President Barack Obama’s much-anticipated plan to deal with the U.S. housing crisis aims to help as many as 9 million families avoid foreclosure on their homes, one of the root causes of the global financial meltdown.

The Obama plan will involve government subsidies to mortgage servicers and lenders to encourage them to lower payments for borrowers in distress.

The aim is to bring mortgage payments to a more affordable range of around 31 percent of borrowers’ incomes.

At the end of last year, just over 9 percent of all home loans in the United States were in arrears or already in foreclosure, the Mortgage Bankers Association has said.

A total of 8.1 million U.S. homes, or 16 percent of all households with mortgages, could fall into foreclosure by 2012, according to a report by Credit Suisse.

Is Obama’s rescue plan enough to curb the tide of soaring foreclosures? Share your thoughts.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner may be new to Washington but he is not new to the financial chaos that has leveled global markets in the past year. From his former perch atop the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the youthful Geithner has been involved in virtually all major efforts to restore stability to shaky financial markets. In his new role, he is now overseeing the latest effort to rescue banks laid low by their exposure to mortgage-related debt.

What’s your view? How has Geithner handled the early days of his new job?

There was a sudden frenzy in French media this week as the word broke that Citroen was about to relaunch the mythic DS car model – an elongated luxury car with air suspension that carried President Charles de Gaulle on his official trips.

Collectors of the DS, a play on ‘deesse’ which means Goddess in French, were eager to see what would come out.

The double-chevron brand, part of Europe’s second-biggest carmaker PSA Peugeot-Citroen, had already tried to latch on the DS romanticism with its C6 model which is also a long, stylish luxury car with a smooth ride.

Well, yes, it is certainly about affordability these days with car sales in a free fall due to the financial crisis and carmakers lining up to ask for government financial support after the Detroit Big Three were bailed out by the U.S. government.

There clearly seems to be an appetite in the market for ‘retro’ models such as the Fiat 500, BMW Mini or Volkswagen Beetle.

But whether this movement to go ‘back to the future’ will get the industry back in the black remains a big question, especially if the new generation of the model does not resemble the original.

Jean-Louis Bidan, an owner of two of the cars that were made in the period 1955 to 1975, said he had expected the new car to have the typical large headlights and the its particular angular rear.

But the concept car model revealed on Thursday evening just steps away from the Elysee presidential palace, while called DS Inside, did not really look like a DS.

It is much smaller, for instance, does not have a long nose and its front is more in line with the C4 Picasso and recent C5 limousines.

Vincent Besson, head of products and markets at the Citroen brand, told Reuters that the carmaker had not wanted to remake the DS car, but to release the DS ‘Spirit’

He said it was all about ‘affordable desirability’.
Well, yes, it is certainly about affordability these days with car sales in a free fall due to the financial crisis and carmakers lining up to ask for government financial support after the Detroit Big Three were bailed out by the U.S. government.

There clearly seems to be an appetite in the market for ‘retro’ models such as the Fiat 500, BMW Mini or Volkswagen Beetle.

But whether this movement to go ‘back to the future’ will get the industry back in the black remains a big question.

After all the media hype about a new DS, fans of the iconic car might be disappointed. The only resemblance with the illustrious DS is the name, wrote Denis Fainsilber, car industry journalist for French financial daily Les Echos. What do you think?

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has had surgery for pancreatic cancer, raising the possibility that President Barack Obama may have to pick a successor if she leaves the court for health reasons.

His pick would likely help shape the new president’s legacy – and could potentially reshape the Supreme Court. If he were to pick someone seen as even more liberal than Ginsburg, that would help moderate the conservatism introduced by President George W. Bush’s selections. A moderate would likely keep the balance of the current court, while a conservative pick is highly unlikely given Obama’s own political leanings.

If President Obama is in the position to nominate a candidate for the Supreme Court, who should he pick and why?

Tom Daschle doesn’t want to be a distraction. Nancy Killefer doesn’t want to be a distraction. Timothy Geithner has already been a distraction.

What these three high-profile nominees to President Obama’s White House have in common, besides not wanting to be distractions, is that they apparently don’t know how to do their taxes. Daschle, the former senator and Obama’s choice for health secretary, and Killefer, a former assistant Treasury secretary and nominee to oversee the government’s budget, have withdrawn their nominations because of tax indiscretions. Geithner has been confirmed but his path to the top of Treasury was also marred by tax troubles that some fear may come back to haunt him.

Besides begging the question why do smart people not know how to do their taxes, it also throws a shadow over Obama’s quest to have a fast, smooth transition to power.

The real question is whether nominees should withdraw their nominations when tax troubles surface. If the transgression isn’t enough to throw them in jail, why should they lose the opportunity to serve in the White House?

The last time round when there was such widespread travel chaos in Britain due to snow was quite some time ago....it was in 1991 - the year the "wrong type of snow" was born - British Rail's ill-conceived attempt to explain why the railways had come to a virtual standstill after heavy snowfall.

The "wrong type" of just about anything has since been used to explain why the country's creaking transport system is grinding to a halt ....remember the one about the "wrong type of leaves" on the tracks?

OK, before you read on I should declare that I'm not British and hail from a country that usually copes with bad weather a lot better than Britain.

But I've been here long enough - 20 years to be precise - to think when I heard on the radio in the morning that no London busses were running at all - that didn't even happen during the Blitz, apparently - ..."oh well, it must be bad then ... better log on from home". And so did thousands of employees, many of them actively encouraged by their employers not to travel to work unless it was "critical".

