Billionaire investor George Soros said yesterday (Monday) that the U.S. recovery would be a slow one because of all the “basically bankrupt” financial companies impeding it.

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Congress agreed Friday that the financial system – not the American taxpayer – should bear the costs of bank bailouts. Sheila Bair, head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), wants the banks to ante up $45 billion – three years’ worth of deposit-insurance premiums – to bail out the fund that insures bank deposits.

When it comes to bank stocks, we all know that there were a number of Money Morning readers shrewd enough to buy Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) shares when the foundering giant’s stock price was below $1 a share.

If you’re one of those investors, good for you: With Citi’s shares now trading at nearly $4.70 a share,

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Remember the good 'ole times from back in the summer of 2006?  Russia was about to host the G8 Summit, Anna Politkovskaya and Stanislav Markelov were still alive and working hard, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky had only been in the gulag 2.5 years and undergone only one show trial.  Earlier that spring, the Council on Foreign Relations also published quite a critical paper entitled "Russia's Wrong Direction" which ruffled some feathers, but would later of course turn out to be quite prescient.The report was chaired by former Congressman Jack Kemp, who expressed optimism that the G8 Summit to be held in St. Petersburg that summer could be a useful forum to get things back on track and enlist Russia's help on ...

I have been much more positive about the Japanese economy than most other analysts in recent months, largely because I believed that many of the problems from the Japanese recession of 1990-2003 were finally in the country’s rearview mirror. In particular, I believed that the Japanese budget deficit – which, by 2003, had become quite acute – was well on the way to being solved through public spending restraint. That, in turn, would allow Japan to pay down its excessive public debt, giving its private sector room to expand. But the surprise resignation of Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda on Monday suggests I may have been wrong about the country’s near-term prospects. Japan Gives Investors a Bubble Bath The Japanese stock market and real estate bubble of the 1980s is now the stuff of stock-market legend, for it sent that country into ...

The Nikkei has lost 3.5% in the first two trading sessions this September — more than erasing the month-end window dressing — and now sits at a five-month low. Initially not phasing stocks was the announced resignation of PM Fukuda, with commentary inside and out of Japan noting the rather muted reaction by investors and lack of selling. However, the yawner of a morning session turned into a bout of indigestion in the afternoon, with stocks falling heavily and the Nikkei 225 briefly dropping below 12,500. So, Japan is leaderless again. Fukuda, who is said to have expressed a goal of topping predecessor Abe’s fifty weeks in office, if by even a day, fell a couple of weeks short. Poll-favorite Taro Aso would likely not last a year as successor. The popular former PM Junichiro Koizumi is highly unlikely to ...