Obama rating high, but poll finds worries on economy

A national poll indicates that nearly two out of three Americans approve of the job President Obama’s doing, but the survey suggests that people appear to be split on how he’s handling some aspects of the economy. Obama’s job approval rating stands at 64 percent in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp

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AIG names recipients of its bailout money

Troubled insurance giant AIG, already under fire for intending to pay out $165 million in bonuses and compensation, succumbed Sunday to congressional pressure, identifying banks that received chunks of the company’s billions in federal bailout funds last year. AIG, a recipient of at least $170 billion in federal bailout money , got an $85 billion loan from the Federal Reserve. The list released Sunday of “counterparties” that benefited from the bailout is topped by European banks Societe Generale and Deutsche Bank, which received $4.1 billion and $2.6 billion, respectively.

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Stewart seen as winner in showdown with Cramer

By most accounts, the showdown was pretty brutal. Many watching Thursday night’s “Daily Show” on Comedy Central felt that comedian-turned-media-critic Jon Stewart held bombastic financial guru and CNBC “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer’s feet to the fire.

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Idaho man charged again for knowingly spreading HIV

The first person ever convicted in Idaho of knowingly spreading the HIV virus is facing new charges for the same offense, authorities said Thursday. Stewart, whose acerbic brand of satire centers largely on the political news of the day, has held Cramer’s frenetic, nearly cartoonish, stock-advice show, “Mad Money,” and other CNBC programming up as examples of an anything-goes attitude that contributed to the financial collapse. “I understand you want to make finance entertaining, but it’s not a [expletive] game,” Stewart said during the recorded interview, segments of which aired on Thursday night

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Ponzi Schemes

The $50 billion Ponzi scheme allegedly masterminded by former Nasdaq chairman Bernard Madoff punctuated a miserable year for Wall Street in the worst possible way: by underlining, yet again, that savvy market-makers can harness arcane financial instruments as weapons of mass destruction. Left in Madoff’s wake are bankrupt investors, mortified regulators and a raft of unnoticed red flags.

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Germany’s Solution to Big Auto’s Woes: Scrap That Clunker!

Amid the gruesome headlines generated by the world’s auto industry these days, it almost read like a typo: new car registrations in Germany rose 21% year-on-year in February, the country’s Association of the Automotive Industry announced March 3. This, though, was no error. The 278,000 cars put on the road, crowed Matthias Wissmann, VDA’s president, amounted to “the highest level of sales in the month of February for ten years.” Why the splurge German drivers have latched onto a juicy new deal

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