Infinite Unknown – Page 4098 – The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either.

Vladimir Putin ‘wanted to hang Georgian President Saakashvili by the balls’

November 15, 2008 by Infinite

(Dmitry Astahov/AFP/Getty Images)

Vladimir Putin reportedly wanted to hang President Saakashvili “like the Americans hanged Saddam”

Nicolas Sarkozy saved the President of Georgia from being hanged “by the balls” – a threat made last summer by Vladimir Putin, according to an account that emerged yesterday from the Élysée Palace.

The Russian Prime Minister had revealed his plans for disposing of Mr Saakashvili when Mr Sarkozy was in Moscow in August to broker a ceasefire in Georgia.

Jean-David Levitte, Mr Sarkozy’s chief diplomatic adviser, reported the exchange in a news magazine before an EU-Russia summit today. The meeting will be chaired by the French leader and President Medvedev.

With Russian tanks only 30 miles from Tbilisi on August 12, Mr Sarkozy told Mr Putin that the world would not accept the overthrow of Georgia’s Government. According to Mr Levitte, the Russian seemed unconcerned by international reaction. “I am going to hang Saakashvili by the balls,” Mr Putin declared.

Mr Sarkozy thought he had misheard. “Hang him?” – he asked. “Why not?” Mr Putin replied. “The Americans hanged Saddam Hussein.”

Mr Sarkozy, using the familiar tu, tried to reason with him: “Yes but do you want to end up like [President] Bush?” Mr Putin was briefly lost for words, then said: “Ah – you have scored a point there.”

Mr Saakashvili, who was in Paris to meet Mr Sarkozy yesterday, laughed nervously when a French radio station read him the exchange. “I knew about this scene, but not all the details. It’s funny, all the same,” he said.

US places ban on Chinese food imports

November 14, 2008 by Infinite

More than 1200 Chinese children have been hospitalised after drinking tainted milk formula (AFP)

Products from the dairy company whose tainted formula killed at least four babies are back on the shelves in China just as the United States issued a ban on Chinese food imports in case of similar contamination.

Such a broad ban by the Food and Drug administration on goods from an entire country rather than from a new rogue manufacturer is unusual and reflects the level of concern over how widespread the problem is in China.

Importers to the United States must now certify that food products are free of dairy or of the industrial chemical melamine that has been found in a vast array of Chinese products – from baby powder to milk powder to creamy confectionery. Failing that, the goods will be stopped at the border.

The FDA order said: “The problem of melamine contamination is not limited to infant formula products. Chinese government sources indicate contamination of milk components, especially dried milk powder, which are used in a variety of finished foods.” These are believed to spread throughout the food chain in China.

Saudi Arabia buys $3.5bn of gold in two weeks

November 14, 2008 by Infinite

There has been an unprecedented surge in Saudi gold purchases in the past two weeks with over $3.5 billion being spent on the yellow metal, reported Gulf News citing local industry sources.

Gold market expert Sami Al Mohna told the leading regional newspaper that this buying had substantially increased the gold reserves of the country: ‘Many Saudi investors see this as the right time for making investments in gold as the price is the most reasonable one at present’.

He said gold was seen as a traditional safe haven at a time of global financial turmoil. Gulf regional stock markets have fallen very sharply since early October, leading to an exodus of cash which needs to find a safe haven.

Gold is currently trading at prices similar to a year ago, and 30 per cent off its March peak. Saudi investors clearly think this is the right time to buy and are piling into gold.

Global warning: We are actually heading towards a new Ice Age, claim scientists

November 14, 2008 by Infinite

It has plagued scientists and politicians for decades, but scientists now say global warming is not the problem.

We are actually heading for the next Ice Age, they claim.

British and Canadian experts warned the big freeze could bury the east of Britain in 6,000ft of ice.

A taste of the future: Plunging temperatures around Britain created dramatic 2-ft icicles over Sleightholme River in County Durham

Most of Scotland, Northern Ireland and England could be covered in 3,000ft-thick ice fields.

The expanses could reach 6,000ft from Aberdeen to Kent – towering above Ben Nevis, Britain’s tallest mountain.

And what’s more, the experts blame the global change on falling – rather than climbing – levels of greenhouse gases.

