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...these toxic assets takes the discussion back around to what the government gets in return for such colossal aid. The largest American banks had market capitalizations of as much as $300 billion each two years ago. The purchase of bad assets when stock values were at those levels would have kept shareholder dilution at a reasonable level. The government would have gotten shares for taking the junk off bank books and putting it into its new "bad bank" agency...
...Even that's not enough to excite investors. On the first trading day of 2009, buyers lifted the Nikkei to above the 9000 level for the first time in two months. The boost, however, was short-lived, and the Nikkei continued to drop, after losing 42% in 2008. Now hovering just above 8200, the index is about one-fifth of what it was in 1989 at the peak of Japan's stock-market bubble. (See pictures of scared traders...
...Nikkei hit rock bottom on Oct. 27 at 7162, and some of the more bullish market analysts say it won't see that level again. But as corporate profitability continues to plummet and the global economy worsens, stock-market analysts are waiting for a catalyst. Tsuyoshi Nomaguchi, strategist at Daiwa Securities in Tokyo, says Japan's stocks are not comparatively cheap but are in the "attractive zone," and once recovery measures in the U.S. take effect in the middle of 2009, Japan's stock prices will rise on anticipation of economic growth. "Japan is falling behind [other nations] in implementing...
...changes in criminal law over the past decades to explain how we achieved this unprecedented rate. Drug crimes account for much of the increase in prison populations. In 12 years, the prison population with drug convictions leapt from 6% in 1979 to 25% in 1991 at the state level and from 25% to 56% at the federal level and these numbers continue to grow. In addition, the courts have become increasing punitive. Arrest rates increased, and defendants are convicted at higher rates for longer sentences. Mass incarceration expanded the net of criminality to include drug offenses and public order offending...
...long way from Washington's isolationist farewell to Bush's ideal of universal liberty ushered in by American leadership and intervention. Someone could write a rich history of the world with those two brief speeches as bookends. On a personal level, it's a long way from the chesty, swaggering George W. Bush of bygone years to the resigned and pensive man in the East Room, who repeatedly acknowledged the large number of people who disagree with his views. "You may not agree with some tough decisions I have made," he said. "But I hope you can agree that...