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SEC files civil lawsuit for securities fraud against Goldman Sachs for the Abacus deal.

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Public anger is increasing about BP's handling of the oil spill.

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A shift in priorities and focus of the three candidates away from the drug war, to reducing the level of violence.

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American journalist, John Foley, beheaded by ISIS Islamic State insurgents in Iraq following American bombings near Mosul dam and Erbil to push back the militants attack on Kurdish Northern Iraq. John Foley survived a 44 day ordeal after being captured in Libya in 2011. He went back to cover the Syrian conflict and was captured by ISIS in 2012. He is shown with a helmet covering the war in Aleppo, Syria, in November 2012. His father John Foley in Rochester, New Hampshire, says Foley was as much a humanitarian as a journalist. He graduated from the Medill School at Northwestern and saw the covering of the Middle East as bringing a voice to the powerless and the helpless in the region.

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Lower corporate governance standards on the NYSE and the NASDAQ stock exchanges in New York are raising concern of large investors. London and Hong Kong exchanges do not allow corporate insiders who collectively own less than half of their companies stock to exercize control through dual share structures and other mechanisms.

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Efforts to get funds like Abu Dhabi's and Singapore's to agree to a set of rules. Treasury and IMF talk to fund representatives from these countries.

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The recommendations of the President's Working Group on Financial Markets to be given today by Treasury Secretary Paulson. The Working Group includes the heads of the Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve bank of New York, and the heads of SEC ad CFTC. The aim is to prevent the kind of crisis in mortgages and credit from happening again. There are other private-sector advisory panels also at work with Treasury with one focusseds on credit rating firms and Congress is working on this also. Much of it does not require legislation and some of it can be implemented immediately. Regulators are asked to work more closely with the Financial Accounting Standards Board to revisit accounting issues and make sure exposures are properly reflected.They are asked to make their independent assessments and not to rely on credit raings firms. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are asked to work on raising more capital and reduce dividends to conserve capital. New licensing standards are supported for mortgage brokers. The question is whether new storms in the economy and credit and financial markets will make this look not enough considering the situation facing the economy and financial markets....

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Lawmakers in Congress finally get overwhelming bipartisan support behind a plan to help homeowners facing foreclosure. The rate of homeowners going into foreclosure is 8000 a day or 2,920,000 between now and the same time next year, with the burden falling more heavily in some regions or states like Nevada, Arizona, California and Florida, and in states where the economy is weak as in the auto industry states of Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. This took some time apparently as there was some hope a couple of months before that the economy would recover and taxpayer money need not be spent to rescue homeowners and lenders from their folly. Now the economy looks sure to go into a serious downturn and homeowner prices measured by the Case-Shiller index show a 16.5% drop in prices from this time last year. Lenders earlier had balked from reducing the size of the loans and balance owed by lenders as part of their contribution. Now with losses of 40-60% in foreclosure the new federally guaranteed mortgages which require reducing the loan money owed to 85% of current value are looking attractive. The new mortgages are 30 year fixed loans with a federal guarantee. Only borrowers wanting to stay in their primary home are eligible. Borrowers also have to pay hefty fees to save taxpayer money. Buyers who purchase unoccupied properties will get a $8000 refund tax credit. There is some concern that because the bill is fairly complicated homeowners and lenders would not make larger use of it....

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Prime Minister Manmohan Singh won a no confidence motion in Parliament by 275 to 256 margin with 10 abstentions and will push for the ratification of the nuclear deal with the USA.

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The Awakening members who went on the American payroll were former insurgents who fought the American military forces and worked with Al Quaeda organization. They did this at a time when tribal leaders were under great pressure to work out some kind of settlement with the Americans, and Sunni civilian casualties from bombings had alienated the Sunni general public from their activities. Now that Americans are announcing a phased withdrawal first from the urban areas and then from the rest of the country, the Shiite government is trying to keep a check on the Awakening fearing they might reorganize to fight the Shiite government once the Americans left. Only about 5200 of the Awakening members have been allowed to join the 100,000 security forces according to General Perkins. Now the Shiite led security forces want to arrest the most effective of the Awakening members about 650 are on the arrest list according to insurgent members. Only 5 have been arrested and most have fled the areas which they first terrorized then helped keep safe on the American payroll....

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Dallas Federal Reserve Bank Governor sees an economy that will have zero growth in the second half and he does not seee price pressures abating. He says the odds are even that inflation turns out to be a one-off event or becomes persistent, but his sense is that it will be persistent. Fisher has voted for rate increase at Fed meetings. For him the key issue is whether the increase in food and energy prices will be transient or persist, and his concern has been that expectations of future price increases will become embedded in the economy.

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Some refreshing comments to Jane Albrechtsen's article on op-ed WSJ, Oct 6, 2008, "Not Everyone Should Own a Home".