Britannia Radio

Last Updated: Thursday, September 18, 2008 12:32 GMT
Up To 500 Bank Closures Could Absorb FDIC Funds 
Mark Patterson, chairman of private equity fund MattlinPatterson, told an audience of financial experts at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria this week that the U.S. could suffer up to 500 bank closures and that the chances of a new great depression are now as high as 25 per cent.

• Worst Crisis Since ’30s, With No End Yet in Sight
• Banking crisis: Central banks pump billions in to ease the strain
• Lloyds TSB to Buy HBOS for $22 Billion 
• Gold extends gains after central banks’ move
• Motorists fume at ‘profiteers’ as price of petrol goes UP despite huge falls in oil price 
• China accuses US of financial WMD
• Why the Poker Game is Ending

White House won’t side with McCain on ‘fundamentals’ of economy being ’strong.’
This year, both President Bush and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) have claimed that the “fundamentals” of the economy “are strong,” McCain doing so as late as yesterday. But in today’s White House briefing, spokeswoman Dana Perino — in a tense exchange — refused to side with McCain’s latest assessment.

• Secret Service order police to block McCain protesters

Networks Wrong On Global Warming Again; Arctic Ice Still There
So much for the media hype about Arctic ice disappearing this summer.

• Biased Broadcasting Climate

Nobel Prize Winning Economist: Crisis As Bad As Great Depression Or Worse 
Two time Nobel-prize winner and former chief economist of the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz has warned that the current financial crisis will continue for at least another eighteen months and in many ways represents a worse situation than the one faced by Americans during the great depression of the 1930s.

Russia threatens to seize swathe of Arctic
President Dmitry Medvedev said that Russia should unilaterally claim part of the Arctic, stepping up the race for the disputed energy-rich region.

Hubble Finds Unidentified Object in Space, Scientists Puzzled
In a paper published last week in the Astrophysical Journal, scientists detail the discovery of a new unidentified object in the middle of nowhere.

• Big Brother tracking comes to Second Life

The End of the Blue Chip Economy
AIG, the quintessential blue-chip, one of the 30 companies that compose the Dow Jones Industrial Average, a company that in 2000 boasted a market capitalization of $217 billion, making it the largest financial institution in the world, is teetering on the brink of collapse.