| 12/23/2008: | Bubble blindness. The big mystery is the failure to see the housing bubble. The data screamed "bubble," even in real time. And there was no excuse for believing that such things don't happen in efficient markets, not with the dead body of the dot-com bubble still warm. Paul Krugman. | |
|
| 12/22/2008: | With most ballot challenges settled, Franken leads by 48. With most ballot challenges settled, Democrat Al Franken holds a 48-vote lead over Republican Sen. Norm Coleman in the U.S. Senate recount, according to a Star Tribune analysis of a draft report from the Secretary of State's office. Star-Tribune. | |
|
| 12/22/2008: | Life Without Bubbles. It may take a lot longer than many people think before the U.S. economy is ready to live without bubbles. And until then, the economy is going to need a lot of government help. Krugman. | |
|
| 12/22/2008: | Toyota sees first oper loss, "unprecedented" crisis. Toyota Motor Corp forecast a first-ever annual operating loss, blaming a relentless sales slide and a crippling rise in the yen in what it said was an emergency unprecedented in its 70-year history. Reuters. | |
|
| 12/21/2008: | Gasoline prices fall to lowest since February 2004. The average price for a gallon of gasoline in the United States fell 5 percent from two weeks earlier, hitting its lowest level since February 2004, according to the nationwide Lundberg survey released on Sunday. Reuters. | |
|
| 12/21/2008: | Gasoline prices fall to lowest since February 2004. The average price for a gallon of gasoline in the United States fell 5 percent from two weeks earlier, hitting its lowest level since February 2004, according to the nationwide Lundberg survey released on Sunday. Reuters. | |
|
| 12/21/2008: | California in fiscal emergency, governor eyes layoffs. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a fiscal emergency on Friday to call lawmakers into another special session to tackle the state's weakening finances, and separately ordered state officials to prepare to furlough and lay off employees to cut costs. Reuters. | |
|
| 12/21/2008: | Who Wants to Kick a Millionaire? There are more black boxes still to be pried open, whether at private outfits like Madoff’s or at publicly traded companies like General Electric, parent of the opaque GE Capital Corporation, the financial services unit that has been the single biggest contributor to the G.E. bottom line in recent years. But have we yet learned anything? Incredibly enough, as we careen into 2009, the very government operation tasked with repairing the damage caused by Wall Street’s black boxes is itself a black box of secrecy and impenetrability. Frank Rich. | |
|
| 12/21/2008: | Lexington: Jumping the gun. Mr Obama repeatedly insists that America only has "one president at a time". But since election day that "one president" seems to have been the junior senator from Illinois rather than the former governor of Texas. The Economist. | |
|
| 12/21/2008: | Up to 30,000 new U.S. troops in Afghanistan by summer. The United States is aiming to send 20,000 to 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan by the beginning of next summer, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Saturday. Reuters. | |
|
| 12/21/2008: | Obama increases new jobs goal to 3 million. President-elect Barack Obama has decided to increase his goal for creating new jobs after receiving economic forecasts that suggest the economy is in worse shape than had been predicted, two Democratic officials told CNN. CNN. | |
|
| 12/21/2008: | A Scheme With No Off Button. Mathematically speaking, Ponzi schemes are doomed. So, what's the exit strategy? NYT. | |
|
| 12/21/2008: | Pastor Warren defends invite to inauguration. Rick Warren, one of the nation's most influential evangelical pastors, is defending President-elect Barack Obama's invitation. USA Today. | |
|
| 12/19/2008: | Music Industry to Abandon Mass Suits. After years of suing thousands of people for allegedly stealing music via the Internet, the recording industry is set to drop its legal assault as it searches for more effective ways to combat online music piracy. WSJ. | |
|
