Comments on: Wednesday Night #1342

By: Diana Thébaud Nicholson

Diana Thébaud Nicholson — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 01:59:42 +0000

29 November 2007
Sarkozy vows to boost confidence
By Christian Fraser BBC News, Paris
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has promised to rebuild public confidence following weeks of strikes and an outbreak of riots in the Paris suburbs.
French people are worried about the cost of living, higher petrol, housing and food prices.They have less money in their pockets, things in the shops cost more, their lives are disrupted by strikes - and once again there have been riots in the suburbs.
In a live televised interview, the president said France would never solve its problems by shying away from the tough reforms.
Mr Sarkozy is under growing pressure to rejuvenate a flagging economy.
Mr Sarkozy pledged his government would breathe new life into the most deprived suburbs … But critics say there is very little room in the government’s budget for any unplanned spending, and consumer confidence - crucial to the wider health of the economy - shows no sign of improvement.

By: Diana Thébaud Nicholson

Diana Thébaud Nicholson — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 21:10:26 +0000

21 Nov 2007
Accommodation road show rolls into Montreal
Loudly picketed by activists demanding jobs for immigrants, the Bouchard-Taylor commission went ahead with its first Montreal open-mike night yesterday in a highly symbolic place.
The site was a new multi-ethnic library in the Côte des Neiges-Notre Dame de Grâce borough, where nearly half of all residents are foreign-born and where Jews, Muslims, Hindus and others outnumber Roman Catholics.
But the subject on the lips of many of the 200 participants at the raucous, two-hour meeting wasn’t reasonable accommodations for religions. It was the bread-and-butter issue of language and employment.

By: Diana Thébaud Nicholson

Diana Thébaud Nicholson — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 17:01:35 +0000

Is this good business or greed or simply obscene? David Mitchell OWN
Nov. 19 (Bloomberg) — Shareholders in the securities industry are having their worst year since 2002, losing $74 billion of their equity. That won’t prevent Wall Street from paying record bonuses, totaling almost $38 billion.
That money, split among about 186,000 workers at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch & Co., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Bear Stearns Cos., equates to an average of $201,500 per person, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.…