At least I could rest assured, sorry - work from home assured - when the Metropolitan Police declared in a news release that it was maintaining policing despite the bad weather.

But I still couldn't help thinking:  why is this happening, and shouldn't I make a bit more of an effort to get into the office? Why is there hardly any public transport, forcing so many people to stay at home when there is heavy snowfall? Can't the streets of London be gritted, and why is no one shovelling the snow off the pavement outside their houses, an effort common in many countries that experience wintery conditions?

The cost to businesses is huge - an estimated 1 billion pounds a day as about 20 per cent of the country’s workforce is believed to have taken a “snow day” on Monday.

It's not that it never snows heavily in Britain - but in London it's not so common. London Mayor Boris Johnson, facing questions over the inability of the capital's infrastructure to cope with six inches of snow,  conceded the city did not have enough ploughs to keep the roads clear.

"There's no doubt about it, this is the right kind of snow, it's just the wrong kind of quantities," Johnson told the BBC.

But local councils said the snow was simply "too heavy" for their gritters to work.  "The problem with this sort of weather is when you grit and it snows heavily, of course, the maximum effect of that gritting is lost," the Local Government Association said.

So, it WAS the "wrong kind of snow" again....

The National Galleries of Scotland and London's National Gallery said on Monday they had raised the 50 million pounds needed to save a key work by Renaissance master Titian before it was put up for sale by the Duke of Sutherland.

Of the 50 million raised for "Diana and Actaeon", the Scottish government pledged 12.5 million pounds, 7.4 million came from public donations, 12.5 million from National Galleries in London and another 10 million pounds came from the National Heritage Memorial Fund.

The campaign to save the painting has drawn criticism from politicians who said the money, some of which came from government funds, could have been spent more wisely during a deepening recession.

Should public money have been spent on saving this seminal work of art, one of two Titian paintings being sold by the Duke of Sutherland? And do you think the Scottish public is entirely happy with their money going to a family whose notorious ancestors were involved in the Highland clearances of the 19th century?

The BBC has been roundly condemned at home for its refusal to broadcast an emergency appeal for Gaza on behalf of the Disasters Emergency Committee, a coalition of 13 aid agencies.

It says it does not want to be seen to be taking sides in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and that broadcasting the appeal could jeopardise its carefully cultivated position of impartiality. Sky News has followed suit.

But criticism has been fierce, including from the government and the Church of England.

The Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, has accused the BBC of "taking sides". He said on Friday: "This is not a row about impartiality but rather about humanity.

Former BBC foreign correspondent Martin Bell said the BBC should admit it had made a mistake. He claimed "a culture of timidity had crept" into the corporation. "I am completely appalled," he said. "It is a grave humanitarian crisis and the people who are suffering are children. They have been caught out on this question of balance."

BBC Director-General Mark Thompson said: "Inevitably an appeal would use pictures which are the same or similar to those we would be using in our news programmes but would do so with the objective of encouraging public donations. The danger for the BBC is that this could be interpreted as taking a political stance on an ongoing story."

What do you think? Are Sky and the BBC being too cautious or do they have a point?

President Barack Obama has just pledged to make a new start for United States relations with the Muslim world: "To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect," he said in his inaugural address. "To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist."

(Photo: President Obama delivers his inaugural address, 20 Jan 2009/Jason Reed)

It's not clear what he plans to do. One idea he's mentioned is to deliver a major speech in a Muslim country in his first year in office. There's already a lively discussion on the web about where he should go. During his speech, CNN showed a shot of the crowd with some people holding up signs urging him to deliver the speech in Morocco.

Before this train starts rolling, it might be useful to recall that some Islam experts don't think it's a good idea for him to deal with "the Muslim world" as a bloc opposed to the West. Two French experts on Islam, Olivier Roy and Justin Vaisse, argued this in a New York Times op-ed piece last month. Here is the full text and below are excerpts.

Do you think it's helpful for Obama to talk about the Muslim world as a distinct bloc?  Would he actually play into Osama bin Laden's hands by talking about the Muslim world and the West as distinct entities? If so, what should he do?

As Roy and Vaisse wrote:

"Such an initiative would reinforce the all-too-accepted but false notion that “Islam” and “the West” are distinct entities with utterly different values. Those who want to promote dialogue and peace between “civilizations” or “cultures” concede at least one crucial point to those who, like Osama bin Laden, promote a clash of civilizations: that separate civilizations do exist. They seek to reverse the polarity, replacing hostility with sympathy, but they are still following Osama bin Laden’s narrative.

"Instead, Mr. Obama, the first “post-racial” president, can do better. He can use his power to transform perceptions to the long-term advantage of the United States and become a “post-civilizational” president. The page he should try to turn is not that of a supposed war between America and Islam, but the misconception of a monolithic Islam being the source of the main problems on the planet: terrorism, wars, nuclear proliferation, insurgencies and the like...

"The truth is, Islam explains very little. There are as many bloody conflicts outside of regions where Islam has a role as inside them. There are more Muslims living under democracies than autocracies. There is no less or no more economic development in Muslim countries than in their equivalent non-Muslim neighbors. And, more important, there exist as many varieties of Muslims as there are adherents of other religions. This is why Mr. Obama should not give credence to the existence of an Islam that could supposedly be represented by its “leaders”.

Barack Obama became the first black president of the United States on Tuesday. In his much-anticipated inaugural speech, he said the “economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.”

But the new president also said the United States remained “the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth,” and that “we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.”

What did you think of the speech? Did it meet the hype? Were you moved, or dismayed?