| 12/12/2008: | The Party of Herbert Hoover. On Wednesday, Dick Cheney met with Senate Republicans and emphasized the importance of keeping the American automotive industry afloat. "If we don't do this, we will be known as the party of Herbert Hoover forever," the vice president said. The Neo-Hooverite caucus apparently seems willing to wear the label with pride. Political Animal. | |
|
| 12/10/2008: | Global trade is shrinking, fast. China's November trade data (a 2.2% year over year fall in exports; a 17.9% year over year fall in imports) suggests that global trade is contracting quite rapidly. And since trade accounts for a rising share of global activity, it suggests that the global economy has stalled -- and perhaps is contracting. Brad Setser. | |
|
| 12/10/2008: | Krugman's worst case: a lost decade. "A scenario I fear is that we'll see, for the whole world, an equivalent of Japan's lost decade, the 1990s -- that we'll see a world of zero interest rates, deflation, no sign of recovery, and it will just go on for a very extended period." Reuters. | |
|
| 12/10/2008: | MS cuts global growth forecast, again. The Morgan Stanley global economics team is bearish on the global growth. Today the team cuts its outlook for the sixth time in seven months, and pretty sharply -- to 0.9 per cent from 1.7 per cent. Global inflation meanwhile is seen coming down to 1.7 per cent from 3.8 per cent. FT Alphaville. | |
|
| 12/10/2008: | Treasury Bills Trade at Negative Rates as Haven Demand Surges. The Treasury sold $27 billion of three-month bills yesterday at a discount rate of 0.005 percent, the lowest since it starting auctioning the securities in 1929. The U.S. also sold $30 billion of four-week bills today at zero percent for the first time since it began selling the debt in 2001. Bloomberg. | |
|
| 12/9/2008: | Carr diagnoses the economy: How irrational are we? What does it take to feel that a recession is real? Carr, like Noonan, seems to be waiting for the appearance of Hoovervilles. There are millions of lost jobs, and many more whom the labor statisticians miss whose hours have been cut back involuntarily. Wordyard . | |
|
| 12/8/2008: | Credit Suisse Forecast: 8.1 million foreclosures by 2012. In a research note titled "Foreclosure Update: over 8 million foreclosures expected" updated last week, Credit Suisse analysts are now forecasting 8.1 million homes will be in foreclosure by the end of 2012, representing 16% of all households with mortgages. Calculated Risk. | |
|
| 12/8/2008: | Times Co. to borrow against building. The New York Times Company plans to borrow up to $225 million against its mid-Manhattan headquarters building, to ease a potential cash flow squeeze as the company grapples with tighter credit and shrinking profits. IHT. | |
|
| 12/7/2008: | Deeply in Debt, Tribune Co. Could Be Flirting With Bankruptcy. The Tribune Company, the newspaper chain that owns The Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Times, is trying to negotiate new terms with its creditors and has hired advisers for a possible bankruptcy filing, according to people briefed on the matter. NYT. | |
|
| 12/7/2008: | In Factory Sit-In, an Anger Spread Wide. Workers who were laid off Friday are occupying a Chicago plant, arguing that the government's bailout plans leave out regular workers. NYT. | |
|
| 12/7/2008: | Krugman: US auto industry will probably disappear. "It will do so because of the geographical forces that me and my colleagues have discussed," the Princeton University professor and New York Times columnist told reporters in Stockholm. "It is no longer sustained by the current economy." AP. | |
|
| 12/5/2008: | Democrats Agree to Push Auto Bailout Plan. Faced with staggering new unemployment figures, Democratic Congressional leaders said on Friday that they were ready to provide a short-term rescue plan for the cash-strapped American automakers, and expected to hold votes on the legislation during a special session next week. NYT. | |
|
| 12/5/2008: | Profiles in Panic. With Wall Street hemorrhaging jobs and assets, even many of the wealthiest players are retrenching. Vanity Fair. | |
|
| 12/5/2008: | Deflation Alert. I think it is time for the Fed to consider in earnest taking up some form of inflation targeting. (Or, better yet, price level targeting.) Initially, inflation targeting was discussed as a policy aimed at reassuring markets that we won't have too much inflation. Right now, we need it to reassure markets that we'll have enough.
