President-elect Barack Obama on Monday called the financial crisis one of “historic proportions” and said that he and the Bush administration are “united” in their efforts to get the economy back on track.
As Obama unveiled his economic team, he said there isn’t “a minute to waste” when it comes to rebuilding the economy.
“My commitment is [...]

Reporting from Washington — Employers slashed jobs from one end of the economy to the other, pushing the unemployment rate to 6.5% — the highest in 14 years — and making a deep recession a virtual certainty.
The Labor Department reported today that the economy lost 240,000 jobs in October, the steepest one-month decline in a [...]

 
Red Hat president and CEO Jim Whitehurst expects the enterprise open source software business to emerge from the economic crisis stronger than the proprietary market.
In August Red Hat posted second quarter revenue 29 percent higher than the same quarter a year ago, while its subscription revenue also enjoyed double-digit growth to beat analysts’ estimates. Whitehurst [...]

WASHINGTON — During last week’s presidential debate, John McCain and Barack Obama sparred over what caused the financial crisis.
“The match that lit this fire,” McCain said, came from the government-sponsored mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which backed risky home loans “with the encouragement of Sen. Obama and his cronies … in Washington.”
Obama shot [...]

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The Federal Reserve announced a new program to help the battered market for short-term business loans - taking its closest step yet to lending directly to businesses.
The program addresses commercial paper, a form of short-term funding that is crucial to many businesses operations.
Commercial paper is sold by major corporations and most [...]

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. won the backing of Warren Buffett, the world’s preeminent stock-picker, as the Wall Street firm seeks to raise cash from investors whose faith in the investment-banking business model has been shaken.
For Goldman, Buffett’s endorsement came at a price. Berkshire Hathaway Inc., led by the 78-year-old billionaire, is buying $5 billion of [...]

 
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said he’s confident several countries will take steps comparable to the $700 billion plan he proposed to buy bad mortgage-related securities to address the global financial crisis.
“We are talking very aggressively with other countries around the world and encouraging them to do similar things, and I believe a number of them will,” Paulson [...]

Sept. 18 (Bloomberg) — Morgan Stanley, the second-biggest independent U.S. securities firm, may sell a larger stake to China Investment Corp. and is in talks about a possible merger with Wachovia Corp., a person familiar with the matter said.
China’s state-controlled fund may buy as much as 49 percent of the New York-based investment bank, said [...]

The Federal Reserve and five other central banks around the globe announced joint efforts early Thursday to try to pump an additional $180 billion into the battered global financial system.
The Fed joined with the European Central Bank, the Swiss National Bank, the Bank of Japan, Bank of England and Bank of Canada in the coordinated [...]

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The Federal Reserve Board late Tuesday confirmed it would authorize the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to lend as much as $85 billion to American International Group Inc., which has unraveled in the face of mounting losses related to insurance on complex financial instruments and credit downgrades that forced the company [...]