Weekly Review

An American cattleman. A 6.3 earthquake in the Abruzzo region of Italy damaged buildings in 26 towns, destroyed numerous historic monuments, left tens of thousands of people homeless, and killed at least 92 people, including an 82-year-old nun who died of shock. Seismologist Giampaolo Giuliani, who for weeks… Read More

President Barack Obama announced new military policies for Pakistan and Afghanistan, reserving, as had George W. Bush, the right to attack the tribal areas of Pakistan, but adding that the United States would create “opportunity zones” for investment in the areas of Pakistan… Read More

The House of Representatives, reacting to a plan by AIG to pay its executives as much as $218 million in bonuses, voted 328 to 93 in favor of a 90-percent tax on executive bonuses at firms that receive $5 billion or more in federal funds. Eighty-five Republicans voted… Read More

The Senate passed a $410 billion omnibus spending bill that included more than 8,000 congressional earmarks, among them provisions for improving blueberry products in Georgia and controlling the spread of Mormon crickets in Utah. President Barack Obama, whose inaugural address included the promise that “those of us who manage… Read More

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… Read More

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… Read More

Caught in the Web, 1860. President Obama signed the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and unveiled a $275 billion plan to help some of the 6 million homeowners facing foreclosure in the next three years. Some Republican governors said they would refuse stimulus aid that… Read More

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… Read More

An American cattleman. The Senate passed an $827 billion stimulus package with the help of three Republicans who forced Democrats to cut billions of dollars that would have provided aid to states and education programs. Economists said the cuts were “outrageous” and “disastrous.” “The point is to… Read More

A Christian martyr. Two days after three candidates and two campaign workers were kidnapped and murdered, Iraqis voted in the first national elections since 2005, choosing between 14,000 candidates running for 440 provincial offices. Two men were shot and wounded at a polling place in Sadr City, and… Read More

Barack Hussein Obama was sworn in as the forty-fourth president of the United States.NY TimesIn his inaugural remarks, President Obama attributed many of the nation’s problems to a “collective failure to make hard choices.” “Starting today,” he said, “we… Read More

Israel and Hamas agreed to a one-week ceasefire in Gaza, where Gazan officials estimated that 1,300 Palestinians had died.Hamas Agrees to One-Week Cease-Fire in Gaza Conflict“My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszow,” said… Read More

The war between Israel and Hamas entered its third week as Israeli forces pushed into heavily populated areas of Gaza City. A UN resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire, which passed through the Security Council by a vote of 14 – 0 with the United States abstaining,… Read More

Israel extended its occupation of the Gaza strip, sending in ground forces and cutting the territory in two. Hamas fired 32 missiles at Israel. The Palestinian health ministry reported that more than 500 Palestinians, most of them civilians, including 21 children, have been killed so far; the Israeli… Read More

The United States marked the five-year anniversary of the war in Iraq. Over four million Iraqis had fled the country or been internally displaced, and the total cost of the war, currently about $650 billion, was expected to rise to $2 trillion over the next five… Read More

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… Read More

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… Read More

Caught in the Web, 1860. Federal agents arrested hedge-fund manager Bernard Madoff and charged him with running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, possibly the largest in Wall Street history. Madoff faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and $5 million in fines; he had… Read More

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. Read More

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… Read More

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… Read More

Doctors in Berlin announced that they had cured a man of AIDS by giving him transplanted blood stem cells from a donor naturally resistant to the virus; other researchers cautioned that the treatment was of little immediate use, and justified in this case only because the patient… Read More

Barack Obama was elected the 44th president, and first African-American president, of the United States, receiving 365 electoral votes in an election that saw perhaps the highest turnout among registered voters in a century. “If there’s anyone out there who still doubts that America is a… Read More

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. Read More

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,… Read More

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… Read More

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… Read More

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… Read More

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… Read More

Caught in the Web, 1860. After many years of increasing borrowing and at least thirteen months of evidence of an impending catastrophe, American financial institutions faced the worst credit crisis since the Great Depression. “The world,” explained Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, “no longer has the capacity to absorb… Read More