Mankiw. | |
|
| 12/4/2008: | Worries about next year. I've been ruminating over economic prospects for next year, and I'm getting scared. Krugman. | |
|
| 12/3/2008: | Corporate default risk soars. A fresh sign of the deterioration in credit market conditions emerged Wednesday when one of the most closely watched barometers of sentiment broke through a key threshold. The Markit iTraxx Crossover index rose above 1,000bp for the first time since its creation in 2004, implying a record number of companies are on the verge of default. FT Alphaville. | |
|
| 12/3/2008: | What to Do. What the world needs right now is a rescue operation. The global credit system is in a state of paralysis, and a global slump is building momentum as I write this. Reform of the weaknesses that made this crisis possible is essential, but it can wait a little while. First, we need to deal with the clear and present danger. To do this, policymakers around the world need to do two things: get credit flowing again and prop up spending. Krugman in NYRB. | |
|
| 12/3/2008: | Why GM Is Doomed. If you're a U.S. taxpayer you ought to read GM’s "Restructuring Plan for Long-Term Viability." By the end of next year, you'll own a good chunk of this company, so you might as well familiarize yourself with what's going on there. WSJ Deal Journal. | |
|
| 12/2/2008: | GAO to Paulson: Must do better. Government Accountability Office has just published its take on the Tarp, which can be summed up in ten of the GAO's own words: "Additional Actions Needed to Better Ensure Integrity, Accountability, and Transparency". FT Alphaville. | |
|
| 12/2/2008: | Credit Crisis Indicators. Yesterday saw a stunning flight to treasuries across the board. Calculated Risk. | |
|
| 12/2/2008: | Pay Bankers Much Less. I've now reached the point at which I simply don't believe people when they say that lower pay for bankers will result in worse performance... Let's bring down pay, a lot, and see whether performance really falls. Felix Salmon. | |
|
| 12/1/2008: | Goldman Faces Loss of $2 Billion for Quarter. Goldman Sachs Group Inc., known for avoiding many of the blowups that have battered its Wall Street rivals, now is likely to report a net loss of as much as $2 billion for its quarter ended Nov. 28, according to industry insiders. WSJ. | |
|
| 12/1/2008: | Overnight markets: Down, down, down. Asian stocks tumbled Tuesday as a deepening global recession drove down oil and metal prices and heightened concerns about company earnings after European stocks slid and US stocks on Monday suffered their heaviest losses since October. FT Alphaville. | |
|
| 12/1/2008: | It is time to jump into the liquidity trap. The recession in the US, the UK, the Eurozone, Japan and the rest of Europe is, with probability verging on certainty, going to be so deep and so prolonged, that the zero lower bound will be reached even by the most anal-retentive gradualist central bank before the middle of 2009. So why not get it over with in December 2008 and possibly do some good in the mean time? Buiter. | |
|
| 12/1/2008: | Cancelled M&As close to eclipsing takeovers. The value of cancelled merger deals for this quarter is closing in on the value of deals actually completed and the two measures will draw level if the mammoth takeover of Canadian telecoms group BCE falls through. Financial Times. | |
|
| 12/1/2008: | Endowments Dump Private Equity Stakes. I reckon this is half panic, and half "let's get out while there's still some value in these things". Felix Salmon. | |
|
| 12/1/2008: | Official: it's a recession. The Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research met by conference call on Friday, November 28. The committee maintains a chronology of the beginning and ending dates (months and quarters) of U.S. recessions. The committee determined that a peak in economic activity occurred in the U.S. economy in December 2007. The peak marks the end of the expansion that began in November 2001 and the beginning of a recession. The expansion lasted 73 months; the previous expansion of the 1990s lasted 120 months. NBER. | |
|
| 12/1/2008: | Deficits and the Future. We have a fundamental shortfall in private spending: consumers are rediscovering the virtues of saving at the same moment that businesses, burned by past excesses and hamstrung by the troubles of the financial system, are cutting back on investment. That gap will eventually close, but until it does, government spending must take up the slack. Otherwise, private investment, and the economy as a whole, will plunge even more. Paul Krugman. | |
|
