Barclays Wealth has advised clients to jump back into stock markets across the world, believing the danger of a severe downturn has receded after the dramatic rescue moves by central banks.

Barack Obama's success shows that the ceiling has risen for African-Americans. But many are still too close to the floor.

Help! We're Running Out Of Internet! The Internet could run out of web addresses by 2011, undermining the potential of businesses to use new services and applications, Karine Perset, the author of an alarming report on the future of the World Wide Web, warned Friday.

Between a quarter and a third of the world's wildlife has been lost since 1970, according to data compiled by the Zoological Society of London.

If you have 20 minutes to spare, check this out. In this fiery and funny talk, New York Times food writer Mark Bittman weighs in on what's wrong with the way we eat now (too much meat, too few plants; too much fast food, too little home cooking), and why it's putting the entire planet at risk.

Tag it:

Why high oil prices are not squeezing us more: The “energy intensity” of growth – the amount of oil, coal and gas needed to produce an increase in gross domestic product – has halved since the 1970s, reflecting greater energy efficiency and the shift away from heavy manufacturing.

If you have four and a half minutes to spare, watch this: Alisa Miller, head of Public Radio International, talks about why -- though we want to know more about the world than ever -- the US media is actually showing less. Eye-opening stats and graphs.

10 ways the Chinese Internet is different from yours.

A new poll shows that 85% of U.S. adults agree that the presidential candidates should participate in a debate on how science can be used to tackle America's major challenges. The poll found no difference between Democrats and Republicans on this question.

That China has yet to grasp the downside of its imminent superpower status is evident from a plaintive e-mail doing the rounds of internet forums.

Tag it:

Links to interesting articles for ThePanelist.com readers...

Poverty and a billion starving people in Africa? Whisked away like dust. Overpopulation and water shortages? Waft, waft. Global warming and climate change? A little brush and they're gone. Jeffrey Sachs explains how to save the world.

The Earth's temperature may stay roughly the same for a decade, as natural climate cycles enter a cooling phase, scientists have predicted.

The financial crises of capitalism, written by Samuel Brittan at The Financial Times.

Economic Recession? It's a Guy Thing.

The global free market for food and energy is facing its biggest threat in decades as a host of countries push through draconian measures to hold down prices, raising fears of a new "resource nationalism" that could endanger world food security, says Ambrose Evans-Pritchard at The Telegraph.

Have a great weekend!

Tag it:

Links to must-read articles for ThePanelist.com readers. Enjoy!

Going green doesn't have to be as complicated as it sounds: 50 ways to help the planet.

The Rockefellers want ExxonMobil to think again on green issues but increasingly oil giants look to government for leadership.

Polluted, poisonous and immune to popular efforts to enforce a clean-up: Tai Lake is a metaphor for the state of China's politics, says The Economist.

"This contrast between the official government statistics and day-to-day reality has led to a boomlet in skepticism about what the government is up to," says David Leonhardt at The New York Times. "So when the new inflation numbers come out next week, they will indeed be misleading. They will be artificially high."

A cartoon explaining the stimulus package...

Tag it:

Links to must-read articles for ThePanelist.com readers...

Tag it:

The bad news is that as markets stabilize, chances for fundamental financial reform may be slipping away. As a result, the next crisis will probably be worse than this one, says Paul Krugman at The New York Times.

Graphic: An Average Consumer's Spending.

We are not as powerful as we used to be because over the past three decades the Asian values of our parents’ generation — work hard, study, save, invest, live within your means — have given way to subprime values, says Thomas Friedman of The New York Times.

Rather than dismissing ourselves as unchangeable creatures of habit, we can instead direct our own change by consciously developing new habits. In fact, the more new things we try, the more we step outside our comfort zone, the more inherently creative we become, both in the workplace and in our personal lives.

Sales of scotch whisky are regarded by some as a fair, if unusual, barometer of economic prospects and how confident people feel about the present and the future.

