The “Dirty Little Secret” Of the US Bank Bailout
By Barry Grey
In an unusually frank article published in Saturday’s New York Times, the newspaper’s economic columnist, Joe Nocera, reveals what he calls “the dirty little secret of the banking industry”—namely, that “it has no intention of using the [government bailout] money to make new loans.”
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21116.htm

Tough times: Congress Grew 13 Percent Richer In 2007
By Rob Hotakainen
Times are tough, but don’t worry about most members of Congress making ends meet. Their collective wealth grew by 13 percent last year, leaving them in better shape than most Americans to make it through an economic downturn, according to a new analysis of personal financial reports.
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21114.htm

Putin rules out nationalization of Russian economy:
“I would like to stress that imposing state controls on Russia’s economy is not, cannot be, and will not be our task. Increasing the state’s presence in the economy is a forced measure and is temporary,” Vladimir Putin told an economic conference.
en.rian.ru/business/20081029/118022204.html

U.S. pulls the plug on the world:
The U.S. administration has prompted a huge surge in the U.S. dollar, which may help refinance its financial sector. The cost is a currency whirlwind that threatens the collapse not just of banks and companies but entire countries.
www.russiatoday.com/Crisis/news/32493

Banks to Use Bailout Bucks for Mergers:
The Treasury Department’s capital injection program is well underway, with more than $150 billion total now promised to around 30 banks. So far, the evidence suggests many of those banks will use the cash to buy up weaker banks.
www.propublica.org/article/banks-signal-govt-billions-will-be-used-for-mergers-1027/

Car dealers hit by sales decline, weak economy:
Sonic Automotive, which operates only in the United States, posted a loss of $25.3 million, or 57 cents per share during the quarter, compared with a profit of $26.1 million, or 58 cents, a year ago.
news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081028/bs_nm/us_autos_dealers

Mass protests in Italy to stop cuts:
Cries of “Berlusconi, now you know what people think of you!” rang through the streets of Rome last Friday as half a million people demonstrated against the right wing government. Milan and Turin each saw marches of 50,000 too.
www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=16225

Warnings of deep recession as US layoffs spread coast-to-coast:
Unemployment is set to rapidly increase. “My view is that it will be near 8 or 8.5 percent by the end of next year,” Nigel Gault, chief domestic economist at Global Insight, told the New York Times.
www.wsws.org/articles/2008/oct2008/jobs-o27.shtml

U.S. Should Enact $400 Billion Stimulus, Roubini Says
By John Brinsley
Roubini, who predicted the current financial crisis in 2006, said the economy risks falling into “a self-fulfilling animal spirit recession that is more severe than otherwise” because of the collapse of credit markets and weak consumer and corporate spending.
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21107.htm

Our Choice
By Nouriel Roubini
If the private sector does not spend and/or cannot spend, old-fashioned traditional Keynesian spending by the government is necessary. It is true that we already have large and growing budget deficits; but $300 billion of public works is more effective and productive than spending $700 billion to buy toxic assets.
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21106.htm

What Will YOU Do About The Worst Capitalist Crisis Since The 1930s?
Uniting & fighting back is no longer a choice; it’s a matter of survival
By Larry Holmes
Working and poor people, devastated by the depression, entered the 1930s destitute, broken and hopeless. Yet by the time the decade was over, the working class had won great battles, first by organizing itself into Unemployment Councils and tenants unions and later into giant labor unions.
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21109.htm

Latin American’s ‘New Left’ In Crises
As the ‘Free Market’ Collapses
By James Petras
The uniformity of the collapse of Latin American economies raises important questions about the changes and claims of independence, decoupling and post-liberal models, which many regime leaders, ideologues and progressive US-European Latin American writers made over the past several years.
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21104.htm

PM Putin Suggests Russia, China Ditch Dollar in Trade Deals
By RIA Novosti
“We should consider improving the payment system for bilateral trade, including by gradually adopting a broader use of national currencies,” Putin told a bilateral economic forum. He admitted the task would be tough, but said it was necessary amid the current problems with the dollar-based global economy.
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21111.htm

The Financial Woes Signal The Death Of The Dollar?
By Rev. Richard Skaff
Once the middle class is slowly and fully assassinated in the US, then, the globalization process becomes easier to implement and the Security and Prosperity Partnership (North America Union) will rush toward us like a knight in shining armor riding on a beautiful white horse to rescue us from our financial disasters that were deliberately created by our treasonous leaders.
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21105.htm

Shots Heard Round the World
By David Glenn Cox
When 90-year-old Addie Polk put the gun to her chest and pulled the trigger she was seeking an escape from foreclosure. The first shot failed to do the job so the elderly widow pulled the trigger a second time as Sheriff’s deputies waited on the porch to serve her with an eviction notice. She was rescued by her neighbor, Robert Dillion, who grabbed a ladder and climbed in a back window. Sheriff’s deputies were kind enough to radio for paramedics.
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21110.htm

American Hegemony Bites The Dust
The Defanging of America: Reality-Based Community Overthrows History’s Actors
By Paul Craig Roberts
The American neoconservatives are the heirs of Leon Trotsky. Their dream of American “Full Spectrum Dominance”—US military and economic superiority over any possible combination of states—is matched in ambition only by the early 20th century Trotskyite dream of world Communist revolution.
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21108.htm

An Open Letter to the CEO of Citigroup by Josh Sidman
Posted: 29 Oct 2008 03:06 AM CDT
Josh by Josh Sidman Dandelion Salad featured writer Josh’s Blog Post Oct. 29, 2008 In 1994 I had the opportunity to have dinner one-on-one with the current CEO of Citigroup, Vikram Pandit. At the time I was employed as a trader in the Japanese equity derivatives department at Morgan Stanley, which Mr. Pandit oversaw. He struck me as a decent, […]
feeds.feedburner.com/~r/DandelionSalad/~3/435593472/

What will YOU do about the worst capitalist crisis since the 1930s? + video
Posted: 28 Oct 2008 05:12 PM CDT
Dandelion Salad By Larry Holmes Workers World Oct 26, 2008 10:29 PM What will YOU do about the worst capitalist crisis since the 1930s? Uniting & fighting back is no longer a choice; it’s a matter of survival Most people have heard that the economic nightmare—the “greed and profits before society” that the capitalist system is plunging us into—is the worst […]
feeds.feedburner.com/~r/DandelionSalad/~3/435187009/