| 11/30/2008: | Doris Dungey, 47, Financial Blogger Known as Tanta, - Obituary. The blogger Tanta, an influential voice on the mortgage collapse, died Sunday morning in Columbus, Ohio. Tanta, who wrote for Calculated Risk, a finance and economics blog, was a pseudonym for Doris Dungey, 47, who until recently had lived in Upper Marlboro, Md. The cause of death was ovarian cancer, her sister, Cathy Stickelmaier, said. NYT. | |
|
| 11/29/2008: | Iran blames West for global crisis. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blamed the West for the global financial crisis on Saturday, saying other countries were being dragged in to help resolve Western problems. Reuters. | |
|
| 11/28/2008: | Stocks end short session with 5th straight gain. Wall Street wrapped up its biggest five-day rally in more than 75 years Friday, even as investors digested signs of a bleak holiday season for retailers and fears that a flurry of reports next week will show more economic distress. AP. | |
|
| 11/26/2008: | Selfishness and Greed are Not Cool These Days. In the Thanksgiving spirit, however, I do see something to be thankful for these days: Being greedy and selfish -- doing things for me, me, me and ignoring or exploiting others in the process -- is out of fashion. Bob Sutton. | |
|
| 11/26/2008: | Why fairly valued stock markets are an opportunity. We have bad news and good news. The bad news is that the world economy is teetering on the brink of what may well be the most damaging slowdown since the second world war. Policymakers around the world -- particularly in the inordinately complacent surplus countries -- do not begin to understand what this may mean. Financial Times. | |
|
| 11/26/2008: | Obama names former Fed chairman to head recovery board. President-elect Barack Obama Wednesday named former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, 81, to lead a new economic recovery board. CNN. | |
|
| 11/25/2008: | Obama Plans to Meet With Governors. The event, which the National Governors Association worked to arrange, will include a two-hour, bipartisan working session Tuesday. NGA Chair and Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell will host the event along with Republican Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas, the NGA's vice chair, Nick Shapiro, an Obama transition team spokesman, said in an email. Mr. Shapiro said they'll meet to discuss "the unique challenges facing our states during this economic crisis." WSJ. | |
|
| 11/25/2008: | Nouriel Roubini on Obama's Economic Team. Renowned economic pessimist Nouriel Roubini approves of Obama's picks, but they face grave challenges ahead. Newsweek. | |
|
| 11/25/2008: | Economy down 1% markets down 50% Here's an OECD report that says that US economy will grow 1.4% this year and contract 1% next year. Still stocks are down 50% or so depending on the day (volatility is gigantic). So either the financial markets are wrong big time, and what we are seeing now is prices that reflect panic selling and not future earnings of companies, or economists are wrong big time and USA and the global economy will shrink much more. Varsavsky. | |
|
| 11/25/2008: | Conservative crisis desperation. So we're having a crisis, reflecting the policy failures of the past 8 years. But the usual suspects insist that the crisis is all the more reason to persist with those policies -- indeed, make them permament. Paul Krugman. | |
|
| 11/25/2008: | Fed Commits $800 Billion to Unfreeze Credit, Boost Spending. The Federal Reserve announced two new programs Tuesday aimed at unfreezing credit for homebuyers, small businesses and consumers. The Fed said it would buy up to $100 billion in direct obligations from mortgage giants and purchase up to $500 billion in pools of mortgages. NewsHour/PBS. | |
|
| 11/25/2008: | Zakaria: A More Disciplined America. Some of us—especially those under 60 -- have always wondered what it would be like to live through the kind of epochal event one reads about in books. Well, this is it. We're now living history, suffering one of the greatest financial panics of all time. It compares with the big ones -- 1907, 1929 -- and we cannot yet know its full consequences for the financial system, the economy or society as a whole. Newsweek. | |
|
| 11/25/2008: | Editorial: Mr. Obama's Economic Advisers. Unless Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers recognize their past mistakes, there is little hope that they can provide the sound economic judgment and leadership that the country needs. NYT. | |
|
| 11/25/2008: | Saving Citi May Create More Fear. With the red ink deepening, other banks may eventually turn to the government to soak up some of their losses. Taxpayers could end up guaranteeing hundreds of billions of dollars of banks' toxic assets. Indeed, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. is expected to announce a new plan on Tuesday to bolster the consumer-finance market. NYT. | |
