Trying to make sense of our new world? Join the party:
1) The Wall Street Journal runs the numbers -- who won, who lost, who walked away from an executive post with buckets of moolah.
2) Banks around the world are trying to figure out just how much trouble they're in from the Lehman Brothers collapse. The headlines alone are instructive.
3) The central banks of countries around the world have set many billions loose on the markets. The idea is to make money available for investment that desperately need to borrow it. The U.S. Federal Reserve has unleashed $300 billion since the weekend.
4) AIG is begging for its life today in a meeting with the Federal Reserve in New York. The insurance firm needs $75 billion to survive. From Forbes: "It is arguably the biggest player in the financial services industry; a collapse, many fear, could be catastrophic."
5) The blog Calculated Risk points out the absurdity of trying to wade through the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debacle at the level of an estimated 62.5 million individual loans. Tanta writes: "With a limited number of columns and a small font, you might be able to get 100 loans on a page. That would only require a 625,812.5 page 'disclosure.' That shouldn't create any server problems, and we could all go long on manufacturers of toner cartridges." Fair or not, it's good for a laugh. And seriously, you might as well laugh.
categories: News
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