codeboaz / Boaz Gurdin

Wells Fargo wants to trump Citi's previous bid for Wachovia

"We hope our products will become to your work life what http://Facebook.com is to your social life"

"Berkshire agreed to buy $3 billion of GE perpetual preferred shares with a 10 percent dividend, generating $300 million of income a year.

Berkshire also gets warrants to buy $3 billion of GE common stock within five years at $22.25 per share, below its current level, and near the 5-1/2 year low it set on Sept 18.

"General Electric is the backbone of American industry," Buffett said on CNBC television. "They've become tainted as every company is that has to borrow a lot of money all the time. They're going to be around in five or 10 or 100 years from now"

"The distribution partnership includes CBS Corp's CBS Interactive, Comcast Corp's E! Entertainment channel, Time Warner Inc's Warner Brothers as well as News Corp and NBC Universal's jointly-owned video site Hulu, among other companies."

"For Citigroup, the acquisition should go a long way toward giving CEO Vikram Pandit the retail banking franchise that has always been the one void in the Citi empire. And with that retail network comes more than $400 billion in deposits—a cheap, stable source of funding that provides a solid foundation at a time when many other funding sources are drying up overnight. And as part of the deal, Citi agreed to absorb $42 billion in prospective losses from Wachovia's $312 billion loan portfolio. The remaining $270 billion exposure, however, is being handed off to U.S. taxpayers in exchange for $12 billion in Citi preferred stock and warrants."

Honestly, they sound like a pretty good idea for the banks. When borrowers default, the defaults should end up hitting insurers like AIG. I can see how AIG got hit by the housing bubble bursting, but now I don't see why the banks were hit too since it seems like they insured the risk of default.

Previous bubbles in railroads and the Internet built infrastructure. The credit bubble was just about consumption. We have to restore the financial system even though it will bail out people unfairly. Then we need to get to investing in clean energy.

Ever heard of "commercial paper"?

""If you're a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration," Gore told the Clinton Global Initiative gathering to loud applause."