The Santos Republic

U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke says the plan proposed by President-elect Barack Obama should provide the economy with a “significant boost.” But he also warns the government must take strong steps to reform the financial system.
During a speech at the London School of Economics Tuesday, Bernanke also warned that the timing and strength of a global economic recovery are still “highly uncertain.”

He said the financial crisis has shown that the world is too interconnected for nations to “go it alone” in economic, fiscal and regulatory policies.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government says the country’s trade deficit plunged to its lowest level in five years in November as oil prices fell and consumers cut back on spending.

The government report says U.S. imports fell by 12 percent, with imports from China dropping by the largest amount on record.

The article is a culmination of what the media is now saying about President Obama.

Rod Beckström, the Department of Homeland Security’s controversial cyber-security chief, has suddenly resigned amid allegations of power grabs and bureaucratic infighting.

Stingy is as stingy does. The bout of miserable U.S. employment data on Friday is a sign that suddenly penny-pinching Americans are unlikely to return to their spendthrift ways for years, an echo of the generation that came out of Great Depression.

Britain’s third-largest banking group joins government scheme to insure toxic assets.

Lloyds Banking Group has become the latest U.K. bank to fall under government control since the run onNorthern Rock in September 2007.

The U.K.’s third-largest bank confirmed Saturday that the government is raising its stake to at least 65%, and possibly as high as 77%, in return for insuring $367 billion dollars in toxic assets. The bank has also promised to increase its lending, primarily to businesses, by $39 billion over the next two years.

Still, the hope for a Northwest Passage lingers and has become central to a key international debate heating up over the Arctic north. If climate change and global warming are real — and there’s currently little doubt over that-then it stands to reason that the ice covering Arctic waterways will decrease in coming decades, presenting fewer navigational problems for shipping.
If the ice recedes — and few experts expect it will do so year-round-cargo shipping times and distances could, the thinking goes, be cut: A 12,400-mile voyage from Japan to England by way of the Panama Canal could be shortened to less than 8,700 miles using the Northwest Passage, saving 14 days and costs.

President Obama spoke to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night. This is a transcript of the speech.

A seismic shift has occurred as this is the first time ever in history that human embryonic stem cells will be injected into human subjects. Geron Corporation has enthusiastically announced the FDA’s approval of their Phase 1 clinical trial to begin using human embryonic stem cells in patients with new spinal cord injuries.

This is the name given to the first few months of the Second World War in the Western Front, when France and Britain, which had reluctantly declared war on Germany, failed to attack while the Wehrmacht was busy in Poland. The Royal Navy, under the able leadership of Winston Churchill, was of course an exception and understood from day one that, in General MacArthur´s words, in war there is no substitute for victory.

Although the circumstances might be almost completely different, such a period of time comes to mind when looking in retrospect at the last few weeks in Gaza, where the Israeli Defense Forces undertook an operation whose objectives do not seem to have been clearly set out.

A parody of Obama´s first 100 days solving U.S. Economic Crisis by lobbying a $900bn (now $787bn) stimulus package penned by Democrats