Every few years, the world seems to face a new testing time. After Sept. 11, leaders had to figure out how to respond to Islamic extremism. Now we face another test. Today, leaders around the world have to figure out how to stabilize economies amid volatile global capital flows. 

Iranian women can drive cars but are not allowed to ride motorbikes. 

Iran has announced plans for a new car designed specially for women. 

Less than a week after the federal government offered an $85 billion bailout to insurance giant AIG, the company held a week-long retreat for its executives at the luxury St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, Calif., running up a tab of $440,000, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said today at the opening of a House committee hearing about the near-failure of the insurance giant.

Showing a photograph of the resort, Waxman said the executives spent $200,000 for rooms, $150,000 for meals and $23,000 for the spa.

Biden on Cheney's worst thing: 

I think he's done more harm than any other single elected official in memory in terms of shredding the constitution. You know - condoning torture. Pushing torture as a policy. This idea of a unitary executive. Meaning the Congress and the people have no power in a time of war.  

An attack on Iran, which Israeli and Bush administration officials appear set to carry out if Iranian uranium enrichment is not halted, would ignite a regional war in the Middle East and lead to economic collapse and political upheaval in the United States.  

When the White House brought out its $700 billion rescue plan two weeks ago, its sheer size was meant to soothe the global financial system, restoring trust and confidence.

For all the talk about Afghanistan being the "right war," and with both Obama and McCain insisting that they want to send thousands of additional US forces there, our British allies have let the camel, so to speak, out of the bag.  

Businessmen or manufacturers can either be genuine free enterprisers or statists. They can either make their way on the free market or seek special government favours & privileges. They choose according to their individual preferences & values. But bankers are inherently inclined toward statism. 

Murray N. Rothbard

 

In his fascinating Iraq war account Generation Kill, Evan Wright describes his experiences as a reporter embedded in one of the first Marine units to invade Iraq in 2003.  

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says the US package to bail out Wall Street is a step forward in easing the global financial crisis. 

The US House of Representatives passed the $US700 billion package overnight. 

In 2003, Donald Rumsfeld estimated a war with Iraq would cost $60 billion.

Five years later, the cost of Iraq war operations is over 10 times that figure. And by the time the war is finished, it will be 50 times that much.  

What's behind the ballooning dollar signs?  

It will be one of the world’s largest asset management firms with an impressive $700 billion war chest. Nothing short of the global economy depends on its success. 

And the Treasury Department has barely a month to get it up and running.

In the Queen's speech this autumn Gordon Brown's government will announce a scheme to institute a database of every telephone call, email, and act of online usage by every resident of the UK. It will propose that this information will be gathered, stored, and "made accessible" to the security and law enforcement agencies, local councils, and "other public bodies". 

In the 1980s Gore Vidal observed of Reagonomics: "The US government prefers that public money go not to the people but to big business. The result is a unique society in which we have free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich."