The next three months will be a wrenching time for every player in the North American motor industry as the Detroit carmakers seek to prove their long-term viability.
George W. Bush on Friday handed the fate of US carmakers to president-elect Barack Obama as he announced plans to lend General Motors and Chrysler $17.4bn to survive the next three months.
Barack Obama on Thursday named Mary Schapiro, head of the securities industry's self-regulatory body, as chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Crude oil prices continued to retreat on Thursday, in spite of Opec announcing the largest supply cut in the cartel's history on Wednesday in its latest effort to stabilise the market.
Goldman Sachs on Tuesday reported its first quarterly loss since it became a public company in 1999, after a severe decline in asset values, including real estate, hit the bank's revenues.
Arriving in Oran, Algeria, ahead of an Opec ministerial meeting on Wednesday, Ali Naimi, Saudi Arabia's powerful oil minister, said Opec had so far cut a total of 1.7m barrels a day, with Saudi Arabia accounting for 1.2m b/d.
Oil prices fell after the US Senate rejected a $14bn bail-out plan for the carmakers' sector, a move that weighed heavily on sentiment towards commodities.
Since Ratan Tata , the patriarch of India's Tata Group, decided to splash out $13.1bn early in 2007 on Anglo-Dutch Corus, he has spent a lot of time with smooth-talking Frenchman Philippe Varin , who has run Corus for five and a half years.
The top executives at Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, led by their chief executives John Thain and John Mack, will not receive bonuses this year amid growing pressure on Wall Street leaders to share the pain of the financial crisis.
Global oil demand will collapse next year and commodities will not return to the highs they reached this summer in the foreseeable future, two authoritative reports said on Tuesday as they forecast a long and painful worldwide recession.
The airline industry will suffer a $2.5bn net loss next year despite the big fall in the oil price, as carriers are overtaken by falling demand for air travel amid the deepening recession in several leading economies.
Over the weekend, the Bombay high court quietly published a 160-page court order detailing its decision to dismiss a petition by Vodafone of the UK against the Indian tax department.
In the corridors of Washington, the dominant metaphor in discussions about President-elect Barack Obama's foreign policy is baseball.
Jaguar and Land Rover, the UK based carmakers, are to set up dealership networks in India soon as they seek to use ties with Tata Motors, their new owner, to find new markets.
Ironically, one of his greatest challenges during the coming year will be writing himself out of the script.
The prospects for ministers pushing through an outline deal in the so-called Doha round of trade talks hang in the balance, with the US struggling with scepticism from Congress and its business and farm lobbies.
Merrill Lynch warned that oil prices could fall as low as $25 a barrel next year if the recession affecting the US, Europe and Japan extended to China, the main driver of demand growth in commodity markets in recent years.
2008 is possibly the worst year of violence in India. There have been terrorist attacks and blasts in Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Guwahati and now in Mumbai. The Indian government is merrily going around boasting of economic growth as ordinary citizens reel under attacks by terrorists.
So clear are the signs of a US downturn that the National Bureau of Economic Research, the most prestigious US independent economic authority, said the country has been in recession since December 2007.
The siege of Mumbai is over. Now the hand-wringing and the finger-pointing begins -- a dangerous period that needs desperately to be turned to advantage, regionally and internationally.
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