An American cattleman. After much bargaining with the largest banks in the United States,Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner announced the results of the Treasury’s “stress tests,” studies that estimate how the banks will fare if the economic crisis deepens. Ten banks, said Geithner, including Bank of America, Citibank, and Wells Fargo, must collectively raise $75 billion in extra capital by November; the rest, however, are fine. Analysts questioned Geithner’s conclusions, which assume a worst-case unemployment rate of 10.3 percent when the current rate is 8.9 percent, and which, after banks complained, ended up measuring bank-capital levels with standards more forgiving than …

Caught in the Web, 1860. The Department of Justice released four Office of Legal Counsel memos, issued in 2002 and 2005, to address CIA concerns that interrogation methods used on some high-level Al Qaeda members in custody were torture. Besides waterboarding, stress positions, slapping, and face-grabbing, the memos permitted “walling,” or repeatedly slamming prisoners into fake, flexible walls specially designed to make a loud noise when people are slammed into them; keeping a prisoner awake and shackled upright for more than a week, if “diapers are checked and changed as needed”; and putting a prisoner who is scared of insects …

An American cattleman. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that 651,000 jobs were lost in February (making it the third straight month in which more than 650,000 jobs have been lost) thus increasing the unemployment rate to 8.1 percent, the highest level since 1983. The Obama Administration pointed to 60 new highway-paving jobs in Maryland as proof that the $787 billion stimulus package was succeeding. “That’s how we’re going to get the country back on its feet,” said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. The White House hopes that the stimulus package will generate 3.5 million jobs; 4.4 million have been …

President Barack Obama addressed a joint session of Congress, offering a broad outline of a massive spending plan paired with $2 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade. “Now is the time,” he said, “to jump-start job creation, restart lending, and invest in areas like energy, health care, and education.”NPR.orgIt was announced that General Motors lost $30.9 billion last year; that U.S. GDP fell 6.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008, exceeding the officially predicted 3.8 percent drop, and even the 5.5 percent drop economists had expected; and that the U.S. government will own up to 36 percent …

The House and Senate reached agreement on a $789 billion economic-stimulus plan, which President Barack Obama is expected to sign into law despite a lack of support from Republicans.New York Times“When Roosevelt did this,” said Representative Steve Austria (R., Ohio), “he put our country into a Great Depression. That’s just history.”Dispatch PoliticsThe Columbus DispatchAbraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin both turned 200.Washington PostAnglican hymns were sung at Darwin’s tomb in Westminster Abbey. A poll showed that 43 percent of Britons believe in creationism.Associated PressIn a speech at the Capitol, President Obama called Lincoln a “singular figure who in so many ways …

Israel bombed Hamas targets in Gaza for three days, killing at least 300 people, 50 of them civilians, and blowing up a mosque and a television station. Palestinians seeking to flee into Egypt were turned back; a doctor at a Gaza hospital said that after 18 months of Israeli sanctions the lack of medical facilities made it better for a patient “to be brought in dead.” Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that the bombing, ordered in retaliation for ongoing rocket attacks by Hamas, would be “widened and deepened as is necessary,” and an area around Gaza was declared a …

An American cattleman. President George W. Bush announced a $13.4 billion bailout for General Motors and Chrysler. The bailout, which will make use of funds authorized by Congress in October for the rescue of U.S. financial institutions, requires among other things that the automakers sell their fleets of private aircraft. “I’ve abandoned free-market principles,” said Bush, “to save the free-market system.”New York TimesBreitbartPresident-elect Barack Obama called for an expansion of his economic recovery plan in order to save a half-million more jobs atop the 2.5 million he already hopes to save, at a total cost of $600 billion or $700 …

The Labor Department reported that 533,000 people lost their jobs in November, a further 621,000 people were forced into part-time employment, and 422,000 more simply dropped out of the labor force. The report, describing a situation far worse than economists expected, also recorded 24,000 layoffs by auto dealers.MarketwatchRepresentatives of the Big Three car companies, facing their lowest sales in decades and, in the case of Chrysler and General Motors, imminent collapse, again appeared before Congress (traveling by car and commercial flights this time, rather than on private jets) to ask for $34 billion in aid, a few billion less than …

An American cattleman. Gunmen terrorizedMumbai for more than two days, killing at least 180 people during attacks at a train station, a restaurant, two five-star hotels, a movie theater, a hospital, a police station, and a Jewish center. At the peak of the violence more than one tweet per second with the word “Mumbai” was being posted to Twitter.com. Indian authorities claimed there were only ten attackers, with nine killed and one captured, but others, including the captive gunman, suggested that many others were involved in the attacks. Evidence suggested that the Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani militant group that has fought …

