The Voices

washingtonpost.com — Corporate America is playing us like chumps. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and the folks he's assembled to try to get us out of the economic tempest are being played like chumps.

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washingtonpost.com — Amid the excitement of the election and the urgency of the economic crisis, it has been easy to lose sight of the terrorism-related "issues" that defined George W. Bush's presidency and robbed America of so much honor, stature and goodwill.

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truthdig.com — It is going to be a Wal-Mart Christmas. It is definitely not going to be a General Motors Christmas, because we long ago stopped being a General Motors country. What were we like then?

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truthdig.com — The right is divided into ideological conservatives and dispositional conservatives. The ideological conservatives hold to a faith linking small government and more tax-cutting to extreme social conservatism. They talk obsessively about returning to the glory days of Ronald Reagan and sometimes drop Sarah Palin’s name as a talisman. The dispositional conservatives want to check government’s influence on the economy but not eliminate it. They want solutions that are as unobtrusive as possible, but they do want solutions. The ideological conservatives will hold sway for a while, but the dispositional conservatives will triumph eventually. For the right, there is no alternative.

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ft.com — For the best part of three decades, policymakers in the developed world followed Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in seeking to roll back the frontiers of the state. The triple mantra of privatization, liberalization and deregulation held sway. Yet the problems that began in credit markets a year ago now cast a cloud over the strong market orientation of western policy. After the collapse of banks such as Bear Stearns, and against the background of mounting speculation about the viability of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Anglo-American approach to capitalism appears badly flawed.

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salon.com — With all trends running against them, Republicans' only hope is to reinvent themselves as pragmatists. That, or nominate Sarah Palin and go out in a blaze of glory.

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cnn.com — The Republican Party has become a party bereft of ideas or trapped by the wrong ones. The Reagan-Thatcher revolution of low taxes, deregulation and tight money isn't relevant to the problems of under-regulated financial products, huge deficits and a deepening recession. Add to that the Republican Party's social program is out of tune with an increasingly young, diverse and tolerant electorate.

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mayfield.co.nz — Citigroup CEO Chuck Prince resigned with a reported payoff package worth $US 38 million after the company was forced to write down billions of dollars of mortgage backed assets accumulated under his directorship. Latest reports put the figure at a staggering $US 64 Billion.

It is unlikely those laid off will receive similar severance deals.

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