Asian stocks cheer plan to rescue U.S. bond insurers
Most major Asian share markets rose on Thursday, lifted by banks and financials after the U.S. government outlined a plan to rescue battered bond insurers and stave off a fresh round of billion-dollar writedowns. The news pushed the Dow industrial average and S&P up more than 2 percent by the close… That marked a sharp turnaround from earlier in the day, when the Dow and the S&P were each down more than 2 percent.

US stocks head for higher open
NEW YORK - Wall Street headed toward a moderately higher open Thursday, a day after stocks staged an extraordinary reversal and after weekly figures on workers seeking unemployment figures suggested the job market was holding.

Bush Becomes Supplicant for Saudi’s Aid to Help Avoid Recession
Jan. 22 (Bloomberg) — With oil at about $90 a barrel, the U.S. economy at risk of sliding into recession and American banks trying to raise cash to ride out the subprime-mortgage crisis, Bush has become a supplicant for Saudi financial help. He also needs the kingdom to get behind his Palestinian peace push, to keep Iran at bay and to support political stability in Iraq.
A lot of people voted for Bush because they thought he was such a tough guy.  As we see, he only acts tough when he perceives his opponent to be weak.  Otherwise, he’s a weasel.

Bill Gates Issues Call For Kinder Capitalism
Free enterprise has been good to Bill Gates. But later today, the Microsoft Corp. chairman will call for a revision of capitalism. In a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the software tycoon plans to call for a “creative capitalism” that uses market forces to address poor-country needs that he feels are being ignored. “We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well,” Mr. Gates will tell world leaders at the forum.
I wonder if he’ll use the same hardball, monopolistic tactics he used at Microsoft to make this happen.