in Iraq over the past five years has been more untruthful than in any other conflict since the First World War.
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By Eugene Robinson — The Democratic presidential candidates squabble over real or imagined racial sensitivities, the Republican presidential candidate stages photo opportunities with the troops in Iraq, and meanwhile the financial system is coming apart at the seams.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Never do I want to hear again from my conservative friends about how brilliant capitalists are, how much they deserve their seven-figure salaries, and how government should keep its hands off the private economy.
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AP photo / Khalid Mohammed
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The two suicide bombers who carried out the attacks that killed 91 people in crowded Baghdad animal markets were mentally challenged women with Down’s syndrome, according to Iraqi military officials. The women reportedly had been strapped with explosives that were activated via remote control.
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AP photo / Karim Kadim
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Two separate bomb blasts claimed 64 lives in Baghdad on Friday and injured more than 100 others—a tragic reminder of the serious and ongoing challenge of containing large-scale violence in Iraq’s volatile capital city.
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Societe Generale
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How did a 31-year-old low-level bank trader with limited access lose five times as much money as the worst rogue trader ever? That’s the question European authorities and Societe Generale, France’s second-largest bank, are trying to answer.
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AP photo / Richard Drew
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Winter 2008 is shaping up to be a gloomy season for the American economy, with mounting concerns over subprime mortgage prices and a plunging stock market. Thursday was a particularly dreary day on Wall Street, with the Dow Jones industrial average down 307 points and the Standard & Poor’s 500 falling almost 3 percent.
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marketplace.publicradio.org
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You know the economy is in trouble when investors and analysts are relieved that Citigroup lost only $9.83 billion in the last quarter of 2007. The banking giant managed to squeeze a few billion out of Abu Dhabi and Singapore, and will still pay a dividend on its stock, so for now the mood is upbeat.
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The same Tayaran Square market in Baghdad that has witnessed so much bloodshed over the last few years has once again been bombed, injuring dozens and killing at least 14. The attack, which occurred after Friday prayers when the market was crowded, took place just across the Tigris from the Green Zone.
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AP photo / Richard Drew
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Thursday was not a good day on Wall Street, with the Dow dropping over 362 points to close at 13,567.87. Meanwhile, the S&P 500, like the Dow, fell 2.6 percent, and the Nasdaq also took a hit, dipping 2.25 percent by day’s end.
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Anyone considering a bid for the presidency these days should keep records of their college (and, to be extra-safe, high school) report cards handy, judging by President Bush’s take on the state of the nation’s economy and the relation of that topic to his own educational history.
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If you’re caught up financially in the housing bubble (who isn’t these days?), you might want to skip this item. Home prices have fallen by 3.2 percent—the sharpest drop in 20 years, while the median price for homes has gone down for the 12th consecutive month—another record. That’s not good news for a market eager to return to the good ol’ days of easy loans and overpriced homes.
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“The Daily Show,” on the scene in Iraq, goes to town on the ridiculous yet timelessly entertaining assertion of Rep. Mike Pence that a particularly deadly Baghdad market he visited was “like a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime.”
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Reports from Baghdad on Saturday painted a grim picture of widespread mayhem. Eight American troops were killed Friday and Saturday, and a series of suicide bombings occurred across the country, including a devastating blast at a market in Amarly that killed at least 115 and wounded hundreds more.
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Joe Lieberman made an unexpected jaunt to Iraq this week and praised the progress he saw in the form of—listen up—a bustling market. But the troops recruited to have lunch with the ex-Democrat had a different take: “It just seems like we drive around and wait to get shot at.”
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By Joe Conason — Sen. John McCain invaded a Baghdad market with a small army this week, determined to sell the surge. But Americans and Iraqis know better: No matter how many soldiers are sacrificed to delay the fact, the war is lost.
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telegraph.co.uk
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Sen. John McCain stood by his optimistic view of the surge on Sunday after visiting a Baghdad market under heavy guard with a group of Republican lawmakers wearing body armor. Southwest of Baghdad, six American soldiers were killed by roadside bombings.
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