Told In 2006 That
Banks Were In Trouble
Bush Did What He Does Best
Ignored It
Officials Vow to Act Amid Forecasts of Long Recession
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
Published: December 1, 2008
WASHINGTON – The United States economy officially sank into a recession last December, which means that the downturn is already longer than the average for all recessions since World War II, according to the committee of economists responsible for dating the nation’s business cycles.In declaring that the economy has been in a downturn for almost 12 months, the National Bureau of Economic Research confirmed what many Americans had already been feeling in their bones.But private forecasters warned that this downturn was likely to set a new postwar record for length and likely to be more painful than any recession since 1980 and 1981.
Rice urges Pakistan to cooperate fully with investigation
US secretary of state adds to global pressure on Islamabad as India claims to have evidence of link to deadly attacks
Julian Borger and Vikram Dodd in Mumbai
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday December 2 2008 00.01 GMT
Condoleezza Rice yesterday called on full Pakistani cooperation with the investigation into the Mumbai attacks, saying they represented a “critical moment” in the new civilian government’s efforts to wrest control of Pakistan’s security services.The outgoing US secretary of state said she did not want to “jump to conclusions”, but made it clear during a visit to London yesterday that she expected Islamabad would have to answer for the attacks which left nearly 200 people dead last week.
Rice, who is due to arrive in India tomorrow, urged its government to focus on the investigation of the attacks, and to avoid actions that might have “unintended consequences”, such as troop manoeuvres.
USA
A Pragmatic Pair Chosen to Confront Terrorism Threat
By Carrie Johnson and Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, December 2, 2008; Page A11
In nominating former federal prosecutors to lead the departments of Justice and Homeland Security, President-elect Barack Obama yesterday selected two Democrats with sterling law-and-order credentials but less experience in detecting threats and gathering intelligence in the age of international terrorism.Eric H. Holder Jr., the candidate to lead the Justice Department, served as the law enforcement agency’s second in command during the waning years of the Clinton administration, overseeing pursuits of violent crime, drug cartels and public corruption offenses. Janet Napolitano, who will run the sprawling Homeland Security bureaucracy, has served since 2003 as governor of Arizona, a border state at the forefront of the nation’s immigration debate.