Washington Mutual

Washington Mutual, la principal caja de ahorros de EEUU, se declara en quiebra.
Washington Mutual, the largest US savings and loans bank was taken over by authorities and its deposits auctioned off.

A I G

Hank Greenberg, former chairman and CEO of American International Group (AIG), the world's largest insurance and financial services corporation.

THUESDAY HIRST

LONDON - While Wall Street was crumbling on Tuesday, an auction house in central London was seeing Damien Hirst, the richest and now one of the most financially savvy artists in British history, smash records in a sale that raked in nearly $200 million.The two-day sale of 223 pieces of Hirst's artwork made a spectacular 111 pounds ($199 million), beating expectations for 98 million pounds ($175 million), Sotheby's auction house told Forbes.com. It also exceeded the 65 million pound ($116.2 million) target Hirst had reportedly set for himself. The artwork sold included a shark in formaldehyde and a 1320-lb bull in formaldehyde whose hooves and horns were cast in solid 18-carat gold, named "The Golden Calf."The auction house would not give details on the commission it was would take from the sale, but press reports indicated Hirst would bring home the vast majority of the profits. According to the sale's organizers, this was the first time an artist had sold his work directly, bypassing art dealers who typically collect up to 40.0% of an auction's sales in commission fees. (See "Going Once, Going Twice…")The auction, entitled "Beautiful Inside My Head Forever," beat the record for the highest ever sale dedicated to a single artist, with the $20 million brought in for 88 works by Picasso in 1993."It is a completely surreal scenario," said Charles Dupplin, an art expert with Hiscox. "The day the financial world was living a black Monday, art as a whole remained confident. It is remarkable."Art experts have been looking carefully at exhibitions of this caliber to see how resilient the art sector is. So far, it has apparently been able to buck the downturn in the global economy.But sales might not be able to keep up for long. "The art world has a history of lagging behind other parts of the economy," Dupplin said. "It can't keep going up forever. It might as well be that looking back in the future we will see this auction as a moment when the market reached its peak."

Convulsive day on Wall Street

Global markets were reeling Monday after a convulsive day on Wall Street that saw a leading U.S. investment bank file for bankruptcy and other institutes scramble to merge as the credit crunch claimed one of its biggest victims yet.

Stock prices plunged in Asia and Europe in the wake of investment bank Lehman brothers announcing its collapse and Bank of America's $50 billion buyout of ailing brokerage Merrill Lynch.

This crisis is clearly deeper than anybody had imagined only a short time ago," Peter Stein, an associate editor at the Wall Street Journal in Asia, told CNN.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 330 points or 2.9 percent to around 11091 in early trading. In Europe, FTSE index in London declined 3.37 percent while the Paris CAC 40 was down 4.47 percent.

Major Asian indexes were closed but India's Sensex fell 5.4 percent, Taiwan's benchmark dropped 4.1, Australia's key index dropped 2 percent and Singapore fell 2.9.

The turmoil followed a roller-coaster weekend for a Wall Street already concussed by woes at other major financial firms and mortgage-financing titans Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

At one point the U.S. Federal Reserve was forced to step in, announcing plans to loosen lending restrictions to the banking industry in an effort to calm markets, while a consortium of 10 leading domestic and foreign banks agreed a $70 billion fund to lend to troubled financial firms.

In an effort to calm market jitters, the European Central Bank on Monday said it has pumped $42.6 billion into money markets. The Bank of England in London also took steps, offering nearly $9 billion in a three-day auction.

HIRST MONDAY

An experimental sale of new works by Damien Hirst at Sotheby's auction house last night surpassed expectations when it raised more than £70m, above its high estimate of £62m.Buyers appeared unfazed by fears over the global banking system as they spent freely. The top lot was "The Golden Calf", a 600kg bullock whose hooves and horns are cast in solid 18-carat gold, which sold for £10.3m, a record for the artist at auction.FINANCIAL TIMES$-->

Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac

Charlie Rose discussed the Bush administration's takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with four people knowledgeable about the matter's significance: Nouriel Roubini, New York University professor of economics; Mohamed El-Erian, CEO of PIMCO; Gretchen Morgenson and Floyd Norris, both with The New York Times. Here's some of what they had to say.

ASHES & SNOW

Gregory Colbert has used both still and movie cameras to explore extraordinary interactions between humans and animals. His exhibition, Ashes and Snow, consists of over 50 large-scale photographic artworks, a 60-minute film, and two 9-minute film haikus.

This excerpt is entitled Feather to Fire, and is narrated in three languages by Laurence Fishburne (English), Ken Watanabe (Japanese), and Enrique Rocha (Spanish).

More information about Gregory Colbert and Ashes and Snow is available at www.ashesandsnow.com.

Ashes and Snow® and Nomadic Museum® are registered trademarks of Gregory Colbert.