The present financial crisis is quite maddening to understand for a laymen, even the experts are finding it difficult to figure out what exactly is going on. Ali Mir, Professor of Business at Wayne Paterson has produced a quick guide to the financial mess we are in. This is from writer Amitav Kumar’s blog. More…

The guru of all investments, Warren Buffet’s anouncement to invest $5 billion in Goldman Sachs has renewd the sagging confidence among the investors all over the world.

 Until now, Mr. Buffett, who has navigated the stock market with legendary prowess, has largely refrained from investing in the stricken financial industry, saying repeatedly that things could get worse. More.. 

So, is it the end of laissez faire? The US government’s massive intervention in the financial industry has set the scene for bringing new limits on executive pay. Lawmakers in US have blamed the ‘perverse incentive’ to be the reason behind the executives taking huge risk that is being blamed for bringing the financial tsunami.

Martin Sullivan, who was ousted as CEO of AIG in June, was promised an exit package valued at the time at around $47 million; his successor Robert Willumstad, who was asked to step aside by the government last week, was due $22 million when he left. More..

Amidst the news of turmoil in American economy, this news from Cuba came rather as a bolt from the blue. Uncle Fidel Castro has slept with more than 35,000 women in his entire 82 years life. This is surprising, aren’t communist (especially die-hard one) known for shunning consumerism and advocating frugal life for common good? More…   

The financial crisis at Wall Street shows no sign of abatement despite the intervention of Government of America (which injected $80 billion in AIG to bail it out).  New fault lines have begun to emerge beyond the original problem. The malaise has been identified by Fed officials as deleveraging, or the unwinding of debt. More…

The steep slump at the Wall Street has sent shock waves across the globe. The situation is being compared with 9/11 when the terrorist attack on the twin towers had resulted into investors suffering their worst losses. The government and companies have rushed to prevent situation spiraling further into a economic crisis. The fall has impacted even the Asian markets. More.

The image of Einstein as a stock market punter is hard to imagine for people who are aware of what he stood for. Very few people know that he made a considerable amount of money dealing in stocks. More..

Haiti was reeling last night from a series of tropical storms which devastated crops and infrastructure and left bodies floating in flooded towns. Three storms in three weeks unleashed “catastrophe” and submerged much of the impoverished Caribbean nation, said President Rene Preval. A fourth storm, Ike, was gathering force in the Atlantic and could strike next week.
More than 120 people have died, thousands are homeless and agriculture and transport networks have been washed away, prompting calls for emergency international aid.
“There are a lot of people who have been on top of the roofs of their homes over 24 hours now,” the interior minister, Paul Antoine Bien-Aime, told Reuters. “They have no water, no food and we can’t even help them.”

It reminds of the situation in north Bihar (India). More

Singing is good for health. If you want to keep illness away, with an apple a day don’t forget to sing your favorite song every day. “He who sings frightens away his ills,” said Cervantes. Even John Harvey Kellogg - Mr Cornflakes himself - had this to add in 1931: “Singing promotes health, breathing, circulation and digestion.” More

PROPHETS are without honour in their own country—at least until they die. For most of his adult life in the Soviet Union, Alexander Solzhenitsyn was persecuted. In exile in the West from 1974, his gloomy philippics and increasingly turgid prose aroused more bafflement than appreciation. After he returned to Russia in 1994, he was welcomed but then ignored.

He is no more. More.