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Christine Lagarde on the need to complete the planned reforms giving more voting power to emerging market countries China, S. Korea, Brazil, Mexico, India and others. This woud not change the U.S. voting power of of over 16%. The reforms would also increase contributions from these countries. This issue is likely to come up in meetings of finance ministers in Australia in 2014.

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Ma Jun, economist who worked for the IMF, World Bank, and Deutsche Bank is the Chief Economist of the People's Bank of China (PBOC) in April 2014.

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Courses that use the material on the economic crisis as part of the course or redesign the course around it are growing on college campuses. The courses are in different subjects from English and sociology and Latino studies to economics and finance all drawing from the material. The heightened interest of students as it shapes the job market and prospects.

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Conoco Phillips posts a loss for 4th quarter 2008 of $31.6 billion. For all of 2008 the loss was $17 billion. This includes a number of charges including $7.4 billion for writedowns on OAO Lukoil in which Conoco has 20% stake, whose shares have lost two thirds of their value.

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Peter Fisher spent 15 years at the New York Fed and was Under Secretary of the Treasury for domestic finance. Interviewed by Maria Bartiromo he says the fourth quarter is going to be very hard and its going to take several quarters to get some stability and freeing up credit markets. Why did this happen. We had says Peter Fisher several years of negative interest rates the middle of this decade, and its this essentially free money that distorted the system. Capitalism he says is premised on the idea that capital is a scarce commodity rationed with a price mechanism. And everybody took advantage of this to leverage themselves too far from the clever guys on Wall Street to people in the housing and financial services industries. This in his view was the engine that led the economy so far astray. Fisher does not believe all financial institutions should be treated by fed and treasury the same way. The ones that overly leveraged with weak managements and are doing poorly ad not likely to survive should be closed. Once it is clear that the prospects for some financial institutions are dim and their survival is uncertain he thinks Fed and Treasury should not wait around for consolidation but close these as quickly as possible. He sees some banks being closed and not just commercial banks. ...

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How the housing crisis is working itself out in worst hit California in places like the Central valley near Silicon valley as foreclosures rise and prices fall. And gradually home buyers are returning to the market.

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Abbott Laboratories agreement to pay $1.6 billion in civil and criminal fines for promoting unapproved off label uses of the neurologic drug Depakote, to sedate older patients in nursing homes. The acting associate attorney general, Tony West, said: "Not only did Abbott engage in off-label promotion, it targeted elderly dementia patients and down played the risks apparent from its own clinical studies." Abbott aggressively promoted its use in nursing homes. It also aggressively promoted the use of the drug for schizophrenia between 2001 and 2006. In 1999 Abbott had to discontinue a clinical trial testing Depakote's effectiveness against dementia after results showed increased incidence of anorexia, drowsiness and dehydration.