For a quick recap of what caused today’s meltdown, via the NYTIMES:
Stocks fell sharply on Monday in London, Paris and Frankfurt.
New bailouts were arranged late Sunday for two European companies, Hypo Real Estate, a large German mortgage lender, and Fortis, a large banking and insurance company based in Belgium but active across much of the Continent. Under the agreement, BNP Paribas will acquire the Belgium and Luxembourg banking operations of Fortis for about $20 billion.
The spreading worries came days after the United States Congress approved a $700 billion bailout package that officials had hoped would calm financial markets globally.
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This thread is for all manner of bickering, particularly tit for tat comments in favor of or in opposition to: McCain/Palin, Obama/Biden, Congress critters, wannabees, staffers, Fox News, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, ESPN, the Food Channel, broadcast media personalities, pundits, anchor critters, radio talk show personalities, the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the Green Party, the Libertarian Party, the Communist Party, the French, the Turks, the Iranians, the Russians, Bernie Sanders, Ralph Nader, Paris Hilton, “reality” shows, the Sunday morning chat shows, NARAL, NOW, the NRA, the Moral Majority, Move On, The Hertiage Foundation, the Brookings Foundation, the Ivy League (collectively or individually), the ACC, the NFL, MLB, the NHL, the Weather Channel, CSPAN, and local cable access programs, including News 12.
Anyone attempting to post anything resembling a substantive, thoughtful, honest, or truthful comment will have that comment deleted, be summarily banned from this thread, and we’ll send some people over to “talk” to you.
No dissing turfie or me, however.
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The Norwalk Musueum will open the It’s Magic exhibit at 4:40 PM on October 17th. And a benefit performance of magic by renowned Magicians Thom Dunlap and Tony Spero will happen at Crystal Theatre on October 25th at 7:30 PM.
Permanent link to this post (41 words, estimated 10 secs reading time)
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In an Advocate article about Stamford’s pensions losing value, I clipped this about Norwalk:
Norwalk Director of Finance Tom Hamilton said pension funds should be relatively secure. Norwalk uses “smoothing techniques” to keep city contributions from zigzagging with the market year to year. When the economy was soaring, Norwalk kept the pensions well-funded for leaner years, Hamilton said.
“That helps moderate swings from going up and down wildly from year to year,” Hamilton said.
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Over at BoingBoing, Douglas Rushkoff has posted about his upcoming book and film. The theme is how corporations have supplanted societal’s focus on the people. In short, a subject near and dear to my heart. Here’s what he had to say:
In June I’ll be releasing a new book and short film, Life Incorporated: How we traded meaning for markets, society for self-interest, and citizenship for customer service. They both look at the way human beings and corporations traded places, and how we came to accept corporatism as our dominant value system.
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