Lead author Thomas Crowley from the University of Edinburgh and Canadian colleague William Hyde say that currently vilified greenhouse gases – such as carbon dioxide – could actually be the key to averting the chill.

The warning, published in the authoritative journal Nature, is based on records of tiny marine fossils and the earth’s shifting orbit.

The Big chill: Experts warn that 3,000ft ice sheets could cover most of Britain

The Earth has seen dramatic climate fluctuations – veering between cold and warm extremes – over the past three million years, the researchers say.

And changes in the Earth’s orbit and slowly falling levels of carbon dioxide are the cause.

The team says we are approaching a turning point, in the next 10,000 to 100,000 years, which will lead to the new ice sheets smothering much of Europe, Asia and South America.

The theory, which is based on computer models, suggests ice sheets will also slash sea levels by up to 300m, so Russia and Alaska will be connected by land.

US: October budget deficit was the highest monthly imbalance on record

November 14, 2008 by Infinite

The federal government began the new budget year with a record deficit of $237.2 billion, reflecting the billions of dollars the government has started to pay out to rescue the financial system.

The Treasury Department said Thursday that the deficit for the first month in the new budget year was the highest monthly imbalance on record. It was far bigger than analysts expected, over four times larger than the October 2007 deficit of $56.8 billion, and more than half the total for all of last year.

The big surge reflected the government spending $115 billion to buy stock in the nation’s largest banks. Those were the first payments made from the $700 billion government rescue program passed by Congress to deal with the most severe financial crisis to hit the country since the 1930s.

The October deficit began a period in which economists are forecasting the red ink for the entire year could well hit $1 trillion, reflecting what many expect to be a severe recession, which will depress tax revenue, and the heavy costs of the financial system bailout.

Australia planning to block 10,000 websites

November 14, 2008 by Infinite

Australia is preparing to block public access to 10,000 websites deemed to carry “unwanted content”.

The websites will be blocked as part of a government-sponsored trial of its filter technology that will start before Christmas and last six weeks.

The government has already identified 1300 websites that it wants to black list as part of the clean feeds scheme.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said the sites mostly contained child pornography and other unwanted content, including images and videos.

“While the ACMA blacklist is currently around 1300 URLs, the pilot will test against this list – as well as filtering for a range of URLs to around 10,000 – so that the impacts on network performance of a larger blacklist can be examined,” se said.

After banning YouTube, military launches TroopTube

November 14, 2008 by Infinite

SEATTLE – The U.S. military, with help from Seattle startup Delve Networks, has launched a video-sharing Web site for troops, their families and supporters, a year and a half after restricting access to YouTube and other video sites.

TroopTube, as the new site is called, lets people register as members of one of the branches of the armed forces, family, civilian Defense Department employees or supporters. Members can upload personal videos from anywhere with an Internet connection, but a Pentagon employee screens each for taste, copyright violations and national security issues.

U.S. Retail Sales Drop in October by Most on Record

November 14, 2008 by Infinite

Nov. 14 (Bloomberg) — Retail sales in the U.S. dropped in October by the most on record, pushing the economy toward the worst slump in decades.

The 2.8 percent decrease was the fourth consecutive drop and the biggest since records began in 1992, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. Purchases excluding automobiles also posted their worst performance.

Spending may continue to falter as mounting job losses, plunging stocks and falling home values leave household finances in tatters. Retailers from Best Buy Co. to Nordstrom Inc. are cutting revenue forecasts ahead of what may be the worst holiday shopping season in six years.

“We are in the eye of the storm,” said James O’Sullivan, a senior economist at UBS Securities LLC in Stamford, Connecticut, who accurately projected the decline in sales. “The recession is clearly intensifying. The next few months will look pretty bad. The fourth quarter will be even weaker.”

In The Know: Should The Government Stop Dumping Money Into A Giant Hole?

November 14, 2008 by Infinite

Source: The Onion

Poverty, Pension Fears Drive Japan’s Elderly Citizens to Crime

November 14, 2008 by Infinite

Elderly customers shop in a grocery store in Tokyo, Aug. 12, 2005. Photographer: Haruyoshi Yamaguchi/Bloomberg News

Nov. 14 (Bloomberg) — More senior citizens are picking pockets and shoplifting in Japan to cope with cuts in government welfare spending and rising health-care costs in a fast-ageing society.

