Aaron Dykes | It would be comedic– if it weren’t so serious. Al Gore & co. are trying to push through a very serious, burdensome carbon tax and yet the chairman of the subcommittee, Rep. Ed Markey cuts off every single member who attempts to raise questions or challenge Gore’s claims in any way, shape or form.

Associated Press | Changes did little to boost sales in the fourth quarter, particularly in the U.S, where the turmoil in the economy took a gulp out of consumer spending.

USA Today | As the economy tanks and banks’ mortgage-related losses balloon, some banks are stepping up such increases to boost revenue.

Larry Chin | The “change” that a Barack Obama presidency will bring to America and the world will be one of style, not substance: a return to the centrist corporate globalism of the Clinton and Carter eras.

Bloomberg | “I’ve never seen so many bankers, lawyers, doctors and actors” with valuable things to pawn.

MSNBC | Several of the nation’s biggest banks have failed or been absorbed by healthier institutions, leaving three giant “superbanks” with an unprecedented concentration of market power: Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo.

YouTube | Journalist Keiser says Paulson and Goldman Sachs are no different than the 9/11 hijackers.

Cryptogon | I had always assumed the entire business of the markets to be a massive criminal enterprise that allowed public participation simply because it made a few people extremely wealthy.

Agence France-Presse | The US economy contracted in the third quarter as panicked consumers slashed spending.

Associated Press | Reports surfaced that bankers might use the money to buy other banks, pay dividends, give employees a raise and executives a bonus, or just sit on it.

Telegraph | The financial crisis spreading like wildfire across the former Soviet bloc threatens to set off a second and more dangerous banking crisis in Western Europe, tipping the whole Continent into a fully-fledged economic slump.

Les Blough | Alan Greenspan should not be standing in front of the so-called “firing line” on Capitol Hill. He should be standing before a criminal tribunal to be tried and convicted of his crimes.

Associated Press | Emmanuel Roman, of GLG Partners, said 25pc-30pc of the world’s 8,000 hedge funds would disappear “in a Darwinian process”, either going bust or deciding meagre profits are not worth their efforts.

Paul Joseph Watson | Country music icon Willie Nelson has a message for Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke– how about a bailout for the desperate and struggling family farmers of America that are nearing extinction?

Telegraph | Investors have rushed to buy gold bars and bought exchange traded funds, worth US$2.8 billion – the biggest inflow on record.

Ben Protess | The Treasury Dept. is keeping key details of the contract it awarded to keep the books for the government’s bailout from the public.

Danny Schechter | The crimes of the financial elite do not stay with the financial elite.

Bloomberg | Merrill Lynch & Co. Chief Executive Officer John Thain said he expects “thousands” of job losses from the bank’s $50 billion takeover by Bank of America Corp.

Stephen Lendman | Nothing is certain or easy, but historically “hardship propels people to collective defiance,” especially at times of extreme inequalities of wealth. Given the current state, what more urgent time than now.

The New York Times | With almost 1 in 6 homeowners dealing with a troubled mortgage, we need a rescue plan fast or else face a huge social problem.

Associated Press | Economists say that communities with close ties to the financial sector such as New York City and Charlotte will probably suffer the worst.

Steven Greenhut | In typical Republican fashion, George W. Bush today declared his support for free markets, but only to say that he had no choice but to expand the government.

Infowars | Robert Marion LaFollette (1855-1925) delivered the following speech in the Senate on March 17, 1908, in response to Senate bill 3023 to amend the national banking laws.

Pam Martens | What most Americans do not understand is the incestuous relationship between the U.S. Treasury and this small band of financial marauders who busted the entire financial system with insane levels of leveraged derivative bets.

Alex Lantier | The Treasury approached the bankers as a supplicant, agreeing that if they accepted the bailout, it would place no real caps on exorbitant CEO pay and exercise no effective oversight of bank operations.

Associated Press | The government’s drastic economic rescue efforts will eventually pay off, President Bush insisted Friday.

Bloomberg | Confidence among U.S. consumers fell by the most on record and single-family housing starts hit a 26- year low, posing an increasing threat to household spending that accounts for more than two-thirds of the economy.

Michigan Today | A University of Michigan and University of Maryland study shows that tighter regulation of gun shows does not appear to reduce the number of firearms-related deaths.

Bloomberg | The U.S. economic downturn deepened in September and October as the credit crisis intensified, reports showed today.

Facts not Fairies | It was planned and orchestrated by those who hate us for our freedoms. The old biblical truism, “By their fruits ye shall know them.”

Washington Post | Community banking executives around the country responded with anger yesterday to the Bush administration’s strategy of investing $250 billion in financial firms, saying they don’t need the money.

Thomas DiLorenzo | “It is a relatively easy matter for the State to preserve the present de facto rights and interests of small savers while completely nationalizing the financial institutions which now administer their savings.”

Bloomberg | The U.S. Federal Reserve led an unprecedented push by central banks to flood financial markets with dollars, backing up government efforts to restore confidence in the banking system.

| The FDIC directly examines and supervises about 5,250 banks and savings banks, and Paulosn invites at most 8 bankers to discuss how to divvy up $700 billion?

Consortium News | The emergency meeting underscored the failure of the Bush/Paulson Wall Street bailout plan to stanch the financial bleeding, despite White House rhetoric and the support of key Democrats, including Barack Obama.

Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay | The Bush administration did not even bother to appoint a trustee to supervise Lehman’s liquidation in order to make it orderly.

Steve Watson | British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has called for a new Bretton Woods system, saying that the financial crisis should be used to make world leaders agree to fresh rules and regulations under a long planned new global financial order.

New York Times | The Treasury’s assurances amount to another extraordinary move by the government and could serve as a model for future deals.

| All the bailouts and “recapitalization” plans of the Treasury and the FED are highly inflationary and require issuing massive amounts of Treasury debt.

Tom Eley | Financial czar Paulsen went from the Nixon White House and Watergate to Goldman Sachs.

Bloomberg | As expected, now that the banker bailout has cleared Congress, the cost has been readjusted considerably upward.

Daily Mail | While the rest of the country struggles to come to terms with the financial crisis, a group of Barclays bankers have jetted off for a lavish banquet costing more than £500,000.

Associated Press | Oil prices fell below $88 a barrel Thursday in Asia on investor fears that crude demand will weaken as turmoil in the financial system pushes economies in the U.S. and Europe into recession.

Reuters | Atmospheric scientist Paul J Crutzen said clouds gathering over the world economy could ease the earth’s environmental burden.

CNS News | A free market economist from the libertarian Ludwig Von Mises Institute, said that while private investors may not have had $700 billion available to purchase shaky investments, it was a financial venture too risky for them to take anyway.

Economic Times | I’m not sure I’m angrier at the bankers who so aggressively pitched the things, the politicians who bought into them because they could get campaign contributions from the brokers who set them up.

Clive Maund | The elites have almost arrived at their nirvana of dictatorial control in the United States.

CNN Money | Poll finds 6 of 10 believe a depression is somewhat or very likely – seeing 25% unemployed and millions homeless and hungry.

Chris Floyd | The bailout bill — or as Arthur Silber more rightly terms it, the “Extortion Bill” — is already law, thanks to the Democrats in Congress, and to Barack Obama.

Michael S. Rozeff | There is absolutely nothing in Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution that empowers the Congress to do what this Act authorizes.