The price of fuel now makes up 35 percent of airline costs compared with 13 percent a decade ago. Capital and Crisis editor Chris Mayer says if oil prices stay where they are and nothing else changes, the airline industry will lose about $6 billion this year, compared with a profit of $5.6 billion last year.

The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), chaired by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), after a 6 month probe, has released a report which says that Swiss banking giant UBS AG and Lichtenstein based LGT Bank have aided and abetted wealthy Americans evade taxes, cover up ownership of accounts and hide assets.

The Swiss Federal Banking Commission (SFBC) wants UBS and Credit Suisse to raise an additional $68.3 billion in capital (70 billion Swiss francs - 40 for UBS, and 30 for Credit Suisse) to avoid problems due to the banks' subprime exposure, expected write-downs and losses.

The Department of Justice is asking the Court to allow the IRS to issue a summons to UBS AG demanding the names of wealthy U.S. clients who used the Swiss bank to keep 'undeclared accounts' in order to evade U.S. taxes.

A network of sham companies and slush funds was set up to route bribes worth 1.3 billion Euros between 2000 to 2006 for telecom projects in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Greece. The first trial starts on Monday, with 58 counts of breach of trust against Reinhard Siekaczek, a manager at Siemens' ICN fixed-line communications unit in Munich until 2004.

A profit in Detroit's auto industry, had it been an animal, would by now have been enrolled into the EPA's endangered species protection program. So its only natural that the Ford Motor Co's quarterly $100 million profit raises more than a few questions about the long term prospects for, and direction of, Detroit in general and Ford in particular.

Todd Sullivan of Value Plays believe that Berkshire Hathaway is "fairly valued" at todays market price. The last time, Todd feels, that Berkshire represented "value" was exactly 8 years ago in March 2000 at the height of the dot.com bubble. Since then its share price has risen 256% even after the current drop.

According to Buffett

More than 21,000 people working for KBR in Iraq - including about 10,500 Americans - are listed as employees of two companies that exist in a computer file on the fourth floor of a building on a palm-studded boulevard in the Caribbean.

It is fascinating to see how Leucadia is boosting its stake in Americredit. One just has to conclude that Leucadia believes that some of the stocks impacted by the credit sector issues are now beaten down enough to start preying on them