GMAC Loses $5 Billion in Fourth Quarter
NEW YORK (Reuters) - GMAC Financial Services, a lender that has received more than $16 billion from the U.S. government across multiple bailouts, said it lost $5 billion in the fourth quarter after writing down bad mortgage assets.
GMAC, one of the largest car loan makers in the United States, [...]

continue reading.....

The Supreme Court’s Blow to Democracy
With a single, disastrous 5-to-4 ruling, the Supreme Court has thrust politics back to the robber-baron era of the 19th century. Disingenuously waving the flag of the First Amendment, the court’s conservative majority has paved the way for corporations to use their vast treasuries to overwhelm elections and intimidate elected [...]

continue reading.....

Corporations Win Big After Supreme Court Ruling on Campaign Spending
WASHINGTON — Overruling two important precedents about the First Amendment rights of corporations, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.
The 5-to-4 decision was a vindication, the majority said, of the First Amendment’s [...]

continue reading.....

The Other Plot to Wreck America
THERE may not be a person in America without a strong opinion about what coulda, shoulda been done to prevent the underwear bomber from boarding that Christmas flight to Detroit. In the years since 9/11, we’ve all become counterterrorists.
But in the 16 months since that other calamity in downtown New [...]

continue reading.....

Banks Prepare to Pay Record Bonuses to Employees
The bank bonus season, that annual rite of big money and bigger egos, begins in earnest this week, and it looks as if it will be one of the largest and most controversial blowouts the industry has ever seen.
Bank executives are grappling with a question that exasperates, even [...]

continue reading.....

Big Oil Bets on Sea

Chevron
Chevron is leasing the Clear Leader, which floats in 4,300 feet of water in the Gulf of Mexico, to drill for oil through nearly five miles of rock.

Big Oil never wanted to be here, in 4,300 feet of water far out in the Gulf of Mexico, drilling through nearly five [...]

continue reading.....

That 1937 Feeling
Here’s what’s coming in economic news: The next employment report could show the economy adding jobs for the first time in two years. The next G.D.P. report is likely to show solid growth in late 2009. There will be lots of bullish commentary — and the calls we’re already hearing for an end [...]

continue reading.....