13 Oct 2007
Banks May Pool Billions to Stop Securities Sell-Off

This is the real killer:

The proposal echoes the 1998 bailout of the hedge fund Long Term Capital Management, when a group of big banks came together to prevent the fund from collapsing after it made a series of bad bets. And the current round of crisis-driven collaboration illustrates the heightened level of concern among both government and financial players.

I can't seem to recall the last time banks lined up to bail my ass out of a jam - all they seem to want to do to us "little people" is foreclose our homes and drive us into bankruptcy. But let one of their own make a series of "bad bets" and billions are suddenly available to help out.

Several of the world’s biggest banks are in talks to put up about $75 billion in backup financing that could be used to buy risky mortgage securities and other assets.

(link) [NYT >New York Times]

23:42 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

Vatican official suspended over gay sex claims

'Nuff said.

Monsignor Tommaso Stenico confirmed in a telephone interview with The Associated Press that he had been suspended from his post at the Vatican's Congregation for Clergy, an office which aims to ensure proper conduct by priests.

(link) [CNN.com]

23:41 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

TV for those who enjoy massacres

This has to be one of the finer screeds to cross my desktop in quite a while. And it's right on: I've seen Futureweapons, once, and was appropriately horrified at the casual way in which weapons of mass destruction were "marketed". The only "educational" value I could find in it (as that's allegedly the Discovery Channel's mission) was from a "know your enemy" perspective.

In 1991, Bad: Or the Dumbing of America was published. Written by Paul Fussell, a man with experience of war, it pessimistically ran through all that was execrable in the United States with the realisation things were only going to get worse.

(link) [The Register]

08:09 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

New Landowners With New Agenda Flood the West

A new Gilded Age, indeed.

With the timber industry in decline, some new investors are snapping up open spaces to be private playgrounds.

(link) [New York Times]

08:02 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link