“We come in every day at 3:30 a.m. and leave at 6 p.m. I’m not used to setting my alarm for 2:45 a.m., but these are extraordinary times.”

...

In the meantime, analysts say, a broader reconsideration of derivatives and the shadow banking system is also in order. “Not all innovation is good,” says Mr. Whalen of Institutional Risk Analytics. “If it is too complicated for most of us to understand in 10 to 15 minutes, then we probably shouldn’t be doing it.”

What Created This Monster?

Atlanta is just as hosed ...

The condominium market is about to get worse as many cities brace for a flood of new supply this year -- the result of construction started at the height of the housing boom.

More than 4,000 new units will be completed in both Atlanta and Phoenix by the end of the year. Developers in Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., are readying nearly 10,000 total new units in a market already struggling with canyons of unsold condos. San Diego, another hard-hit region, will add 2,500 units, according to estimates provided by Reis Inc., a New York-based real-estate-research firm.

The deluge means bad news for developers and potentially lower prices, including in cities such as Atlanta and Dallas that have avoided the worst of the housing bust. If defaults and foreclosures rise, lenders will feel the pain too.

Woes in Condo Market Build As New Supply Floods Cities

Who knew that selling so many copies of "Flipping for Dummies" would be their own undoing?

The credit crisis engulfing America’s banking system yesterday threatened the independence of Borders, the retailer of books and DVDs, which put itself up for sale and admitted that it had been forced to seek emergency funding.

Borders, which yesterday reported annual sales of $3.8 billion (£1.9 billion) for 2007, said that it had appointed JPMorgan Chase and Merrill Lynch, the Wall Street investment banks, to “explore strategic alternatives”, including a sale of the entire company or a break-up.

Credit crisis forces Borders into sale talks

We received many questions from the press and the public, several on this blog, about the information contained in a person’s passport file. This entry details exactly what information can be found in a passport file.

Your Passport File

Award-winning food writer Fuchsia Dunlop went to live in China as a student in 1994, and from the very beginning she vowed to eat everything she was offered, no matter how alien and bizarre it seemed. In this extraordinary memoir, Fuchsia recalls her evolving relationship with China and its food, from her first rapturous encounter with the delicious cuisine of Sichuan Province to brushes with corruption, environmental degradation, and greed. In the course of her fascinating journey, Fuchsia undergoes an apprenticeship at China's premier Sichuan cooking school, where she is the only foreign student in a class of nearly fifty young Chinese men; attempts, hilariously, to persuade Chinese people that "Western food" is neither "simple" nor "bland"; and samples a multitude of exotic ingredients, including sea cucumber, civet cat, scorpion, rabbit-heads, and the ovarian fat of the snow frog. But is it possible for a Westerner to become a true convert to the Chinese way of eating? In an encounter with a caterpillar in an Oxford kitchen, Fuchsia is forced to put this to the test.

From the vibrant markets of Sichuan to the bleached landscape of northern Gansu Province, from the desert oases of Xinjiang to the enchanting old city of Yangzhou, this unique and evocative account of Chinese culinary culture is set to become the most talked-about travel narrative of the year.

Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China

Shoppers are discovering an upside to the down economy. They are getting price breaks by reviving an age-old retail strategy: haggling.

A bargaining culture once confined largely to car showrooms and jewelry stores is taking root in major stores like Best Buy, Circuit City and Home Depot, as well as mom-and-pop operations.

Even at Megastores, Hagglers Find No Price Is Set in Stone

Change Congress is a movement to build support for basic reform in how our government functions. Using our tools, both candidates and citizens can pledge their support for basic changes to reduce the distorting influence of money in Washington. Our community will link candidates committed to a reform with volunteers and contributors who support it.

Change Congress

During the war in Iraq, young Army and Marine captains have become American viceroys, officers with large sectors to run and near-autonomy to do it. In military parlance, they are the “ground-owners.” In practice, they are power brokers.

Many in the military believe that these captains are the linchpins in the American strategy for success in Iraq, but as the war continues into its sixth year the military has been losing them in large numbers — at a time when it says it needs thousands more.

Most of these captains have extensive combat experience and are regarded as the military’s future leaders. They’re exactly the men the military most wants. But corporate America wants them too. And the hardships of repeated tours are taking their toll, tilting them back toward civilian life and possibly complicating the future course of the war.

From the archive:

The Army will need this lieutenant 20 years from now when he could be a colonel, or 30 years from now when he could have four stars on his collar. But I doubt he will be in uniform long enough to make captain.

It will always suck to work for large organizations, and the larger the organization, the more it will suck.

Sovereigns of All They’re Assigned, Captains Have Many Missions to Oversee

What is the measure of a good executive? The ability to inspire those who follow, certainly. A dedication to speaking the truth, and particularly not misleading those who entrust leadership to him. The ability to listen and to absorb information critically. Raw intelligence. Good judgment. Being a good judge of others, and being able to pick the right advisors. Being possessed of a moral anchor. All of that would figure in the common measure of leadership. But no leader will operate without making mistakes. So another critical measure of a good leader is the ability to recognize mistakes and take remedial steps to correct them; moreover, to do this in a timely way.

Edmund Burke and the War in Iraq

BEGINNING IN 1997, an important change swept over cotton farms in northern China. By adopting new farming techniques, growers found they could spray far less insecticide over their fields. Within four years they had reduced their annual use of the poisonous chemicals by 156 million pounds - almost as much as is used in the entire state of California each year. Cotton yields in the region climbed, and production costs fell. Strikingly, the number of insecticide-related illnesses among farmers in the region dropped to a quarter of their previous level.

This story, which has been repeated around the world, is precisely the kind of triumph over chemicals that organic-farming advocates wish for.

But the hero in this story isn't organic farming. It is genetic engineering.

The new organic