|
| 11/24/2008: | Citigroup Scores. This is not a particularly good deal for American taxpayers, but it is a marvelous deal for Citi. In return for all the cash and guarantees they are giving away, taxpayers will get only $27 billion of preferred shares paying an 8 percent dividend. No other strings are attached. The senior executives of Citi, including those who have served at the highest levels in the US government, have done their jobs exceedingly well. The American public, including the media, have not the slightest clue what just happened. Robert Reich. | |
|
| 11/24/2008: | Credit Crisis Indicators. The 3-month treasury is still at zero ... and that is not good. Calculated Risk. | |
|
| 11/24/2008: | U.S. Pledges Top $7.7 Trillion to Ease Frozen Credit. The U.S. government is prepared to provide more than $7.76 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers after guaranteeing $306 billion of Citigroup Inc. debt yesterday. The pledges, amounting to half the value of everything produced in the nation last year, are intended to rescue the financial system after the credit markets seized up 15 months ago. Bloomberg. | |
|
| 11/24/2008: | Time for a change at the Fed. The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced last week that the seasonally adjusted consumer price index fell by 1% during the month of October, implying an annual deflation rate around -12%. That's the biggest monthly drop in the CPI since publication of seasonally adjusted changes began in February 1947. The core CPI (excluding food and energy) saw its first decline in a quarter century. Econbrowser. | |
|
| 11/24/2008: | Can We Mute His Mike? Dow Jones reports that President Bush will talk to reporters this morning at 10:35. One thing you have to say about the Bush Administration: they do not know the meaning of the words "Leave well enough alone." Surowiecki. | |
|
| 11/24/2008: | US stocks look to open higher on Citigroup plan. Wall Street showed relief early Monday over the government's plan to bail out Citigroup Inc. -- a move it hopes will help address some of the uncertainty hounding the financial sector. Stock index futures contracts indicated the market was poised to extend a sharp rally from Friday. AP. | |
|
| 11/23/2008: | Statements by Fed on Citi Bailout. "The U.S. government is committed to supporting financial market stability, which is a prerequisite to restoring vigorous economic growth." Calculated Risk. | |
|
| 11/23/2008: | Citigroup gets $20bn bail out. The US government rode to the rescue of Citigroup late Sunday, entering an agreement to backstop up to $306bn in problematic assets and injecting $20bn in capital to restore confidence in a bank that defines the term "too big to fail." Financial Times. | |
|
| 11/23/2008: | Worst of financial crisis yet to come: IMF chief economist. The IMF's chief economist has warned that the global financial crisis is set to worsen and that the situation will not improve until 2010, a report said Saturday. AFP. | |
|
| 11/23/2008: | Forbes: Paulson is worst treasury secretary in modern times. Forbes magazine President and CEO Steve Forbes called Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson "the worst treasury secretary we've had in modern times", citing, among other things, the government's handling of the housing crisis. CNN. | |
|
| 11/23/2008: | Citigroup seeks 'emergency cash' Executives of Citigroup, one of the biggest banks in the US, are in emergency talks with the US Treasury to gain much-needed funding, reports say. BBC. | |
|
| 11/23/2008: | Senate recount continues through the weekend. Saturday's recount results show incumbent Republican Sen. Norm Coleman still leading challenger Democrat Al Franken, but the lead has narrowed and the number of challenged ballots has grown. MPR. | |
|
| 11/23/2008: | We Found the W.M.D. Conventional wisdom says it's good for a new president to start at the bottom. The only way to go is up. That's true -- unless the bottom falls out before he starts. Thomas Friedman. | |
|
| 11/22/2008: | The Reckoning - Citigroup Pays for a Rush to Risk. When he was Treasury secretary during the Clinton administration, Mr. Rubin helped loosen Depression-era banking regulations that made the creation of Citigroup possible by allowing banks to expand far beyond their traditional role as lenders and permitting them to profit from a variety of financial activities. During the same period he helped beat back tighter oversight of exotic financial products, a development he had previously said he was helpless to prevent. NYT. | |
