Derivatives Market Growth Accelerates to 18% - $707.6 trillion!

By Masaki Kondo
Nov. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Growth in derivatives markets accelerated in the first half of this year, a report from the Bank of International Settlements showed today.
Notional amounts outstanding of over-the-counter derivatives climbed 18 percent to $707.6 trillion by the end of June, compared with the six months ended December 2010, when they increased 3 percent, the bank said in the report.
Interest-rate swaps jumped 21 percent to $441.6 trillion in the first half, accounting for 62 percent of the total amount, the report showed. Credit-default swaps rose 8 percent to $32.4 trillion, the BIS said.
--Editors: Jonathan Annells, Naoto Hosoda

Judge strikes down CITI Group / SEC deal

By LARRY NEUMEISTER

Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) - A judge on Monday used unusually harsh language to strike down a $285 million settlement between Citigroup and the Securities and Exchange Commission over toxic mortgage securities, saying he couldn't tell whether the deal was fair and criticizing regulators for shielding the public from details of the firm's wrongdoing.

U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff said the public has a right to know what happens

Recession fears prompt Britons to ramp up savings

Britons are suffering the biggest squeeze on their incomes
 in three decades. Photograph: itanistock / Alamy/Alam

The Office of National Stastics said the households saving ratio rose to 7.4% in the second quarter, up from 5.9% in the first three months of this year.

British households ramped up their savings to their highest in almost a year between April and June, official data showed on Tuesday, in a sign that a darkening economic outlook may be causing consumers to retrench.

A.D. 2041: End of White America?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

John Hope Franklin, the famed black historian at Duke University, once told the incoming freshmen, “The new America in the 21st century will be primarily non-white, a place George Washington would not recognize.”

In his June 1998 commencement address at Portland State, President Clinton affirmed it: “In a little more than 50 years, there will be no majority race in the United States.” The graduates cheered.

The Census Bureau has now fixed at 2041 the year when whites become a minority in a country where the Founding Fathers had restricted citizenship to “free white persons” of “good moral character.”

John Malone Now Biggest U.S. Land Owner

By Robert Frank

Ted Turner has lost his crown.

According to the newly released 2011 Land Report 100, which ranks the top land barons, John Malone is now America’s biggest individual landowner. The 70-year-old cable pioneer and chairman of Liberty Media now owns 2.2 million acres, after purchasing more than 1 million acres of timberland in Maine and New Hampshire earlier this year.

Al Gore: U.S. Democracy ‘Hacked’ by Anti-Warming Special Interests

By Patrick Goodenough

September 30, 2011

(CNSNews.com) – Democracy in the U.S. is being undermined by Congress appeasing special interest groups in return for campaign funding rather than tackling climate change, former vice president and global warming campaigner Al Gore has told a conference in Scotland.

Warren Buffett clarifies positionon taxing the rich

by Wayne Freedman

WOODSIDE, Calif. (KGO) -- President Obama may have thought he had an ally in billionaire Warren Buffet, who recently admitted to paying only $6,000 in federal taxes, which is a lower rate than his secretary. Buffett had said the rich should pay their fair share, but he clarified his statement on Friday.

"It's not to have the rich pay more taxes, but to have the ultra rich who have low tax rates pay more taxes," Buffett said.