"Buying equities and taking on those risks in late 2009, or more likely 2010, will be a great move because equities will be much cheaper than now. It is going to be a buying opportunity of the century."

This week we'll see a knock-down, drag-out battle between Obama, Geithner and the Senate who want to keep the market from falling, and the market itself which wants to drop precipitously.

As Seth Meyers pointed out on Saturday Night Live, Kellogg Company's image is closer to that of bong-smoking Olympian Michael Phelps than the cereal maker likes to admit.

Kellogg's Keebler Elves, after all, "live together in a treehouse and do nothing all day but think of new things to put cheese on."

Wall Street helped produce the global financial and economic crisis. Now, as the Obama administration prepares to unveil a revised bailout plan for the banking system, policy makers hope Wall Street can be part of the solution.

Administration officials said the plan to be announced Tuesday was likely to depend in part on the willingness of private investors other than banks — like hedge funds, private equity funds and perhaps even insurance companies -- to buy the contaminating assets that wiped out the capital of many banks.

For many high school seniors who are applying to college in the midst of an economic meltdown, Cooper Union's commitment to full scholarships -- regardless of need -- has given the institution an almost mythic allure....

While many of the nation's elite colleges underwrite the education of poor students, Cooper is among a handful of private colleges that are tuition-free for everyone (it does not, however, pay for room and board, though financial aid is available for living expenses).

Another Bank Bailout: On Monday, Treasury Secretary Geithner is due to announce the next phase in a long series of government bailouts for banks. The leaks about the plan thus far have indicated a hybrid approach using elements of a "bad bank" and more government guarantees on bank assets. The price action of Bank of America and Citigroup does not inspire confidence in the market's reaction to previously announced government guarantees of toxic bank assets.

If the regulators hope to bring stability to the markets, they might want to consider leaving the rules unchanged for more than two weeks at a time.

Officials believe arson may be behind nation's worst-ever wildfires as entire towns burn.

Geithner is considering a plan to help purge banks of their bad bets by partnering with the private sector to buy troubled assets.

A 21-year-old autistic man perished and his grandmother was left fighting for her life as flames engulfed their 17th-floor East Harlem apartment yesterday morning, police said.

Saks' decision to cut prices by 70% on designer clothes in mid-November set off a domino effect in the luxury goods business.

The stimulus plan emerging in Washington could offer an unprecedented, multibillion-dollar boost in financial help for college students trying to pursue a degree while they ride out the recession.

Former Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu, who is poised to be swept back into power Monday, declared Sunday he would not give up the strategic Golan Heights, signaling a harder line is coming with Israel's Arab neighbors.

Casino operator MGM Mirage says a tax break for forgiven debt is a good way for Congress to stimulate the U.S. economy; Granite Construction Inc. favors more money for roads and bridges; General Motors Corp. wants incentives for car buyers.

Critics are skeptical of gains cited by school officials at an Assembly hearing Friday on whether mayoral control of the school system should continue.

The Obama administration is considering turning to a new program run by the Fed that depends heavily on hedge funds to jump-start the financial system.

Mayor Bloomberg came to a Queens banquet hall Sunday like a man looking to woo a lover he once spurned, sweet-talking a roomful of Republicans to take him back. It didn't work.

The debate over the controversial practice of child marriage in Saudi Arabia was pushed back into the spotlight this week, with the kingdom's top cleric saying that it's OK for girls as young as 10 to wed.

"It is incorrect to say that it's not permitted to marry off girls who are 15 and younger," Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh, the kingdom's grand mufti, said in remarks quoted Wednesday in the regional Al-Hayat newspaper. "A girl aged 10 or 12 can be married. Those who think she's too young are wrong and they are being unfair to her."...

Late last month, a Saudi judge refused to annul the marriage of an 8-year-old girl to a 47-year-old man.

The judge, Sheikh Habib Abdallah al-Habib, rejected a petition from the girl's mother, whose lawyer said the marriage was arranged by her father to settle a debt with "a close friend." The judge required the girl's husband to sign a pledge that he would not have sex with her until she reaches puberty.

While a pay cap for financial executives punishes yesterday's fools, it may inadvertently create tomorrow's culprits.

More than 70 percent of firefighters who retired in the past five years did so on disabilities - hiking the cost of taxpayer-funded FDNY pensions to nearly $1 billion a year, a Post analysis shows. At the same time, a rise in final-year overtime racked up by firefighters - even those retiring on disabilities - has boosted pension costs...

A law firm with bankruptcy expertise, three capital-markets lawyers and an investment bank are advising the U.S. government on how to restructure General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC, two people involved in the work said.