Criminal offences by people 65 or older doubled to 48,605 in the five years to 2008, the most since police began compiling national statistics in 1978, a Ministry of Justice report said.

Theft is the most common crime of senior citizens, many of whom face declining health, low incomes and a sense of isolation, the report said. Elderly crime may increase in parallel with poverty rates as Japan enters another recession and the budget deficit makes it harder for the government to provide a safety net for people on the fringes of society.

“The elderly are turning to shoplifting as an increasing number of them lack assets and children to depend on,” Masahiro Yamada, a sociology professor at Chuo University in Tokyo and an author of books on income disparity in Japan, said in an interview yesterday. “We won’t see the decline of elderly crimes as long as the income gap continues to rise.”

Citigroup to lay off another 10,000 – report

November 14, 2008 by Infinite

Financial services company said to be adding to the 23,000 lost jobs from the last four quarters.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Citigroup is getting ready to lay off thousands of workers and raise credit card interest rates, according to a published report Friday.

The battered financial services company will be laying off 10,000 workers, on top of the 23,000 job cuts it has already made over the last four quarters, reported The Wall Street Journal.

Rare Treatment Is Reported to Cure AIDS Patient

November 14, 2008 by Infinite

Doctors in Berlin are reporting that they cured a man of AIDS by giving him transplanted blood stem cells from a person naturally resistant to the virus.

But while the case has novel medical implications, experts say it will be of little immediate use in treating AIDS. Top American researchers called the treatment unthinkable for the millions infected in Africa and impractical even for insured patients in top research hospitals.

“It’s very nice, and it’s not even surprising,” said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “But it’s just off the table of practicality.”

The patient, a 42-year-old American resident in Germany, also has leukemia, which justified the high risk of a stem-cell transplant. Such transplants require wiping out a patient’s immune system, including bone marrow, with radiation and drugs; 10 to 30 percent of those getting them die.

“Frankly, I’d rather take the medicine,” said Dr. Robert C. Gallo, director of the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, referring to antiretroviral drugs.

Belarus President Seeks to Deploy Russia Missiles

November 14, 2008 by Infinite

[Belarus]
President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, left, who met Oct. 26 near Moscow with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, says that Belarus would like to deploy missiles even if it doesn’t reach an agreement with Moscow.

MINSK, Belarus — President Alexander Lukashenko is in talks with Moscow about placing in Belarus advanced Iskander missiles that could hit targets deep inside Europe.

The talks raise the ante in the debate over a U.S. plan to deploy missile defense in Europe. They also complicate Western hopes for warmer ties with Belarus, which some in the U.S. and Europe hope could help to counterbalance an increasingly hostile Kremlin.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Lukashenko said that he would like to see closer relations with the West but that he sympathizes with Russia on two flashpoints that have rocked relations — the conflict in Georgia and U.S. plans to place antimissile systems in Europe to counter a potential threat from Iran.

Mr. Lukashenko said he “absolutely supports” Russia’s plans to place Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad that would target the U.S. missile system. Kaliningrad is a Russian enclave in Europe that borders NATO members Poland and Lithuania, and missiles there could reach the proposed U.S. missile sites in Poland.

Mr. Lukashenko said Russia also had proposed putting Iskander missiles in Belarus, which is situated between Russia and Poland. And if a deal on the issue isn’t reached, Belarus itself would like to deploy the missiles, he said.

“Even if Russia does not offer these promising missiles, we will purchase them ourselves,” said Mr. Lukashenko, who said the technology for the Iskander optics and fire-control systems comes from Belarus. “Right now we do not have the funds, but it is part of our plans — I am giving away a secret here — to have such weapons.”

Osama bin Laden is Dead

November 14, 2008 by Infinite

By Bob Moriarty:

I’m pleased to see Barack Obama hit the ground running after his election on the 4th. The US needs change.

I’d like to see him announce the death of Osama bin Laden as one of his first official duties. Bin Laden often better known as bin Forgotten died in December of 2001. There is nothing I am saying that is news to anyone who has actually spent any time thinking.

Osama bin Laden had serous kidney disease that required him to have dialysis treatment twice a week. There aren’t any dialysis machines floating around in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan. A few months back a reporter finally asked the question that should have been asked years ago at a White House press conference.

How is it that a guy who was seriously ill seven years ago is getting treatment for end-stage renal disease in some cave in Afghanistan? The woman conducting the press conference panicked at the thought of answering that most basic question and immediately canceled the rest of the briefing.

The United States does not need a boogieman living in a cave in Asia. Osama bin Laden is dead. Barack Obama should be honest enough with the American people to declare him dead.

Here are the facts.

The last intelligence intercept of Osama bin Laden was on December 14 of 2001. He has not been heard from since.
President Bush and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld hinted in late December of 2001 that they knew Osama bin Laden was dead.
President Musharraf of Pakistan announced in January of 2002 that Osama bin Laden was probably dead of kidney disease.
President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan was quoted in October of 2002 as saying, “The more we don’t hear of him, and the more time passes, there is the likelihood that he probably is either dead or seriously wounded somewhere.”
But the actions of the US Military are the most telling. There isn’t a single soldier, sailor or Marine tasked with chasing down Osama bin Laden, dead or alive. Because we know exactly where he is. He’s dead. So the US military is either totally or absolutely incompetent or Osama bin Laden died years ago and we’ve been fighting the boogieman.
As early as July of 2002, even the FBI’s counterterrorism chief was quoted as saying; Osama bin Laden is “probably” dead.

The US does not need a boogieman; we have real challenges ahead of us. We need a President who will not lie to us on a constant basis.

While you are at it Mr President Elect, you may want to mention that Iran never threatened to wipe Israel off the map and 16 US Intelligence agencies all agree [pdf] Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program. But you knew that, didn’t you? Iran is neither the enemy of the United States nor Israel.

BT slashes 10,000 jobs

November 13, 2008 by Infinite

• Telecoms giant cuts 6% of global workforce
• Several thousand expected to go in UK
• News of cuts sends shares up 12%

BT is axing 10,000 workers, or 6% of its global workforce, with several thousand expected to go in the UK as the company looks to cut costs and reduce its reliance on contractors in the face of the global economic downturn.

The company, which announced an 11% fall in second quarter profits, said it has already cut 4,000 mostly contractors jobs and a further 6,000 will go by next April. The majority of those job losses will be among BT’s own staff and the axe is expected to fall particularly heavily in the UK.

BT has 160,000 people working for it worldwide, of whom 110,000 are directly employed.

This latest blow to the British economy came just a day after the number of jobless people in the UK hit its highest level since 1997. By the end of September there were 1.825 million people out of work. The claimaint count also rose to 980,900, its highest level since the end of 1997.

News of the job cuts helped to send the company’s shares up 12% in early trading, 13.5p higher at 126p.

Kenneth Clarke warns Britain is on the brink of meltdown

November 13, 2008 by Infinite

Kenneth Clarke, the former Conservative Chancellor, has warned the economy is on the brink of “meltdown” and unemployment could reach three million.

Mr Clarke, 68, said the British economy is headed for a “catastrophic crisis” that will be “far worse than anything that has occurred in my lifetime”.

“There will be a very serious recession next year,” he said in an interview with Telegraph TV. “I think the big problem in 2009 will be the catastrophic fall in consumer spending demand, spending in shops will get worse.”

Mr Clarke, who as Chancellor of the Exchequer between 1993 and 1997 led Britain’s recovery from Black Wednesday, called for a temporary cut in VAT to boost spending.

Speaking as the Office of National Statistics revealed unemployment has reached an 11-year high of 1.82m, Mr Clarke said the number of jobless could soon reach three million.

German Economy Enters Worst Recession in at least 12 Years

November 13, 2008 by Infinite

Nov. 13 (Bloomberg) — The German economy, Europe’s largest, contracted more than economists expected in the third quarter, pushing the nation into the worst recession in at least 12 years.

Gross domestic product dropped a seasonally adjusted 0.5 percent from the second quarter, when it fell 0.4 percent, the Federal Statistics Office in Wiesbaden said today. Economists expected a 0.2 percent decline, the median of 40 forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey showed. The economy last contracted this much over two consecutive quarters — the technical definition of a recession — in 1996.

