Financial Crisis

Seeking an early victory on a top priority, President-elect Barack Obama is pitching workers in the ailing Midwest on his plan for some $825 billion in new spending and tax cuts to spur the troubled economy.

A week shy of taking office, President-elect Barack Obama already is putting his persuasion skills to a high-stakes test with Congress as he seeks access to the second half of the $700 billion financial bailout fund.

From Thomas L. Friedman at The New York Times: Here’s hoping that our new administration will be guided in shaping the stimulus by reading John Maynard Keynes in one hand and by reading “Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future” with the other.

The nation’s unemployment rate bolted to 7.2 percent in December, the highest since early 1993, as nervous employers slashed 524,000 jobs.

Barack Obama is heading to Capitol Hill to push for quick action on a broad economic stimulus package that congressional leaders are saying won’t be ready until mid-February at the earliest — almost a month later than the president-elect wanted.

<em>From the </em>New York Times: With Detroit reeling, many blacks find their economic well-being threatened.

While top executives of sinking companies are being bailed out, average Americans are being failed by their government, and left to struggle with the crisis on their own. NewsOne introduces our <strong>"Bailed Or Failed"</strong> series. <span style="text-decoration:underline;">Click through</span> to read about an exec who was bailed out and an average American who was failed during the financial crisis.<strong> Protest here!</strong>

It’s something any bank would demand to know before handing out a loan: Where’s the money going? But after receiving billions in aid from U.S. taxpayers, the nation’s largest banks say they can’t track exactly how they’re spending the money or they simply refuse to discuss it.

DETROIT — Mayor Ken Cockrel Jr. said in a statement Friday that new problems are being discovered daily regarding the finances and financial reporting practices of the administration of his predecessor, Kwame Kilpatrick.

WASHINGTON — Citing danger to the national economy, the Bush administration came to the rescue of the U.S. auto industry Friday, offering $17.4 billion in emergency loans in exchange for concessions from the deeply troubled carmakers and their workers.