|
| 11/22/2008: | At summit, Bush touts free-trade record. President Bush, in what could be his final overseas trip as president, called on international leaders Saturday to continue his administration's push for free trade despite the global financial crisis. CNN. | |
|
| 11/22/2008: | Obama Vows Swift Action. President-elect Barack Obama signaled on Saturday that he would pursue a far more ambitious plan of spending and tax cuts than anything he outlined on the campaign trail, setting the tone for a recovery effort that could absorb and define much of his term. NYT. | |
|
| 11/22/2008: | Summers to Be Top White House Economic Adviser at NEC. ABC News has learned that President-elect Obama has decided to name former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers the director of the National Economic Council, essentially the president's senior economic adviser. ABC. | |
|
| 11/22/2008: | The New Deal Didn't Always Work, Either. Expansionary monetary policy and wartime orders from Europe, not the well-known policies of the New Deal, did the most to make the American economy climb out of the Depression. Our current downturn will end as well someday, and, as in the ’30s, the recovery will probably come for reasons that have little to do with most policy initiatives. NYT. | |
|
| 11/21/2008: | How Tom Daschle Might Kill Conservatism. If Democrats take the White House and pass a big-government healthcare plan, that's it. Game over. Government will dominate the economy like it does in Europe. Conservatives will spend the rest of their lives trying to turn things around and they will fail. US News. | |
|
| 11/21/2008: | Who Will Take Over Citi? Nothing's unthinkable in this market, not even the idea that you can tie two rocks together and hope that they float. Felix Salmon. | |
|
| 11/21/2008: | A week of living perilously. Panic seized markets this week. Just one asset class is deemed safe: the liabilities of highly-rated governments. Financial Times. | |
|
| 11/21/2008: | End of the beginning? The failure of Citigroup, which looks increasingly likely to happen in the near future, would mark the end of the beginning of the financial crisis. Until now, the prevailing view has been that the crisis and recession will pass in a year or so, after which things will go back, more or less, to the way they were, with a few less financial institutions, and a bit more regulation. A Citigroup failure would put paid to that idea. Crooked Timber. | |
|
| 11/21/2008: | Time for the Government to Buy Citigroup. No real point to merging it into JPMorgan Chase or Bank of America. And it is definitely too big to fail. Brad DeLong. | |
|
| 11/21/2008: | The Lame-Duck Economy. How much can go wrong in the two months before Mr. Obama takes the oath of office? The answer, unfortunately, is: a lot. Consider how much darker the economic picture has grown since the failure of Lehman Brothers, which took place just over two months ago. And the pace of deterioration seems to be accelerating. Paul Krugman. | |
|
| 11/20/2008: | Mukasey collapses during speech. Attorney General Michael Mukasey collapsed during a speech Thursday night and was being taken to a hospital. Newsweek. | |
|
| 11/20/2008: | Don't panic about the stock market. Panic about the credit markets instead. Interest rate on 3-month Treasuries at 0.02%; interest rate on high-yield (junk) bonds over 20%. Paul Krugman. | |
|
| 11/20/2008: | Keynes to FDR, February 1, 1938. Because a number of people have asked, and the relevant section -- the start of the letter -- doesn't seem to be on the Internets elsewhere, I provide here the opening of Keynes's letter to Roosevelt, with some interpolation/translation and historical detail. The Edge of the West. | |
|
| 11/20/2008: | Worst of all possible bailouts? So the plan is to take money aimed at giving the Big Three a fighting chance to compete in a world where climate change and declining fossil fuel resources are immense challenges, and use it just to keep G.M., Ford and Chrysler from declaring imminent bankruptcy. If ever the phrase "bail out" was appropriate, in the sense of futilely bailing water out of a doomed sinking ship, this would be the case. How the World Works. | |
|
| 11/20/2008: | A long-term squeeze on Wall Street wealth. Wall Street is clearly going to cut bonuses this year, and next year does not look promising either. But financial industry types have not given up the hope of an eventual return to a system based on taking 50 per cent of revenues for the annual bonus pool. John Gapper. | |
|
