| UPDATE 2-NYC mayor presents $58.5 bln budget, 3.7 pct hike
Because we didn't squander our resources when times were good, we're much better prepared to deal with these more challenging times," he said in a statement. Wall Street's evaporating profits could cut city tax revenues by $660 million. The billionaire mayor, who won his first four-year term in 2001 by stressing his business experience as the founder of information company Bloomberg LP, was repeatedly asked about the risk of a recession. "My gut says everybody including me thinks the economy is going south so we're all probably wrong." Continued... .
Surprising Few, Italy’s Government Collapses
After the government fell briefly in February 2007, it collapsed fatally on Monday, after Mr. Prodi's former justice minister, Clemente Mastella, withdrew the three votes he controlled in the Senate. That left Mr. Prodi without a majority there. But rather than resign immediately, Mr. Prodi, 68, a former economics professor and European Commission president, demanded confidence votes in the two houses of Parliament. Although he won a vote in the lower chamber on Wednesday, it seemed unlikely from the start that he could ultimately survive. So the confidence votes turned into something like a two-day wake, with Mr. Prodi whose sober and high-minded demeanor is often compared to that of a parish priest presiding over his own government's funeral. On Thursday he told senators it was not "stubbornness" that caused him to press the confidence votes, but a desire to underline publicly each lawmaker's responsibility to make reforms that he said were "urgently needed." He strongly defended his government's accomplishments, including a modest increase in economic growth starting from zero and said Italy needed "continuity" to make real change.
Postage stamp portfolio primed for next year
U.S. homes were supposed to be the safest investments around. Mortgages were bundled as low-risk packages of securities that would provide steady returns for decades. After more than $80 billion of write-offs and a slump in housing prices, those notions were as tainted as the myth of the free lunch. Although it may sound downright contrarian, focus less on the national or global economy in the coming year and protect your investments by focusing on time and risk. To reach your goals for prosperity, you will need a postage portfolio. You affix the stamp of risk management on this envelope of mutual and exchange-traded funds to ensure that it gets to a certain place in the future. First you will need to create a vision of where you want to be and how the housing slump will affect your wealth.
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