By Helle Bank Jorgensen
Published December 14, 2009
Do you receive an electric bill?
This is one of the many questions I’ve heard in Copenhagen, where I am attending COP15, the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference. In a sense, the work being done this week in Copenhagen is really about saving on the Earth’s electric — and water — bill.
The mood here is one of hope and optimism, but many feel that the delegates are talking more than they are acting.
By Barry Grey
14 December 2009
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/dec2009/regu-d14.shtml
The US House of Representatives on Friday passed a bill, backed by the Obama administration, to revise government regulations covering banks and financial firms. The bill has been widely reported in the media as the most sweeping reform of bank regulations since the New Deal measures passed in the wake of the stock market crash of 1929. It is being cast as a rebuke to Wall Street for its role in precipitating the financial crash and recession, and a major tightening of government oversight of the banks.
In his weekly address on Saturday, President Barack Obama hailed passage of the House measure as a major step in restoring “free and fair markets in which recklessness and greed are thwarted.” He used the bill’s passage to strike a populist pose, decrying the “irresponsibility of large financial institutions on Wall Street that gambled on risky loans and complex financial products, seeking short-term profits and big bonuses with little regard for long-term consequences.”
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By Joel Makower
Published December 07, 2009
http://greenbiz.com/blog/2009/12/07/copenhagen-gets-down-business
To start with the basics: I don’t expect this week’s United Nations Climate Change Summit, a.k.a. COP15, to produce much from the perspective of global political change. I’m guessing, cynically perhaps, that the two-week event will yield more posturing and pageantry than productive policies.
But that isn’t stopping me from making the trek to Copenhagen. I’ll be there, albeit relatively briefly, to see how business, especially big business, is engaging with and responding to the proceedings and all that surrounds them. After all, while national governments will be responsible for creating commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the responsibility for implementing them will fall largely to those economic entities that produce the carbon-emitting goods and services — that is, the private sector.
US banks move to repay bailout loans
By Andre Damon
11 December 2009
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/dec2009/bank-d11.shtml
Citigroup is negotiating with regulators in an attempt to pay back its government bailout funds before the end of the year. The bank’s drive to repay its loans comes a week after Bank of America announced that it had repaid the $45 billion it received under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
Citi’s push to repay its loans has sewn divisions between regulators, with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and Federal Reserve arguing that the bank is not yet healthy enough to repay its loans, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner pushing for repayment as soon as possible. The bank posted a $3.2 billion loss in the third quarter, following two consecutive quarterly profits.
http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/17-10-2009/109936-marx_dollar-0
The great October fall of the US dollar is turning into an avalanche. On Tuesday, the American currency lost nine kopeks in Russia and reached a new minimum mark this year – 29.5 rubles per dollar. Within six months (April through September) the dollar lost over 10 percent at the world foreign exchange trading, which marked the sharpest decline since 1991. Some experts believe that the American currency is close to collapse, which may lead to a new financial crisis.
The tendency of the US dollar devaluation has been observed for a few years, but the current rate of decline is unprecedented. Some jokesters even rushed to re-read the letters of Karl Marx to Friedrich Engels written during the US financial panic of 1857 discussing the collapse of America. It would have been funny if it wasn’t so serious.
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By Andre Damon
5 December 2009
http://wsws.org/articles/2009/dec2009/unem-d05.shtml
The US economy lost fewer jobs in November than in any other month since the recession began, according to the latest jobs report from the Labor Department. But overall economic conditions continue to worsen for the majority of the population, with wages falling and no return to normal job conditions in sight.
The Labor Department said the economy lost 11,000 jobs last month, nearly one tenth the amount that was lost in October. The department also said that the unemployment rate, which is calculated using a different measure, fell to 10.0 percent, down from 10.2 percent in October. The last time the US economy added jobs was in December 2007. About 100,000 jobs need to be added per month to keep up with new entrants into the labor force.
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