EconomicCrisis.US

Brooksley Born, a former head of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission who also warned about unwarranted risks in the U.S. financial system, was appointed on Wednesday to help investigate the causes of the U.S. and global financial crisis.

Democratic leaders also named former California state treasurer Phil Angelides to chair the inquiry. But Born’s appointment attracted more immediate attention because of her prominence in warning about financial risks before the crisis struck.

Congress has established a 10-member Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission that is supposed to produce a final report by Dec. 15, 2010.
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A Chinese spokesman has leveled some of his government’s harshest criticism against the United States for “initiating” the global financial crisis that has worsened conditions for workers around the world.

At Tuesday’s regular briefing, a reporter from the Bloomberg News Agency asked the Chinese Foreign Ministry to respond to a U.S. State Department statement saying China could use the global financial crisis as a pretext to weaken labor rights.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang says his government firmly opposes what he describes as an “accusation” by the American side.
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The Obama administration marked with little fanfare a major milestone in its bank rescue effort — its decision on Tuesday to let 10 big banks repay federal aid that had sustained them through the worst of the crisis — as policy makers and industry executives focused on the challenges still before them.

“This is not a sign that our troubles are over,” President Obama said. “Far from it.”

While the announcement had been expected for weeks, the official word put the administration’s imprimatur on a corps of big banks considered healthy enough to extricate themselves from Washington’s grip.
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Fewer Americans moved in 2008 than in any year since 1962, according to census data released Wednesday, and immigration from overseas was the lowest in more than a decade.

The Census Bureau reported that the annual rate at which people moved dipped last year to 11.9 percent, compared with 13.2 percent in 2007 and a recent high of 20.2 percent in 1984-85. It was the lowest rate since the bureau began measuring mobility six decades ago.

The declines appeared to be directly related to the housing slump and the recession.

“It represents a perfect storm halting migration at all levels, since it involves deterrents in local housing-related moves and longer distance employment-related moves,” said William H. Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution.
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