Wednesday 27th of November 2024
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sick puppies .....

spreading the mange .....

They came, they talked and at the very end of it all they agreed on just one thing: the global financial crisis was somebody else's fault and the answers lie with more of the same.

For four days the Swiss Alpine resort of Davos has played host to the men (and women) dubbed Masters of the Universe by Tom Wolfe in the 1980s. They were then a new breed of high-octane men - there were no mistresses of the universe yet - whose ambition and steely intestines allowed them to gamble millions, and rack up as much in bonuses, with tiger investment banks such as Lehman, Salomon Brothers and Bear Stearns.

Now those banks and many others are no more. But mea culpa has not figured in the lexicon of the World Economic Forum, despite it being the very arena where the financial policies and behaviours that led to the credit crisis have long been discussed and supported.

...

"The missing reality check here is that now nobody trusts them any more, and rightly so."

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read more at the SMH... Davos leaders in more sombre mood, but not sorry

sick as a dog...

General Motors says it will cut 47,000 jobs - 26,000 of them outside the United States - as part of a massive restructuring plan this year.

GM says it may need another $US30 billion ($47 billion) in government aid - more than doubling its original aid - and will run out of cash as soon as March without new federal funding.

The request for additional aid from the top US carmaker was made in a restructuring plan submitted to the US Treasury this morning.

America's number three carmaker Chrysler requested an additional $US5 billion in government aid, saying it expected the brutal downturn in the US market to run another three years.

GM also said it had not reached deals with bondholders and its major union to reduce some $US47 billion in debt but would work to reach those agreements by the end of March.

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