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Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers are the latest corporate casualties in the financial crisis caused by abusive loans from reckless lenders. Even the former chair of the Mortgage Bankers Association now concedes that brokers, lenders and investors "forgot about [their] customers" because "making money and our commission checks were more important." In short, these loans never should have been made. The failure of Lehman and forced sale of Merrill underscore the need for stronger regulation of the mortgage market to prevent this from recurring, and, if we want to fix the economy, the need to modify the millions of bad loans that created this mess.

Developing Asian economies will revert to a more moderate growth outlook of 7.5% this year and 7.2% next year after posting its fastest growth of 9% in nearly two decades in 2007, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) says in a new major report.

Fitch Ratings has completed an initial review of the investment exposure to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac held by U.S. life and property/casualty (P/C) insurers. Based on that review, Fitch believes that the impact on the insurance companies' ratings will be limited.

While still an unfamiliar term to most, travelers will soon face the effects of the airline industry's latest way of trying to make money: capacity cuts. This is when an airline cuts the number of daily flights on a route or replaces a big plane with a smaller one, thereby reducing the number of available seats, which then affects travelers and their wallets in a myriad of different ways.

Developing Asian countries must implement structural reforms that support the agricultural sector or else face another dramatic rise in food prices, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) warns in a new major report.

Children under twelve should no longer have their fingerprints included on passports issued in the European Union, the EP Civil Liberties Committee agreed in a co-decision report adopted on Monday. But they should have their own passports, containing data on their parents, so as to combat trafficking in children, say MEPs.

So what can be said about the Lehman Brothers failure and the other dramatic events of the weekend? Well, the system worked, as it was supposed to, at last. When the US Government removed itself as buyer of last resort, no one in the financial world was prepared to extend a lifeline to Lehman, so it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection overnight for the parent.

The problems in the Australian housing market pale into insignificance beside the woes of credit markets in the wake of Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, but they do tell us something about the Australian economy.

A new economic study issued by Navigant Consulting, Inc., shows that more than 1.2 million employment opportunities, including 440,000 permanent jobs, and $232 billion in investment would be supported in the U.S. by the solar energy sector alone through 2016 if Congress extends the solar investment tax credit (ITC) for 8 years.

Seventy one percent of American employees are living paycheck to paycheck, according to results released from the 2008 "Getting Paid In America" survey.