Markets sank in Europe and Asia today, stock index futures slipped sharply on Wall Street, and the dollar plunged as two giant investment banks, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch, collapsed over the weekend. Compounding the financial uncertainty, insurance giant A.I.G. “sought a $40 billion lifeline from the Federal Reserve, without which the company may have only days to survive.”
Former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan said the U.S. credit squeeze has brought on a “once-in-a-century” financial crisis that is likely to claim more big firms before it eases. “Indeed, it will continue to be a corrosive force until the price of homes in the United States stabilizes,” Greenspan said.
A new poll released by the AP and National Constitution Center finds “Americans strongly oppose giving the president more power at the expense of Congress or the courts, even to enhance national security or the economy.” Two-thirds of Americans oppose altering the balance of power to strengthen the presidency.
Last week, John McCain claimed that Sarah Palin had never sought earmarks as the governor of Alaska. But state records show that “Palin has asked U.S. taxpayers to fund $453 million in specific Alaska projects over the past two years,” including “more than $130 million in federal funds that would benefit Alaska’s fishing industry and an additional $9 million to help Alaska oil companies.”
On the trail today: Barack Obama will campaign in Grand Junction, CO, and Joe Biden will be in Michigan. McCain is campaigning in Jacksonville, the first stop on a two-day Florida tour. Palin is in Colorado.
The government announced yesterday that “it would not allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to pay their departing chief executives the separation payments, known as ‘golden parachutes.’” The decision deprives the departing chiefs of Fannie and Freddie of $9.8 million and $14.9 million respectively.
Before assuming his post as head of Central Command, Gen. David Petraeus drafted “a final letter of thanks” to the troops serving in Iraq in which he “underscored his view that the struggle to bring stability to Iraq is far from over.” In an interview with the Associated Press, Petraeus explained, “You don’t kill or capture your way out of an industrial strength insurgency.”
The location of a Bush fundraising event in Florida has been changed after event planners realized that the original host is under an IRS investigation. The event was originally scheduled to be at the home of John Boswell, whose Boswell House Ministries is undergoing an IRS probe.
Spanish diplomat Francesc Vendrell, “[o]ne of the most experienced Western envoys in Afghanistan,” yesterday said that conditions in that country are at the worst point since 2001. He “urged a concerted American and foreign response, even before a new American administration took office, to avoid ‘a very hot winter for all of us.’”
And finally: Former “Star Trek” crew member George Takei and his partner Brad Altman were “among the first gay couples to get a marriage license” after the California Supreme Court struck down the state’s gay marriage ban in May. Yesterday, the two men were finally married in a “Buddhist ceremony at the Japanese American National Museum in downtown Los Angeles.”
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