A Christian martyr. After a trial based predominantly on classified evidence, much of which could not be discussed with the defendants, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ordered the release of five Algerian prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, where they have been held without charge for seven years based on a single, unidentified source. “To allow enemy combatancy to rest on so thin a reed,” said Leon, “would be inconsistent with this court’s obligation.” The judge called upon the Justice Department to accept his ruling, saying that the Algerians deserve to go home and that an appeal would keep the prisoners at …

Democrats were outvoting Republicans in all nine states that track the party affiliations of early voters, indicating a likely election victory for Barack Obama. George Mason University“It’s gonna get nasty,” Obama told a crowd in Missouri.CNNRepublicans claimed that Democrats were coercing dementia patients to cast absentee ballots,Des Moines Registerand fliers posted in black neighborhoods of Philadelphia falsely warned that voters with unpaid parking tickets would be arrested at the polls.APIt was reported that Obama‘s half-aunt Zeitun Onyango lives in a Boston housing project and is an illegal immigrant–a detail likely leaked by the Bush Administration against the procedures of the …

An American cattleman. On the 79th anniversary of the stock market crash of 1929, the Dow fell 312.3 points, closing below 8400. Chrysler announced that it would cut 25 percent of its salaried jobs, OPEC said that it was cutting oil production by 1.5 million barrels a day, and former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan declared that financial markets were engulfed in a “once-in-a-century credit tsunami” and admitted that he had “found a flaw” in his free-market ideology. “I don’t know how significant or permanent it is,” he said of his mistake. “But I’ve been very distressed by that fact.”The …

Caught in the Web, 1860. Governments around the world attempted to slow the global financial catastrophe. Der SpiegelNYTThe stock market in Iceland reopened after a three-day suspension and immediately plunged 77 percent.NYTBloombergReutersThe Economist via Seattle PIFTGuardianBloombergSwitzerland bought $60 billion in bad debt from the largest Swiss bank, while the second-largest Swiss bank sought aid from the government of Qatar.WPPresident George W. Bush announced a world financial summit, described by some as “Bretton Woods II,” to be held at Camp David after the November 4 elections,TelegraphWSJBBCWPNYTWPBloombergCSMand the United States partially nationalized nine of its major banks. “Bush is to the left …

The world economy continued its collapse. The Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 22 percent over eight days, Wall Street lost $2.4 trillion in market value, and Iceland went bankrupt.CNNBusiness WeekThe head of the International Monetary Fund warned that the world was on the “brink of systemic meltdown,”BBCand Democrats in Congress called for a $150 billion economic stimulus plan to rebuild America’s crumbling infrastructure.Yahoo! NewsBarack Obama called for firms that create jobs to be rewarded with tax credits and for a moratorium on foreclosures;AFPJohn McCain refused to answer questions about his economic plan, but was reportedly considering a cut in the …

An American cattleman. The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives passed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. The legislation, which originated as a three-page proposal by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and grew to 451 pages after House and Senate negotiations, established the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to grant the Secretary of the Treasury up to $700 billion to buy troubled assets owned by financial institutions, to allow the Treasury to limit executive compensation and “golden parachutes” at those institutions, and to establish an oversight board to monitor the Treasury. The act also provides wooden arrow manufacturers an exemption …

A Christian martyr. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 777 points in one day after the House of Representatives failed to pass a Wall Street bailout plan, first put forth by President George W. Bush, that would have granted Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson up to $700 billion to buy, at any price, toxic mortgage-backed assets from financial firms. “It’s not based on any particular data point,” said a Treasury spokeswoman of the $700 billion figure. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”Wall Street JournalWashington PostForbes.comSenator John McCain announced that fixing the economy was more important than politicking, suspended …

Stocks on Wall Street and other exchanges throughout the world dropped as brokerage Merrill Lynch was bought by Bank of America, insurance giant AIG sought tens of billions of dollars in government loans, and investment bank Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy.The New York TimesJohn McCain and Barack Obama suspended political advertising and appeared together at the World Trade Center site to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the September 11 attacks,The New York Timesand former Massachusetts governor Jane Swift, chair of the Palin Truth Squad, demanded that Obama apologize for saying that McCain’s promise to change Washington amounted to putting “lipstick on …

The Treasury Department seized control of mortgage and loan giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, firing the companies’ chief executives and promising to provide as much as $200 billion to prevent insolvency.New York TimesThe jobless rate rose from 5.7 percent to a five-year high of 6.1 percent, with more than 84,000 jobs lost in August,Yahoo and Senator John McCain accepted the Republican Party’s nomination for the presidency.KTLA.com“This campaign is not about issues,” said McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis. “This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.”Washington PostIt emerged that McCain did not properly …