The present and impending disorder of the automobile companies is a reminder, even more than the decline of the housing and banking industries, of the desolation of the Great Depression. It is a reminder, too, of economic history, or of the rise and decline of industrial destinies.

The Great Depression of the 1930s created hardship and suffering among millions of Americans. It also created populist resentment of elites. Among the many signs of this anger was the astonishing popularity of Huey P. Long, governor of Louisiana and then U.S. senator, a figure so dominant in his own state that his enemies called him a dictator. But to the ordinary people of Louisiana -- and later to millions of ordinary people across the U.S. -- Mr. Long was a heroic figure, fighting for the "common man" and challenging the right of elites to monopolize power and wealth....

Every Sunday night, New York bankruptcy lawyer Marshall Huebner spends a 13-hour shift on call as an emergency medical technician. His day job involves work on another sort of rescue: The government's $152.5 billion bailout of American International Group Inc.

For Paris's Notre Dame Cathedral, the economic crisis is turning into manna from heaven.

After six months of deliberating whether to buy a car, Mumbai real-estate agent Abraham Mathew took out a 300,000 rupee ($6,200) loan to buy a Suzuki Motor Corp. sedan. The clincher: a 20 percent drop in interest rates.

First came the bird strike. Then everything went dead silent.

"It was the worst, sickening, pit-of-your-stomach, falling-through-the-floor feeling I've ever felt in my life," hero pilot Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III told CBS's 60 Minutes, according to excerpts released yesterday.

"I knew immediately it was very bad," he said in the interview, set to air Sunday at 7 p.m.

When asked if he wondered how he could get the crippled plane down safely, Sullenberger said he was just stunned. "My initial reaction was one of disbelief," he said.

Polls Show Avigdor Lieberman's Far-Right Platform Gaining Ahead of Vote

A Pakistani court declared disgraced nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan free on Friday, ending five years of house arrest for the man at the center of the world's most serious proliferation scandal.

Khan, lionized by many Pakistanis as the father of the country's atomic bomb, confessed to selling nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya in 2004, but was immediately pardoned by the government, although his movements were restricted to effective house arrest.

New uniforms for everyone!

The massive $900 billion stimulus bill making its way through Congress would require the feds to purchase up to 100,000 uniforms for the Transportation Security Administration and other Department of Homeland Security workers — a provision critics say won't do anything to spark the economy.

The fall of Boaz Weinstein, once one of Wall Street's hottest traders, speaks volumes about why financial firms still are reeling from the shattered global markets.

A Manhattan judge has thrown out a $50 million lawsuit against 50 Cent by the baby mama who said he'd promised to always take care of her.

Pick to Run Agency Calls Waterboarding Torture, but Says Employees Following U.S. Lawyers' Opinions Shouldn't Be Prosecuted

We have experienced the perfect storm — a precipitous decline in revenue and a tough economy has coupled with a credit crisis, making it extremely difficult to support our debt.

No one thought the buyout of Tribune Co. would work — and it didn't.

The fact that Tribune Co. has hired Lazard as its adviser for a potential Chapter 11 filing ranks among the least surprising potential bankruptcies ever.

The recession is accelerating a disturbing trend in which more kids have early diabetes, hypertension and other health problems previously confined to adults. The number of children under 6 who sometimes are forced to go hungry has doubled in recent years to 8 percent of all youngsters.

In a note sent to the presiding judge, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four co-defendants declared that they wished to confess to planning the 2001 assault on New York and Washington. ...

"We don't want to waste time," he told the judge.

According to the note, the five men do not trust their lawyers — appointed by the US military — and want to withdraw any pending motions filed on their behalf.

But with US President-elect Barack Obama opposed to the military trials — known as commissions — the case is unlikely to survive the new year.

Scientists are warning that manmade pollutants which have escaped into the environment mimic the female sex hormone estrogen.

The males of species including fish, amphibians, birds, and reptiles have been feminised by exposure to sex hormone disrupting chemicals and have been found to be abnormally making egg yolk protein, normally made by females, according to the report by Chem Trust, environmental group.

Convinced 32 unmarked graves at the Florida School for Boys are the bodies of boys abused and killed decades ago, four former residents of the school are demanding the governor and state and federal attorneys investigate. The men learned of the graves six weeks ago when they were invited to dedicate a plaque at the school.

Canada's housing sector is entering what RBC Economics calls a "cyclical downtown," but says the risk of a U.S.-style meltdown is remote.

RBC senior economist Robert Hogue says many factors that triggered the U.S. housing collapse are either absent or of much lower significance in Canada.

He says the housing market is expected to hold up even as a sluggish economy threatens income growth and erodes consumer confidence.

Mr. Hogue says the sub-prime business remains marginal, banks are stable and households are generally not overstretched financially.