Tag it:

This is one of the best pieces of financial journalism you're ever going to read. The next bubble: Priming the markets for tomorrow's big crash, published by Harpers Magazine.

According to George Will: "The future has a way of arriving unannounced". That was before equity analysts, says Satyajit Das.

Tiger economies are snapping at U.S. heels: Observers expect the US to deepen its ties with India, which Washington views as a counterweight to China.

Coal has long been a cheap and plentiful fuel source for utilities and their customers, helping to keep American electric bills relatively low. But rising worldwide demand is turning American coal into another hot global commodity, with domestic buyers having to compete with buyers from countries like Germany and Japan.

A funny take on the economic stimuls package.

Have a great week!

Tag it:

It’s a myth that the world’s oil is running out, says Irwin Stelzer at The London Times.

Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy, says Thomas Friedman in the New York Times

Do Americans worry more about climate change, America’s dependence on foreign oil or the cost of filling their petrol tanks?

The Fed is trying to promote the notion that it is not entirely useless, that its actions do achieve a reaction, says Alan Kohler at BusinessSpectator.com.

Why conservatives are happier than liberals.

Tag it:

What excessive pay package? CEO compensation gone wild...

The notion that two consecutive quarters of negative growth spell the descent into economic recession is a big myth, says Gerard Barker at The London Times.

Only 18% of the world's population have access to a free press according to Freedom House, an American think-tank.

Climate change is already affecting the prospects for children in the world's poorer countries, according to Unicef.

Bernanke must take on genuine banking reform and currency and trade policies, or his job is impossible.

Tag it:

How to win the war on global warming, according to Time Magazine.

An excellent list of statistics: What's happening in the world right now?

Energy experts have dismissed the presidential candidates' plans for lowering gas prices, and say it'll be a decade before we can exert downward pressure on the price of gas.

Come on Hillary. Enough is enough.

Novelist Amy Tan digs deep into the creative process, journeying through her childhood and family history and into the worlds of physics and chance, looking for hints of where her own creativity comes from. It's a wild ride with a surprise ending.

Tag it:

European and Japanese leaders at their annual summit in Tokyo have called for "ambitious and binding" targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

At a time when the world’s top climate experts agree that carbon emissions must be rapidly reduced to hold down global warming, Italy’s major electricity producer, Enel, is converting its massive power plant here from oil to coal, generally the dirtiest fuel on earth.

China stock exchange investors suffer from spectacular bear market.

When will we ever learn? It's education that counts, says David Wighton at The London Times.

Under its new boss Disney has staged an impressive creative turnaround—and is making synergy work.

Tag it:

Oil prices rose above $116 a barrel last week, setting another record for the world’s most indispensable energy commodity. What was striking about this latest milestone was what didn’t happen: there was no shortage of oil, no sudden embargo, no exporter turning off its spigot.

The subprime mortgage crisis in technicolor.

An innovative website using Wikipedia-like collaborative software has given people around the world to design the perfect -- if sadly fictional -- candidate for the United States presidency.

Will it be possible to retain a political consensus in high-income countries in favour of a liberalized and globally integrated economy? How do we persuade citizens that the rise of the emerging countries, the brightest story of our era, is to be welcomed, rather than resented or even resisted, when what they experience is financial disarray, falling house prices, recession and soaring costs of essential commodities?

And lastly, the stupidest business decisions in history.

Tag it:

If you have 30 minutes to spare, watch Al Gore's brand-new slideshow. He presents evidence that the pace of climate change may be even worse than scientists were recently predicting, and challenges us to act with a sense of "generational mission" - the kind of feeling that brought forth the civil rights movement - to set it right.

The size of bets traders are making that there will be a further decline in bank share prices has continued to grow this month, suggesting they do not believe the worst is over in the sub-prime crisis.

Google-backed solar startup picks up steam, raises $130 million.

The perils of overestimating emerging markets: "But the history of emerging markets is littered with crises as economies have overheated," says The Economist.

