News from around the web: 2009-09-03

"The World Trade Organization is expected to rule Friday that European governments illegally subsidized Airbus aircraft, in the first significant ruling in a long-running trans-Atlantic trade dispute, according to trade officials, lawyers and executives from both sides."

President Barack Obama will address a joint session of Congress next Wednesday, pressing lawmakers to accept new formulas for a politically charged overhaul of the health-care system.

Report reveals SEC mishandled five separate inquiries into the biggest Ponzi scheme in Wall Street history

A monthly gauge of U.S. online labor demand soared in August at its fastest pace in four years, indicating steadier footing for nationwide labor demand, a private research group said on Thursday. Monster Worldwide Inc , an online careers and recruiting firm, said its employment index surged to 121 in August, up 6 percent from 114 in July. It was the biggest monthly increase the index has seen since August 2005.

Administration officials hope to reach a broad, international consensus on the issue and lay the groundwork for the rapid introduction of new capital guidelines after the Group of 20 summit meeting in Pittsburgh late this month.

The Obama administration has proposed sweeping changes to our financial regulatory system. I am an active supporter of the key pillars of reform… But some are advocating even more drastic changes, like the creation of a single regulator for all banks (and bank holding companies)…a single regulator is not the solution.

The World Trade Organization has ruled that Brazil can set around $295 million in annual sanctions against American goods as a result of the United States’ failure to eliminate illegal subsidies to American cotton growers.

Whether you’re moving, short on cash, or running out of storage space, you’ve got plenty of reasons to ditch your physical media. Hard drives are cheap; here are our recommended methods of saving, selling, and trading your CDs, DVDs, and video games.

"Doing business in China is getting harder, not easier, according to European businesses, as they laid out almost 600 pages of complaints in a new report."

Bailouts for CRE could be on the way: "in what a Prudential Real Estate Investors report described as “a move of near-perfect symbolism,” the conference sponsor, the Commercial Mortgage Securities Association, recently announced that next year’s event would be relocated from South Beach to Washington, where the industry has been lobbying strenuously for federal assistance."

as banks move increasingly more assets to the the mark-to-model Level 3 category, so as to hide the true sad state of their asset exposure, entire security classes that reference the specific balance sheet (think stocks) will likely end up becoming increasingly volatile

So says Iberian Equities AV in their retort to a now infamous piece of research by Variant….Iberian still believes things will get worse for Spain’s banks before they get better.

Finance ministers are now simply papering over cracks having squandered the opportunity to make real changes to the way the world economy works, argues Edmund Conway.

If HSBC AI is "the biggest loser" then there has to be some winners too. George Soros’ hedge fund firm, JP Morgan Chase, Paulson & Co. and Bridgewater have emerged from the recession as the biggest winners according to rankings by AR.

Pfizer Inc agreed on Wednesday to plead guilty to a U.S. criminal charge relating to promotion of its now-withdrawn Bextra pain medicine and will pay a record $2.3 billion to settle allegations it improperly marketed 13 medicines.

"Costolo, who sold Feedburner to Google for $100 million in 2007, left Google in July. We’d heard he was looking to start a new company, but obviously Twitter swooped in and grabbed him."

"Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has hired fewer law clerks than usual, generating speculation that the leader of the court’s liberals will retire next year."