| 11/20/2008: | Zimbabwe Datapoint of the Day. Steve Hanke is mainly known in the world of international economics for his conviction that dollarization is the cure for all ills. (How's that working out, Steve?) But he's come up with something really rather fabulous for the Cato Institute: the Hanke Hyperinflation Index for Zimbabwe, which puts that country's inflation at 89.7 Sextillion Percent. Market Movers. | |
|
| 11/20/2008: | Associated Press to cut 10 pct jobs in '09: sources. The Associated Press plans to cut up to 10 percent of its workforce in 2009, according to sources at the news service, as it copes with tough financial times and ailing member newspapers. Reuters. | |
|
| 11/20/2008: | Global stocks hit 5-1/2 year lows. A rout in Asia pushed world stocks to their lowest in 5- years on Thursday, while oil fell to below $53 a barrel and safe havens such as the yen gained as economic data indicated a global recession could get even uglier. Reuters. | |
|
| 11/20/2008: | Weak Japan exports pile on economic gloom. Japan's exports to Asia fell in October for the first time since 2002, showing that the fallout from the credit crisis has spread to neighbors such as China and adding momentum to investors' flight to the safety of cash. Reuters. | |
|
| 11/20/2008: | My Nine Years Spinning Wheels at GM. With gasoline slipping toward $2 per gallon, commitment to what the industry touted as "nothing less than the re-invention of the automobile" (or in English "copying the Japanese") seems to be slipping. Ford has restarted large pickup production. Even Toyota, which apparently has been "copying the Americans" for too long, is restarting truck production. Daily Beast. | |
|
| 11/19/2008: | Rep. Frank Wants Bailout Shared With Automakers. Rep. Barney Frank has drafted legislation extending the $700 billion rescue program to Detroit's Big Three automakers. The Massachusetts Democrat talks with Steve Inskeep about the legislation. NPR. | |
|
| 11/19/2008: | Everyone went down to Georgia. Democrats might find their 60th Senate seat in Georgia, but Saxby Chambliss and the GOP are putting up a fight. Salon. | |
|
| 11/19/2008: | Detroit Chiefs Back on Hill for a Second Day. The chief executives of the three Detroit automakers were back on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, appealing this time to the House of Representatives to approve $25 billion in bailout funds to stave off industry collapse. NYT. | |
|
| 11/19/2008: | McCain wins Missouri. Kind of. Two weeks later. Obama is still the prez, of course... The Missouri Secretary of State's office said Tuesday night the Arizona Republican led President-elect Barack Obama by 4,355 votes out of 2,923,496 cast. Kansas City Star. | |
|
| 11/19/2008: | Opening seals, sorting ballots: Minnesota's Senate recount begins. The contentious fight for a U.S. Senate seat between incumbent Republican Norm Coleman and Democratic challenger Al Franken inched into the recount phase today as election workers across Minnesota started retabulating more than 2.9 million ballots -- one by one. Star Tribune. | |
|
| 11/19/2008: | Big Three CEOs Flew Private Jets to Plead for Public Funds. All three CEOs -- Rick Wagoner of GM, Alan Mulally of Ford, and Robert Nardelli of Chrysler -- exercised their perks Tuesday by flying in corporate jets to DC. ABC. | |
|
| 11/19/2008: | Dollars Per Vote: The Best Buys Of The Race. Obama won the award for most dollars spent per vote -- doling out $14.85 in Nevada -- with McCain close behind at $13.95 in the same state. Obama also topped the $10-per-vote mark in Virginia and New Hampshire, while John McCain's next-highest outlays came in New Mexico, at $9.25 per voter, and Pennsylvania, at $8.51. National Journal. | |
|
| 11/19/2008: | A Sea of Unwanted Imports. Gleaming new Mercedes cars roll one by one out of a huge container ship here and onto a pier. Ordinarily the cars would be loaded on trucks within hours, destined for dealerships around the country. But these are not ordinary times. NYT. | |
|
| 11/18/2008: | Begich defeats Stevens in Senate race. The Democratic Anchorage mayor widened his lead to 3,724 votes in today's counting of absentee and questioned ballots. The only votes left to count are approximately 2,500 special absentees from people living outside the U.S. or in remote parts of Alaska with no polling place. Anchorage Daily News. | |
|
| 11/15/2008: | Obama Babies: It's Change You Can Conceive In. Barack Obama, the son of politically progressive parents, was born Aug. 4, 1961 -- almost nine months to the day after John F. Kennedy was elected to the White House. Is it possible Obama was conceived on that historic night? Newsweek. | |
|
