1 December 2008 ,TomDispatch.com

On a December day in 1932, with the country prostrate under the weight of the Great Depression, ex-president Calvin Coolidge -- who had presided over the reckless stock market boom of the Jazz Age Twenties (and famously declaimed that "the business of America is business") -- confided to a friend: "We are in a new era to which I do not belong." He punctuated those words, a few weeks later, by dying.

A similar premonition grips the popular imagination today. A new era beckons. No person has been more responsible for arousing that expectation than President-elect Barack Obama. From beginning to end, his presidential campaign was born aloft by invocations of the "fierce urgency of now," by "change we can believe in," by "yes, we can!" and by the obvious significance of his race and generation. Not surprisingly then, as the gravity of the national economic calamity has become terrifyingly clearer, yearnings for salvation have attached themselves ever more firmly to the incoming administration.

November 28 2008, FT

It no longer makes headlines when bankers turn down this year’s bonus or pay rise. But when ex-bankers at UBS – including the former chairman Marcel Ospel and the former chief executive Peter Wuffli – volunteer to pay back some of last year’s haul, the world has changed.

One is reminded of shoplifters surrendering their ill-gotten gains to try to win clemency from the judge. But Mr Ospel and Mr Wuffli are accused, not of any crime, but of incompetence. They face only the court of Swiss public opinion. Small wonder that the Swiss former executives have been quicker than the non-Swiss to announce their gestures of atonement.

November 29, 2008, Bloomberg

The yen gained for a fourth straight month against the euro, the longest wining streak since 1999, as the deepening global economic slump prompted investors to sell high-yielding assets and pay back loans made in Japan.

The euro weakened against the dollar for a fifth month as investors added to bets the European Central Bank will cut interest rates next week after inflation in the region slowed by the most since at least 1991. Russia’s ruble declined against the dollar to the weakest level since March 2006 as the central bank let the currency depreciate and raised interest rates to halt an exodus of foreign capital.

November 28, 2008, WSWS

Balzac’s maxim that “behind every great fortune lies a great crime” may yet prove a fitting epitaph for American capitalism. A recent survey by the Wall Street Journal reveals that CEOs at major US financial and real estate firms converted tens of millions of dollars of overvalued stock into cash prior to the eruption of the current financial crisis, even as many of their corporations approached the precipice.

The Journal analyzed the fortunes of CEOs from 2003 to 2007 based on executive compensation and stock sale data. Fifteen of these CEOs took home more than $100 million in cash during this period. At the high end was Charles Schwab, who made over $816 million from his self-named accounting firm, almost all of it from stock sales.