The News Bin

Icelandic Shoppers Splurge...
After a four-year spending spree, Icelanders are flooding the supermarkets one last time, stocking up on food as the collapse of the banking system threatens to cut the island off from imports. ``We have had crazy days for a week now,'' said Johannes Smari Oluffsson, manager of the Bonus discount grocery store in Reykjavik's main shopping center. ``Sales have doubled.'' Bonus, a nationwide chain, has stock at its warehouse for about two weeks. After that, the shelves will start emptying unless it can get access to foreign currency, the 22-year-old manager said, standing in a walk-in fridge filled with meat products, among the few goods on sale produced locally.

The Amero?

GM to Shut Wisconsin, Michigan Plants

General Motors Corp. says it will close its metal stamping plant near Grand Rapids, Mich., by the end of 2009, costing about 1,340 hourly jobs. Workers at the factory in the suburb of Wyoming, Mich. were notified Monday afternoon of the planned shutdown. The move comes as GM tries to cut costs in the middle of a U.S. sales slump and global financial crisis that has led to a big slump in vehicle sales. The automaker announced earlier Monday that it would end sport utility vehicle production at its Janesville, Wis., factory in December, which is earlier than previously announced. The plant will close in mid-2009.

Royal Bank of Scotland Under State Control

Royal Bank of Scotland Under State Control
The Chancellor will move to take control of the Royal Bank of Scotland today by injecting £20 billion of taxpayers’ money. The Government is also expected to take over HBOS in the most dramatic extension of state ownership in the British economy since the war. The bank’s rescue takeover by Lloyds TSB appeared to be on the brink of collapse last night. As governments around the world scramble to prevent the collapse of the global financial system, Alistair Darling will unveil plans for a £40 billion “recapitalisation” of the banking sector.