Citigroup upgrading mile-high club

What can I say?"Beleaguered Citigroup is upgrading its mile-high club with a brand-new $50 million corporate jet - only this time, it's the taxpayers who are getting screwed. Even though the bank's stock is as cheap as a gallon of gas and it's burning through a $45 billion...

Financial Innovation = Creative Counterfeiting Schemes by Wall Street

The new Sanity Check blog by Bob O'Brien is out. He gives us his take on the subprime meltdown. For those who get befuddled by the convolutions used to explain how they first naked short the stock and then naked short the bonds, using cdos, tranches etc, he included a picture...

We do not know what no one can deny: Stephen Champion’s Lanka War Stories

"Stephen Champion has produced two books in the past twenty-two years: Lanka 1986-1992 and Lanka War Stories. His images make it clear that we are going in circles. The past reproduces its patterns in the present and cycles its way into the future; a past whose tragedies our...

This Is Not A Normal Recession: Moving on to Plan B

""The Winter of 2008-2009 will prove to be the winter of global economic discontent that marks the rejection of the flawed ideology that unregulated global financial markets promote financial innovation, market efficiency, unhampered growth and endless prosperity while...

Thomas Friedman: We Found the W.M.D.

Thomas Friedman quotes Norman Ornstein in today's Times:   "What we can do now, though, said the Congressional scholar Norman Ornstein, co-author of “The Broken Branch,” is “ask President Bush to appoint Tim Geithner, Barack Obama’s proposed Treasury...

New players challenge world order

[New players challenge world order Brazil, Russia, India and China, the so-called Brics, are predicted to emerge as major world players by 2050. In this,...

2 Months Left, Bush Says Goodbye, Quietly

"Two months from today, the White House packs up the Bush Family belongings and moves in those of the Obama’s. And it seems President Bush is accepting the ever-nearing end of his term in good spirits. “He’s usually in a good mood,” said Press Secretary Dana Perino on...