If you want to know whether the banking crisis is in the third inning or the ninth, consider Corus Bankshares. The Chicago regional bank has made just over $4 billion in commercial real estate loans. The recently completed government bank stress tests assumed that as many as 12% of all such loans could go bad in the next two years
Tag Archives: country
Egyptian tycoon faces death over singer’s slaying
Obama’s other woman
Barack Obama is a married man but there’s another woman with a hold on him that his wife can never match: she runs the House. She is Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives, the most powerful woman in Washington and lately, a target for Republicans. Pelosi is easy to spot in any crowd of U.S.
Sri Lanka street party celebrates end of civil war
The deafening roar of drums and horns rose as thousands of people took to the streets in Sri Lanka Friday for a victory parade marking the end of the decades-long civil war. Enthusiastic revelers danced in the street, carried yellow and red flags and some even carried hand-crafted puppets depicting the dead body of the leader of the rebel Tamil Tigers. Watch the victory parade » Sri Lanka’s government declared victory Tuesday in the country’s 25-year civil war against the Tamil Tiger rebels
Russia and Ukraine Battle Over Their Shared History
Fresh from their conflict over gas in January, Ukraine and Russia are again in the midst of a heated battle this time about the countries’ shared Soviet past. As Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko this week lamented that Ukraine had become “a hostage in the fight between two totalitarian regimes fascist and communist” and called for Soviet-era symbols around the country to be torn down, his Russian counterpart Dmitri Medvedev ordered the creation of a presidential commission “to counter attempts to harm Russian interests by falsifying history.” These latest salvoes represent an intensification of the ongoing war of words between the two countries over their closely linked histories.
Manhunt for accidental millionaires focuses on Hong Kong
Police hunting for a New Zealand couple who allegedly fled the country after a bank mistakenly paid them $NZ10 million ($6 million) believe they traveled to Hong Kong. New Zealand authorities have sought help from Interpol in locating the couple who disappeared May 7, two days after an employee error at Westpac bank paid them 100 times the amount they asked for
Contagious cancer threatens future of devils
Hisham Talaat Moustafa: Egypt’s Condemned Tycoon
Greens Celebrate Cap-And-Trade Victory Cautiously
Environmentalists savored a long-awaited victory on Thursday when the carbon cap-and-trade bill fashioned by Democratic Representatives Henry Waxman and Edward Markey passed out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, putting it on the road to becoming a law. Supporters had to withstand over 400 amendments filed by Republicans during the markup of the bill this week, but it’s now possible the U.S. could see climate legislation go into effect by the end of the year
In Lebanon’s Election, a More Pragmatic Hizballah
The young men in gold-collared gowns collecting their certificates as beaming parents looked on could have been at any graduation ceremony in the U.S., except perhaps for the fact that the commencement speaker appeared via a video link from an undisclosed location, so as to avoid assassination. That, and the fact that the graduates’ job prospects are probably far better than those of their Western peers right now, by virtue of the fact that most are trained guerrilla fighters