After former Bear Stearns Cos. trader Guy Irace lost his job on the bond desk a year ago, he moved back to Long Island to teach high school math and dropped 40 pounds. Jack Yang’s deli in Manhattan cut three employees. Cavonberry’s, Yang’s 46th Street shop near the headquarters of the New York firm taken over by JPMorgan Chase & Co., once bustled with finance workers jostling to buy a barbeque chicken chopped salad and bottled...

As a way of getting your husband’s attention, it is difficult to better: a couple of days ago Veronica Lario wrote an email to a national news agency detailing exactly what she thought of her spouse’s latest antics, and pointedly dissociating herself from them. As she is married to Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, that country’s press has since talked of little else. Lario was reacting to reports that he was...

“Gold Isn’t Going To $2,000 An Ounce” is both the headline and the announcement of Jeff Clark at CaseyResearch.com, a conclusion he apparently reached after he “decided to take a fresh look at calculations that could be used to appraise gold’s upside potential.” Confirming rumors that I am “always disagreeable,” I am absolutely sure that gold will soar in price, as in To The Freaking Moon (TTFM), as a result of the fiscal...

Nothing like peeling a Band-Aid off slowly… The Treasury concluded its painstaking six-week stress tests late yesterday and announced (gasp) the 19 American banks under stress need to raise $75 billion if they plan to stay in business. Ten of the 19 banks under TARP “protection” will be REQUIRED by the U.S. government to raise capital. They include: Bank of America, Citi, PNC, Fifth Third, GMAC, Wells Fargo and others. Notably absent...