Wash. Post: Korean Blogger Predicted Downturn

Prescient Young Blogger Did What S. Korea Couldn't -- Foresee Global Financial Crisis
(Washington Post, 1/24)

He had been a so-so student who studied communications at a so-so junior college in a backwater town south of Seoul. Thirty-one years old and single, he spent much of his time alone in his room. As his father noted, "He can't even get a job."

But he knew a global economic smack-down when he saw one.

Minerva saw it coming last fall, far earlier and with far more acuity than the South Korean government, which his blog has humiliated and angered.

Besides getting mad, the government got even. In a move widely perceived by the public as a chilling echo of the 1970s, when a military dictatorship ruled South Korea, the government detained Park this month, invoking a seldom-used telecommunications law that charges him with harming the public by spreading "false rumors."

Washington Post: Downturn Accelerates

Downturn Accelerates As It Circles The Globe: Economies Worse Off Than Predicted Just Weeks Ago
(Washington Post, 1/24)

The world economy is deteriorating more quickly than leading economists predicted only weeks ago, with Britain yesterday becoming the latest nation to surprise analysts with the depth of its economic pain.

Washington Post: War on Terror Ends

Bush's 'War' On Terror Comes to a Sudden End
(Washington Post, 1/23)

President Obama yesterday eliminated the most controversial tools employed by his predecessor against terrorism suspects. With the stroke of his pen, he effectively declared an end to the "war on terror," as President George W. Bush had defined it, signaling to the world that the reach of the U.S. government in battling its enemies will not be limitless.

Washington Post: Tom Toles Cartoons

Here's a great archive of political cartoons from Tom Toles of the Washington Post.

Tom Toles Cartoons

Washington Post: Ponzi - Name Stands Alone

One Name Stands Alone in The Grand Scheme of It All (Washington Post, 12/20)

Sorry, Mr. Madoff. Despite your prodigious alleged accomplishments -- $50 billion of investors' money, vaporized! -- you're no Charles Ponzi.

The feds, in their complaint, allege that you, Bernard L. Madoff, admitted to colleagues that you've "been conducting a Ponzi-scheme" through your investment advice business. Some Wall Street experts, struggling to convey the scope, say it's perhaps "the biggest Ponzi scheme in history."

Wow! And there have been so many.

But for all your Palm Beach Country Club connections and your sterling Wall Street résumé, you're still just walking in the shadow of the great Charles Ponzi.