Dickens in Amerika

Editorial
The New Debtors’ Prisons
Published: April 5, 2009

Here is a tale that sounds like it comes right from the pages of “Little Dorrit,” Charles Dickens’s scathing indictment of Victorian England’s debtors’ prisons. Unfortunately, it is happening in 21st-century America. More

Sweden vs Japan: Round 809

How to Clean a Dirty Bank
By ANDREW ROSENFIELD
Published: April 5, 2009
Chicago
Times Topics: Credit Crisis — The Essentials

COMMERCIAL banks in the United States are not subject to the bankruptcy statute — when they become insolvent they are simply acquired by the government. This is what banks sign on for in return for a charter, deposit insurance and direct access to the Federal Reserve lending window, which generally allow banks to prosper as long as they control risk. More

The Pay at the Top

The compensation research firm Equilar compiled data reflecting pay for 200 chief executives at 198 public companies that filed their annual proxies by March 27 and had revenue of at least $6.3 billion. (Two companies, Motorola and Synnex, had co-C.E.O.’s.) | See a detailed description of the methodology. Link

Right-wing Nuts

Deadly Rampages Rack the Nation
By ROBERT GUY MATTHEWS

PITTSBURGH -- A 22-year-man who shot and killed three Pittsburgh police officers over the weekend had been stockpiling guns and ammunition, buying and selling the weapons online "because he believed that as a result of the economic collapse, the police were no longer able to protect society," according to a court report. More