My del.icio.us bookmarks for December 30th

These are my links for December 30th:

• FT.com / Companies / Banks – Pension threat to HBOS deal – This is an occasion when the words 'cart' and 'horse' come to mind
• La fortune de Bernard Madoff en images – Diaporama – E24.fr – Perhaps it's no great surprise that Madoff's yacht was registered in George Town, Cayman
• FT.com / Companies / Retail – Debenhams to raise cash to cut debt levels – Much as I said in the previous blog – here's another one in trouble as a result of private equity

  Expect Boots to be on the list too

• FT.com / Companies / Financials – Private equity groups face tough choices – Another sector facing a horrible 2009 – indeed, more businesses will fail because of their links to this sector than for any other reason I suspect
• FT.com / Companies / Financials – Crackdown on hedge funds after Madoff affair – For all those who said Madoff was not a hedge fund – the evidence that the world think he behaved like one

  2009 will be a torrid year for such funds, I suspect

• FT.com / UK / Politics & policy – Tory plan to merge UK councils – Tories plan to undermine local democracy in push for greater involvement of private sector might be a better headline

  Will they never learn?

• FT.com / Global Economy – The undeniable shift to Keynes – "The sudden resurgence of Keynesian policy is a stunning reversal of the orthodoxy of the past several decades, which held that efforts to use fiscal policy to manage the economy and mitigate downturns were doomed to failure. Now only Germany remains publicly sceptical that fiscal stimulus will work."

  Maybe anything is possible now!

• FT.com / World – IMF argues for large stimulus packages – I'm not sure I ever expected to hear the IMF arguing for significant fiscal stimulus headed by tax cuts for the poorest in society

  Is anything possible now?

• Make 2009 the Year Labour Gets Tough on Tax Havens – "Unite, Britain's biggest union is calling on Gordon Brown to make his new year's resolution a commitment to close down the tax havens and give Britain back GBP33bn a year."

  It will be a theme of the year – I can promise you

• Government will refuse business demands to freeze minimum wage - – "Ministers will reject calls from business leaders for a freeze in the national minimum wage. The call for a freeze came from the British Chambers of Commerce, which said it would help to limit the number of jobs being lost in the recession."

  Staggering, isn't it? Bail out business, allow bonuses to remain, crush those living on £10,000 a year

  And you wonder why people think business callously indifferent to the needs of real people?