Articles

If you think this bailout is expensive, just wait until you see the next one.

In the fall of 1857, the Bank of England faced a big problem. Its bullion reserves were slipping away, thanks to financial problems and bank failures in the United States and Scotland and the jitters brought on by the Crimean War. By law, the value of its bullion determined how much paper currency it could issue, so the bank's dwindling inventory was causing it to cancel some of its notes. On Nov.

Last week, the blog search engine Technorati released its 2008 State of the Blogosphere report with the slightly menacing promise to "deliver even deeper insights into the blogging mind." Bloggers create 900,000 blog posts a day worldwide, and some of them are actually making money.

With Monday having gone down as Wall Street's bleakest day since the 1987 crash, Tuesday rated as the hairiest in the history of the financial news networks. It was business as unusual, with the journalists of burnished CNBC, gaudy Fox Business, and dapper little Bloomberg variously barking with compensatory confidence and squirming abjectly, asking for frank assessments and pleading for Panglossian answers, quelling panic and reflecting it.

The Senate's approved version of the $700 billion financial rescue legislation, laden as it is with tax breaks and other help for special interests, begs a question: Who could run this huge fund of taxpayers' money without getting distracted by the power that comes with so much money and the potential for political interference?

Warren Buffett's name should be high on the list. Sure, the legendary investor and chairman of Omaha, Neb.-based Berkshire Hathaway almost certainly has more rewarding things to do. But it's worth a hypothetical look at how he might go about it.

Save the world economy! Save the wooden arrows for children! The Senate did both on Wednesday night. The 451-page Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 includes a number of tax relief measures added in presumably to garner votes; certainly few seem to respond to an emergency, or do anything particularly stabilizing. Here are the juicy bits from the bill that help some special interests or regions. John McCain and other senators, why didn't you put country first?