German companies are struggling with dwindling export orders. Siemens AG, Europe’s biggest engineering company, reported a profit decline today and plans to cut 16,750 jobs by 2010. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development lowered its global forecast for the second time, saying the economy of its 30 members will contract 0.3 percent in 2009 after growing 1.4 percent this year.

“The German recession has begun in earnest and it’s very serious,” said Holger Schmieding, chief European economist at Bank of America Corp. in London. “It raises the risk of a German contraction of more than 1 percent next year and we will have to revise down our forecast for the euro area as well.”

Change, change, change … Obama’s Bailout Bunch Brings Us More of the Same Bullshit

November 13, 2008 by Infinite

Change you cannot possibly believe in.

Nov. 11 (Bloomberg) — It’s hard to believe Barack Obama would even think of calling this change.

Take a good look at some of the 17 people our nation’s president-elect chose last week for his Transition Economic Advisory Board. And then try saying with a straight face that these are the leaders who should be advising him on how to navigate through the worst financial crisis in modern history.

First, there’s former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. Not only was he chairman of Citigroup Inc.’s executive committee when the bank pushed bogus analyst research, helped Enron Corp. cook its books, and got caught baking its own. He was a director from 2000 to 2006 at Ford Motor Co., which also committed accounting fouls and now is begging Uncle Sam for Citigroup- style bailout cash.

Two other Citigroup directors received spots on the Obama board: Xerox Corp. Chief Executive Officer Anne Mulcahy and Time Warner Inc. Chairman Richard Parsons. Xerox and Time Warner got pinched years ago by the Securities and Exchange Commission for accounting frauds that occurred while Mulcahy and Parsons held lesser executive posts at their respective companies.

Mulcahy and Parsons also once were directors at Fannie Mae when that company was breaking accounting rules. So was another member of Obama’s new economic board, former Commerce Secretary William Daley. He’s now a member of the executive committee at JPMorgan Chase & Co., which, like Citigroup, is among the nine large banks that just got $125 billion of Treasury’s bailout budget.

There’s More

UN suspends food distribution in Gaza

November 13, 2008 by Infinite

Labourers work at a UN Relief and Works Agency food distribution center in the Gaza City Shati refugee camp

GAZA CITY (AFP) – The United Nations announced it was suspending food distribution to half of Gaza’s 1.5 million people on Thursday after Israel failed to allow emergency supplies into the Palestinian territory.

Israel had said it would allow 30 trucks to deliver supplies to Gaza on Thursday after it sealed off the Gaza Strip on November 5, but later said rocket and mortar fire by Gaza militants made it impossible to do so.

“They have told us the crossings are closed today. At the end of today we will suspend our food distribution,” said UN Relief and Works Agency spokesman Chris Gunness.

“Our warehouses are effectively empty,” he told AFP.

George Soros says deep recession inevitable, depression possible

November 13, 2008 by Infinite

Chairman of Soros Fund Managment George Soros speaks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technolog, October 28, 2008.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – George Soros, chairman of Soros Fund Management, testified at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on Thursday. Highlights:

* Said “a deep recession is now inevitable and the possibility of a depression cannot be ruled out.”

* Said hedge funds were an integral part of the financial market bubble which now has burst.

* Said hedge funds will be “decimated” by the current financial crisis and forced to shrink their portfolios by 50-75 percent.

Hedge-Fund Assets Shrink by $100 Billion Last Month (Correct)

November 13, 2008 by Infinite

(Corrects to remove reference to Man Group redemptions in first paragraph, adds breakdown for asset drop in sixth.)

Nov. 13 (Bloomberg) — The global hedge-fund industry lost $100 billion of assets in October, according to an estimate from Eurekahedge Pte, as firms including Sparx Group Co. were hammered by investor withdrawals.

Clients took about $60 billion out of funds, Singapore-based Eurekahedge said in a statement. Funds fell 3.3 percent on average, based on preliminary figures from the Singapore-based data provider, as measured by the Eurekahedge Hedge Fund Index, which tracks the performance of more than 2,000 funds that invest globally. That compares with a 19 percent slide in the MSCI World Index last month.

