Good morning. Looks like GMAC will get more capital from the Treasury. That and more to start the day:
More money for GMAC (Detroit News)
The Treasury Department plans to announce early this afternoon that it will give GMAC Inc. around $3.5 billion in additional capital, sources said.
Detroit-based GMAC and the Treasury Department have been in talks for months to finalize the amount of money the company would receive. The Treasury Department said earlier this year it would invest up to $5.6 billion more in GMAC — on top of $13.4 billion GMAC has received over the last year.
US had prior intelligence on “Nigerian” plot (PBS NewsHour)
The United States had a variety of information that could have prevented a would-be bomber from boarding a Northwest Airlines flight bound for Detroit on Christmas Day, but failed to share it properly among its intelligence agencies, according to multiple reports out Wednesday morning.
The Dutch will begin using full-body scanners for flyers (Associated Press)
“It is not exaggerating to say the world has escaped a disaster,” Interior Minister Guusje Ter Horst told a news conference.
She said the U.S. had not wanted these scanners to be used previously because of privacy concerns but said the Obama administration in Washington now agreed that “all possible measures will be used on flights to the U.S.”
Wall Street’s bonus baby steps (CNN Money)
A year after taxpayers saved the finance industry from collapse, the big banks will hand out billions of dollars in bonuses in the coming weeks — at a time where unemployment tops 10% and many people are still losing their homes to foreclosures. To say this rankles in some quarters is an understatement.
“There is a need to show restraint considering the unusual circumstances of the past year or so,” said Tim Smith, a senior vice president at socially responsible investment firm Walden Asset Management in Boston. “That’s what you’re not seeing right now.”
How e-books will change reading and writing (NPR)
“When printed books first became popular, thanks to Gutenberg’s press, you saw this great expansion of eloquence and experimentation,” says Carr. “All of which came out of the fact that here was a technology that encouraged people to read deeply, with great concentration and focus. And as we move to the new technology of the screen … it has a very different effect, an almost opposite effect, and you will see a retreat from the sophistication and eloquence that characterized the printed page.”
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