Congress and the White House inched toward a financial rescue of the Big Three auto makers, negotiating legislation that would give the U.S. government a substantial ownership stake in the industry.

The full-court press by Detroit Three auto lobbyists for taxpayer money has fostered strong feelings across our country. B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell staked out his province's position that massive job losses in the forestry sector merit government help just as much as Ontario's auto sector. Fearing for their own jobs, Canadians employed in the services, retail, construction and other sectors ask why workers who earn much more than they do should be subsidized - and why mismanaging bosses should be bailed out. ...

Canada has the lowest debt-to-GDP ratio of any G8 country and is the only member going into the global meltdown without a structural deficit. Despite the gloom and doom espoused by panicky politicians, our economy is performing relatively well, so we haven't been forced into the desperate ad-hoc measures seen in the United States. While our country does have the financial capacity for well-placed temporary fiscal stimulus, spending taxpayer money in the wrong places will weaken rather than strengthen the economic future of Canadians.

As unlikely as it sounds, the Big Three Detroit auto makers might look to Romania for inspiration on how to reinvent themselves.

Romania is a struggling Eastern European country that gets little attention in the rest of Europe, or anywhere else. The country's industrial base is in rough shape, though slowly improving as it creeps into the European Union fold. But it has one industry that stands out as an international success story - car making.

Romania's Automobile Dacia is one of the few high-growth car businesses in the otherwise ailing global auto industry. The brand's French owner, Renault, couldn't be happier. The Dacia is a genuine low-cost car that rolls out of the factory near Bucharest with a fat profit margin.

The machine sells well throughout Europe, and elsewhere, because it is not a jalopy pieced together with 40-year-old parts from Warsaw Pact trucks. The Dacia's engineering and drivability, if not visual appeal, come close to the standards of the latest Renault cars.

General Motors Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Rick Wagoner is coming under increasing pressure from outside the company to resign as part of any broad bailout of the auto maker by the federal government.

On Sunday, Sen. Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.), a supporter of emergency loans for Detroit, suggested Mr. Wagoner should go if the government follows through and provides billions of dollars to help the auto giant restructure and return to profitability.

"I think you've got to consider new leadership," the senator said on the CBS talk show Face The Nation. A Dodd aide said later the senator's demand for change would not be a "condition written into the" rescue package coming together on Capitol Hill, and draft legislation prepared by top Democrats doesn't make that explicit requirement. But Mr. Dodd's displeasure was clear. "If you're going to restructure, you've got to bring in a new team to do this," he said. "I think [Mr. Wagoner] has to move on."

... It is clearly possible that the terror rampage had its origins outside India, aimed as they were at international rather than Hindu targets. But in a least one sense it doesn't matter. For the attacks will aggravate a growing fault line between Hindus and Muslims within India itself.

India is home to 154 million Muslims, the third largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia and Pakistan. Tolerable inter-communal relations are the sine qua non of Indian stability and ascendancy. India has more to lose from extremist Islam than arguably any other country in the world.

A legacy of the Bush Administration is that America can no longer sweep in and impose a solution on a crisis. The answers for Pakistan lie largely in its own hands ...

Merrill Lynch & Co. chief John Thain has suggested to directors that he get a 2008 bonus of as much as $10 million, but the battered securities firm's compensation committee is resisting his request, according to people familiar with the situation. ...

The difference of opinion between Mr. Thain and directors who hired him just a year ago is part of the bigger debate about compensation practices at Wall Street firms. Many blame Wall Street for fueling the credit crisis that dragged the U.S. economy into recession, and the giant paychecks that are routine at many Wall Street firms have received deepening criticism as the government extends aid to banks and securities firms.

The video game industry appears to be alone in bucking a retail recession as consumers turn to fitness workouts, musical jam sessions and fantasy worlds to take their minds off the credit crunch.

Microsoft has reported November as its biggest sales month in Europe for the Xbox 360 console - sales rose 124 per cent on a year ago. In the US it announced its best Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, with sales up 25 per cent on the year.

US industry sales are up 25 per cent so far this year, according to the NPD research firm. Game sales in October rose 35 per cent on 2007's total. The rises are in spite of a strong 2007.

Legislation would give automakers at least $15B in emergency loans early next week; Dodd says GM chairman Richard Wagoner "has to move on."

Media giant Tribune Co., saddled with billions in debt since it became a privately held company last year, has hired bankruptcy advisers, according to its flagship newspaper, the Chicago Tribune.

The Chicago-based company owns a coast-to-coast empire with television stations and newspapers in most of the nation's largest cities. Its holdings include the Los Angeles Times; cable television super-station WGN in Chicago; the Baltimore Sun; and WDCW-50 in Washington, the CW affiliate. The company even owns the Chicago Cubs.