Some bloggers’ thoughts and impressions concerning the horrible events in Mumbai that have me both horrified and puzzled. From Death Ends Fun:
Everyone around me is talking of the terrorism, but there’s an air of bonhomie about. Plenty of backslapping as friends catch sight of each other, good cheer and chuckling. Are we used to terror [...]

James Fallows points out an interesting perspective on Tim Geithner, Obama’s pick to be US Secretary of the Treasury: experience with Asia and at the IMF. Both will be very useful in the current crisis.
When I was with a DC finance firm about a decade ago, my colleagues had fairly regular contacts with him. [...]

The US state of New Hampshire now has more female senators than male in the upper house of state government.
After [the November 4] election, thirteen of the twenty-four state Senate seats in New Hampshire are now occupied by women. Peggy Gilmore (District 12), Bette Lasky (District 13) and Amanda Merrill (District 21) beat out their [...]

Now this is a very interesting question, isn’t it? The only honest answer I can give is that I don’t know, and indeed I haven’t the faintest idea. The government of Latvia (the Baltic state which is currently most rife with “rumours” about imminent devaluations) works in its own wondrous ways, and neither we (nor [...]

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”
Tolstoy
Well this is an interesting little fable of modern family life, even if all the families involved may not be ones which many of my readers would normally wish to belong to.
As is now reasonably well know Russian private oil company Lukoil [...]

Two productivity-enhancing additions to the internet that at least a couple of our readers may not have noticed in the last 24 hours.
Google is putting the image archive of the American magazine LIFE online. Over the next few months, this will mean access to some 10 million images, the vast majority of them never published. [...]

The IMF has released yesterday’s concluding statement of its mission to Italy.   It’s mixed reading.  On the one hand, Italy is looking at a full year recession for 2008, let alone 2009 (the latter being the benchmark prediction for most OECD countries).  And long-term problems, such as low employment rates, remain.  However Italy has dodged [...]

While we are likely to see a “substantial” drop in euro-region inflation, Bank of Spain forecasts for the 15-nation euro area do not show price drops. That is they “show an enormous moderation in price gains, but they do show price gains,” according to the latest statements by Miquel Angel Fernandez Ordoñez, ECB Council member [...]

Well it must come as something of a relief for any Italian readers we have here at AFOE to learn that UniCredit SpA, Italy’s biggest bank by assets, has definitely NOT incurred losses on the Russian interbank market. Although perhaps I should rephrase that by adding just one extra word: yet. UniCredit has definitely [...]

Here is some interesting reading and debating material for our readers (hat tip Sargasso). Former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt has published an essay through Bertelsmann entitled The Financial Crisis: Three Ways Out for Europe (pdf). Teaser (emphasis mine):
What counts in this new world order is the multiplicity of empires and civilisations, not the dominance [...]