The biggest market losses since the Great Depression and investor withdrawals hurt the $1.7 trillion hedge-fund industry that manages largely unregulated pools of capital. The index of global funds has lost 11 percent this year, set for the worst performance since 2000 when Eurekahedge began tracking the data.

New York Gov. seeks $2 bln spending cuts, led by aid to schools and health care for the poor

November 13, 2008 by Infinite

NEW YORK, Nov 12 (Reuters) – New York Gov. David Paterson on Wednesday proposed $2 billion of spending cuts, led by aid to schools and health care for the poor, to clip a widening budget deficit as fallout from the financial crisis crimps revenues.

Paterson said the legislature agreed not to increase personal income taxes at a special session set for next week to reduce the state’s $121 billion budget.

Paterson, a Democrat who says the state must reform its long history of over-spending, said he hoped to avoid an income tax hike next year — though he did not rule one out.

Lawmakers, Investors Ask Fed for Lending Disclosure of Almost $2 Trillion in Emergency Loans

November 13, 2008 by Infinite

Nov. 13 (Bloomberg) — Members of Congress, taxpayers and investors urged the Federal Reserve to provide details of almost $2 trillion in emergency loans and the collateral it has accepted to protect against losses.

At least five Republican members of Congress yesterday called for the Fed to disclose which financial institutions are borrowing taxpayer money and what troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral. More than 300 more investors and taxpayers also pressed for more disclosure in e-mails and interviews with Bloomberg News.

“There cannot be accountability in government and in our financial institutions without transparency,” Texas Senator John Cornyn said in a statement. “Many of the financial problems we are facing today are the direct result of too much secrecy and too little accountability.”

House Republican Leader John Boehner and Republican Representatives Jeb Hensarling of Texas, Scott Garrett of New Jersey and Walter Jones of North Carolina also are pressing Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke to elaborate on the Fed’s emergency lending. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in the separate $700 billion bailout of the banking system that was approved by Congress last month.

European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet today urged greater disclosure to help strengthen the global financial system.

Swiss Banker Charged With Conspiring in Massive Tax Fraud

November 12, 2008 by Infinite

The Justice Department today announced that a senior Swiss banker has been indicted on charges of conspiring to defraud the U.S. government by helping about 20,000 U.S. clients hide $20 billion in assets from the Internal Revenue Service.

The indictment of Raoul Weil alleged that he conspired with a host of others at his bank, overseeing a business that employed encrypted laptops, numbered accounts and counter-surveillance techniques to help American clients conceal their identities and evade taxes.

Weil oversaw the bank’s cross-border business that catered to U.S. clients, generating about $200 million a year in revenue for the bank, the Justice Department said in a news release.

The announcement did not name the bank, describing it only as a large Swiss bank with offices worldwide.

A report on UBS’s Web site says an executive name Raoul Weil was head of UBS’s wealth management international business between 2002 and 2007. The indictment says the Raoul Weil charged in the case was head of the unnamed Swiss bank’s wealth management business from 2002 through 2007.

Weil was named chairman and chief executive of UBS’s global wealth management and business banking operations in 2007, the UBS site said.

Other bank executives “at the highest levels of management” are unindicted co-conspirators, according to the indictment.

The action announced today is part of a larger clash between the U.S. government and the tradition of secrecy that has been central to Switzerland’s lucrative banking industry.

Family homelessness rising in the United States

November 12, 2008 by Infinite

A man sweeps the area outside his tent with a broken broom at “tent city”, a terminus for the homeless in Ontario, a suburb outside Los Angeles, California December 19, 2007. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President-elect Barack Obama has vowed to help middle-class U.S. homeowners facing foreclosure, but he has said little about how he will help low-income families made homeless by a worsening economy.

Obama has spoken broadly about boosting affordable housing and restoring public housing subsidies. But with economists forecasting a deep recession in 2009, he may find it hard to find the money to fulfill those promises soon.

At the same time, advocacy groups and the country’s czar for combating homelessness say immediate action is needed to halt the foreclosures of tens of thousands of homes and rehouse thousands of families amid the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

“President-elect Obama understands the economy will only get back on track if we end the foreclosure crisis. And he realizes that part of ending the crisis is both preventing and ending homelessness for families losing their homes,” said Jeremy Rosen of the National Policy and Advocacy Council on Homelessness.