Detroit is in trouble and the big three are asking for help, a lot of help.  The president of the United Automobile Workers will testify this week but many lawmakers may say that unions have done little, if anything, to help. 

“When Ron Gettelfinger and the leaders of Detroit’s Big Three speak at their scheduled hearing, Mr. Gettelfinger is likely to deliver the bleakest warning. A bankruptcy by any of the three companies in Detroit, Mr. Gettelfinger fears, would wipe out the rest of them.”
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 NEW YORK – Citigroup Inc. is cutting approximately 53,000 more jobs in the coming quarters as the banking giant struggles to steady itself after suffering massive losses from deteriorating debt.The plans, posted on the company’s Web site, are being discussed by CEO Vikram Pandit at the company’s town hall meeting in New York Monday with employees.

 The company said total headcount is being reduced by 20 percent from its peak of 375,000 at the end of 2007; the company had already announced in October that it was eliminating about 22,000 jobs from those levels. The total workforce reductions include thousands of jobs that will be lost when Citigroup completes the sale of Citi Global Services and its German retail banking business.

The New York-based bank has posted four straight quarterly losses, including a loss of $2.8 billion during the third quarter. The company said that in addition to job cuts, it plans to lower expenses by about 20 percent, and that is has reduced its assets by more than 20 percent since the first quarter of the year.Citi shares fell 42 cents, or 4.4 percent, to $9.10 in morning trading. The company’s shares have been trading at 13-year lows.

Shortly before the town hall meeting in New York, Citigroup Chairman Win Bischoff said at a business forum in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, that it would be irresponsible for Citi and other companies not to look at staffing in the event of a prolonged economic downturn.

“What all of us have done — and perhaps injudiciously — we’ve added a lot of people over … this very benign period,” Bischoff said

.“If there is a reversion to the mean … those job losses will obviously fall particularly heavily on the financial sector,” he added. “Certainly they will fall particularly heavily on London and New York.

“A Citigroup spokesman said that while certain regions and businesses might have higher concentrations of job cuts, they would generally be across the entire company and around the world.

In his comments to the Associated Press, Bischoff did not rule out the likelihood that Citi’s leaders would go without bonuses this year — a move that would effectively amount to a substantial pay cut for the company’s executives.“Watch this space,” he said when asked about lost bonuses.

On Sunday, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said seven top executives, including Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein, opted out of receiving cash or stock bonuses for 2008 amid the ongoing credit crisis

.___AP Business Writers Adam Schreck in Dubai and Stephen Bernard in New York contributed to this report. By MADLEN READ, AP Business Writer Madlen Read, Ap Business Writer …

A woman has been charged with impaired driving after she was seen driving a Zamboni erratically at the Kingsville Arena, hitting the boards and falling asleep slumped over the wheel.

At around 9:40 p.m. Thursday, an off-duty Kingsville OPP sergeant who happened to be at the arena was approached by a number of citizens telling him “I think the Zamboni driver is drunk.”

The sergeant observed the 34-year-old driver operating the machine in an erratic manner, with speed fluctuating and missing large portions of the ice surface. On more than one occasion the Zamboni struck the boards and at one point the machine was stopped and the woman was slumped over the steering wheel. The sergeant contacted Kingsville OPP and requested assistance.

The woman managed to drive the Zamboni off the ice and she was arrested for impaired operation of a motor vehicle. During the arrest, the woman was not co-operating with the officers, who discovered she had a mickey of vodka.

She was released on a promise to appear in court in Windsor on Dec. 2 on charges of impaired operation of a motor vehicle, driving with more than 80 milligrams of alcohol.

Scientists around the world were elated with the images released on Thursday that are believed to be the first pictures of planets orbiting stars other than the sun. 

“The achievement, the result of years of effort on improved observational techniques and better data analysis, presages more such discoveries, the experts said, and will open the door to new investigations and discoveries of what planets are and how they came to be formed.”
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As gasoline prices continue to fall around the country the American public are using the ‘extra’ money that they aren’t putting into their gas tank to pay off their debt.  In some places the price has fallen below $1.50! 

“When gasoline topped $4 a gallon this summer, Celeste Vazquez of Cleveland started working 10 hours of overtime every week to make ends meet. But lately, with prices falling below $2 a gallon at many stations here, she has been able to cut her hours.”

“Lower gasoline prices have followed a rapid drop in the price of oil, to less than $59 a barrel on Thursday, from more than $145 a barrel in July. The pace of the recent drop in fuel prices is “absolutely unprecedented,” said Tom Kloza, publisher and chief analyst for the Oil Price Information Service.”
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A few years back it was a larger gathering.  This year there will be only 21 Republican Governors in our country.  They were gathering in Miami to mull over what happened and how to deal with the new situation.  Only 16 of the 21 actually made the trip.  It is a gloomy group to say the least.

“The Republican Party is ill situated to serve a changing America, they said. Members make excuses for corruption. The Bush administration and congressional leaders are fiscally irresponsible and have ceded the tax issue — of all issues — to the Democrats. Large swaths of the country are off limits to GOP candidates. Republicans have lost the technology advantage, and if they were part of a corporation, “heads would roll.” It’s going to be worse in 2010.”
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Political campaigns cost money, lots of money.  Barack Obama and John McCain spent millions.  In one town in Grafton County, New Hampshire Vanessa Sievers, a Dartmouth College junior spent far less.  She actually spent $51 dollars.

“Ms. Sievers’s big investment in the campaign was a $51 advertisement on Facebook, which she paid for with her own money.”

“The current county treasurer, Carol Elliott, 68, called Ms. Sievers, 20, a “teenybopper” in an interview with a local newspaper, The Valley News, and said she had won only because “brainwashed college kids” had voted for the Democratic ticket.”

“Ms. Sievers beat Ms. Elliott by 586 votes out of about 42,000 cast, and won big in Hanover, home to Dartmouth, and Plymouth, home to both Ms. Elliott and Plymouth State University.”
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If you pay attention to what impact the Obama election win has on the rest of the world, you should be watching Europe. 

“Race had long been one reason that Europeans, harking back to the days when famous American blacks like Josephine Baker and James Baldwin found solace in France, looked down on the United States, even as Europe developed postcolonial racial problems of its own.”

““They always said, ‘You think race relations are bad here in France, check out the U.S.,’ ” said Mohamed Hamidi, former editor of the Bondy Blog, founded after the 2005 riots in the heavily immigrant suburbs of Paris.”

““But that argument can no longer stand,” he said.”
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The financial crisis has eased just a wee bit, but the American consumer has lost a lot of confidence in our economy and it’s not bouncing back. 

“The panic on Wall Street has eased in the last few weeks, and banks have become somewhat more willing to make loans. But in those same few weeks, American households appear to have fallen into their own defensive crouch.”

“Suddenly, our consumer society is doing a lot less consuming. The numbers are pretty incredible. Sales of new vehicles have dropped 32 percent in the third quarter. Consumer spending appears likely to fall next year for the first time since 1980 and perhaps by the largest amount since 1942.”
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Veteran’s Day is just past and so we go blithely on with hardly a second thought.  That’s not how all veterans live.  Some modern day veterans need us to think about them and their families every day. 

“Tracy Keil met her husband, Matt, in August 2005 between his first and second tours of duty in Iraq. They married in January 2007. Six weeks later, Staff Sergeant Keil was shot in the neck while on patrol in Ramadi, Iraq, and rendered a quadriplegic.”

“Mrs. Keil has joined a growing group of veterans’ families who are asking to be compensated in place of a caregiver. She sees it not only as a battle about income but also about dignity and respect.”
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