financial

The New York Times takes stock of the economy’s dreadful year:
In a mere 12 months, the Dow Jones industrial average plunged 4,488.43 points, or 33.8 percent, its most punishing loss since 1931. Blue chips like Bank of America, Citigroup and Alcoa lost more than 65 percent of their value. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock [...]

We were talking Monday about the unexpected effects of the foreclosure crisis, like skateboarders in California taking advantage of empty swimming pools behind vacant homes to practice their craft. Here’s another: Gambling is falling in popularity as more people choose instead to pay their bills, Bloomberg reports. That means tough times for Atlantic City, where [...]

Another good point made by TWI’s Daphne Eviatar and Josh Marshall, who sums it up well. From TPM:
Senate Republicans are following this course for three key reasons — first is payback against a major industrial union; second is payback against states like Michigan and Ohio who have been moving away from the GOP; third is [...]

Forget credit default swaps, mortgage-backed securities and all those complicated financial instruments that are causing the economy so much trouble. Wall Street is reeling today instead from a straightforward, by-the-books, $50 billion Ponzi scheme apparently orchestrated by the once-respected investor Bernard Madoff, a former chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Exchange. There is no complex chain [...]

The Obama-Biden transition team today released its first monthly list disclosing the names of donors to the transition and the size of their contributions. The list can be found here.
As of November 15, the transition has raised $1,170,937.44 from 1,776 donors, for an average donation of $659.31. The contributions range in size from $5 to [...]