On Treasury Secretary Paulson's new regulatory scheme for the nation’s stricken financial markets: "As the press has noted, the plan would consolidate our myriad and overlapping regulators into fewer, bigger ones," says James Surowiecki at The New Yorker magazine. "But the most interesting thing about it is something subtler: a push to move from our current system of regulation — often known as “rules-based”— toward a “principles-based” approach."

Tag it:

What happens when one of the world’s largest banks reports a multi-billion dollar loss? The stock shoots up, of course. The "Citi applause was premature," says Antony Currie at BreakingViews.com.

Click here to read another brilliant piece written by Anatole Kaletsky at The London Times. "There is, however, another apparent consequence of the credit crunch that is less understood and is causing consternation and anxiety, especially in China and other developing countries. This is the upsurge in oil, food and commodity prices, many of which have almost doubled since the credit crunch began last August, even though the causal linkage between soaring commodity prices and a collapsing supply of credit remains obscure."

When Muslims become Christians: There's a widespread belief that the penalty for leaving Islam is death - hence, perhaps, the killing of a British teacher last week. But Shiraz Maher believes attitudes may be softening.

British politics is missing out on the potential of new media, says The Economist.

Another week, another round of late-night monologues and political jokes.

Tag it:

The best of the web...

Have you had enough of doom and gloom yet? Now for a bit of optimism...

Some interesting thoughts on the shape of a (possible) U.S. recession.

Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism rips into former Fed Chairman Greenspan. "When Richard Nixon tried to rehabilitate his reputation, he didn't dispute the horrific errors of judgment he made while in office. He instead made useful, substantive intellectual contributions on other fronts. But Greenspan is an ideologue and intellectually bankrupt, so this option may not be open to him."

The dollar is at risk of being surpassed by the euro as the world's leading reserve currency in the next seven years, according to a study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

How generous is your government?

Tag it:

Anatole Kaletsky, a columnist at The London Times, argues that recession is unlikely if the U.S. economy gets through the next two crucial months.

Looks like this is the end of the Spanish bull run. Ismael Clemente, head of Deutsche Bank's property arm RREEF in Spain, told a panel of experts in Madrid that foreign banks were now dumping Spansih mortgaged debt at a 40% discount.

Pondering the crisis, and peddling a new paradigm. George Soros says that America will pay for its “market fundamentalism”, which was “no better than Marxist dogma”.

Tag it:

Some interesting finds for ThePanelist.com readers . . .

There Is No Gas Shortage! But Washington, Wall Street, and ethanol and oil and gas companies want you to think there is, says automotive expert Ed Wallace.

An expert asks an Ecuador court to fine Chevron up to $16 billion.

Is the current financial crisis the fault of academics and their insidious models? Blame your business school professor!

Slideshow: Chinese pollution.

The pinnacle of business journalism?

Tag it:

A cartoon explaining why Mr. swashbuckling capitalist is so smart.

Should you get ready for an era of lower returns for all of Wall Street?

Rather than waging old debates about tax cuts versus spending increases, policymakers ought to be discussing how to reform the financial system so that it serves the rest of the economy, instead of feeding off it and destabilizing it.

Want to have a look at the priciest cities in the world? Click here.

Coffee may cut the risk of dementia by blocking the damage cholesterol can inflict on the body, research suggests.

Tag it:

A U.S.-based company that has controversially laid claim to nearly all of the Arctic Ocean's undersea oil said Thursday that new geological data suggests a "potentially vast" petroleum resource of 400 billion barrels.

As the election nears, the mainstream media, unable this time to make an issue out of Iraq, are focusing on the economy on behalf of the Democrats.

The U.S. Federal Reserve is examining the Nordic bank nationalizations of the 1990s as a possible interim solution to the US financial crisis.

"The current crisis is like putting together the world’s largest jigsaw puzzle and recognizing you’ve completed the borders and a lot of the interior patterns," says bond guru Bill Gross.

April fools day cartoon...

Tag it: