Yahoo Finance Tech Ticker video and article here:

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/132132/How-the-Mighty-Have-Fallen-Buffett-Other-Legends-Feel-Bear-Market-Bite?tickers=BRK-A,FMAGX,CGMFX,LMVTX,IEP,LM,GS

• Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway): -43%
• Ken Hebner (CMG Focus Fund) -56%
• Harry Lange (Fidelity Magellan): -59%
• Bill Miller (Legg Mason Value Trust) -50%
• Ken Griffin (Citadel): -44%
• Carl Icahn (Icahn Enterprises): -81%
• T. Boone Pickens: Down $2 billion since July
• Kirk Kerkorian: Down $693 million on his Ford shares alone

“We’re investing to facilitate transactions. We’re doing deals to make money,” David Lawee, vice president of business development at Google, said at the event. Lawee also confirmed that Google will launch its own venture fund to back promising start-up companies.

http://blogs.wsj.com/biztech/2008/11/20/tech-giants-eyeing-start-ups-despite-downturn/?mod=djemTECH

Bank of America(BAC Quote – Cramer on BAC – Stock Picks) CEO Ken Lewis slammed a potential auto-industry bailout this Tuesday. The banking bigwig made his remarks just as auto executives from GM (GM Quote – Cramer on GM – Stock Picks), Ford(F Quote – Cramer on F – Stock Picks) and Chrysler were on Capitol Hill begging for a $25 billion emergency bridge loan to avert a collapse of one or more of their companies.

“I think there’s one too many” automakers, Lewis said to the Detroit Economic Club during a meeting in Cobo Center, the downtown convention center that’s home to the North American International Auto Show each January.

“I think the American people are suspect of just giving more money and buying more time,” he told reporters following the speech, according to The Associated Press. “They want to see that the companies have, in fact, changed and the strategies have changed.”

Sorry Ken, but bankers in glass houses shouldn’t toss grenades.

Lewis shouldn’t balk at anyone getting a handout, after nine large banks, including Bank of America, Wells Fargo(WFC Quote – Cramer on WFC – Stock Picks), Citigroup(C Quote – Cramer on C – Stock Picks) and JPMorgan Chase(JPM Quote – Cramer on JPM – Stock Picks), received $125 billion last month.

Oh, and what did Lewis do with the $25 billion of the government’s largesse that you said you didn’t need? Instead of lending it out to Americans being crushed by the credit crisis, like he was supposed to do, he announced this week that Bank of America is buying more shares of China Construction Bank, raising its stake to 19.1% of the company.

http://www.thestreet.com/story/10449331/1/the-five-dumbest-things-on-wall-street-nov-21.html?puc=_tscrss

For most of the decade, Silicon Valley technology startups have assumed that Google would pay their legal bills. Not literally, mind you, but rather by taking on the big, high-profile cases about fair use, interoperability, and other digital intellectual property issues that would set precedents that all disruptive innovators could rely on.

Well, Google just put the Valley on notice that the free ride is over, which means more legal burdens for smaller technology companies that previously depended on Google clearing a path for them.

Late last month, Google announced a settlement in its lawsuit with book publishers and authors over its Google Book Search offering. At the heart of the dispute is the question of whether scanning copyrighted books in order to index them violates copyright law, as the publishers argued, or is permissible as a fair use, as Google argued. If approved by the court, the $125 million settlement would buy Google — and only Google — permission not just to scan books for indexing purposes, but also to expand Book Search to provide more access to the scanned books.

Google has consistently led the way on a number of cases paving the way for other companies to benefit from legal precendent.

Until now. By settling rather than taking the case all the way (many copyright experts thought Google had a good chance of winning), Google has solved its own copyright problem — but not anyone else’s. Without a legal precedent about the copyright status of book scanning, future innovators are left to defend their own copyright lawsuits. In essence, Google has left its former copyright adversaries to maul any competitors that want to follow its lead.

ok ok so this is a digression from the usual, but give me a break the dow is getting a little depressing right now…http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/11/further-thoughts-google-book-search-settlement

Great to look at.  But for over $30k?  Delayed?  This is the last thing people need right now.

Chevy Volt Plug-In Hybrid Car
The GM Volt plug-in hybrid was supposed to hit showrooms in 2010 for $30,000. Well, apparently it’s not that easy to redesign wipers, stereos and other electrical accessories so they drain as little juice as possible from the battery. GM has announced that the first generation Volt will be “closer to $35,000″. The good news is that the late 2010 deadline hasn’t been officially pushed back, though GM says that if it can’t make it, the car might be delayed until the Spring of 2011.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/02/chevrolet_gm_volt_price_goes_up_wipers_stereo.php

Perhaps the confidence can now be expressed by confusion and meltdown?

On the bright side, stocks rallied in Asia:

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) — Most Asian markets rebounded Friday after days of sharp declines in stocks around the world as investors scooped up battered financial and technology shares.

Entire Article here:

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/081121/world_markets.html

Some great information from Seeking Alpha on when we might be able to predict a decline:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/106668-four-commonsense-clues-to-a-genuine-market-bottom?source=front_page_most_popular_articles

1. If Energy prices continued to slide lower Here they are now;

2. Stock prices reach book values (defined assets minus liabilities)

3. Unemployment levels stabilize

The last one makes no sense to me right now perhaps that means its time to sleep.  Regardless if we can recognize characterstics of a bottom, it is unclear when that bottom will actually happen, it does not look like anytime soon.

Entire story here: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1859381,00.html

Shaukat Tarin, adviser to the prime minister, told reporters Saturday that the country will get the loan to help avoid defaulting on its international debt as credit crisis widens on declining market value of the equities.

The announcement by the top official in Pakistan ahead of G20 summit in Washington, D.C., where the presidents and prime ministers of rich and emerging economies are going to develop a common approach to combating the global economic crisis.

Recently, IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn urged leaders of the industrialized and developing economies to take measure to help counter the global economic slowdown.

He mentioned in his letter to the leaders on November 6 that emerging markets were now under great stress as the “capital flows that have sustained growth dry up across the board. The international community must take action.”

Tarin reportedly said that Pakistan would initially get $4 billion by the end of this year, which will be a part of 23-month deal with IMF, and it would start repaying the loan in 2011, according to AFP news agency.

The South Asian country has experienced a growth of up to 8 percent in the last few years, mainly led by consumer financing sector.

Under the IMF deal, the country will have to reduce the size of the government, slash its expenses on development and cutback on a few subsidies crucial for certain sectors.

Pakistan requires up to $4.5 billion to tackle with its debt payment crisis as its currency has lost value and its foreign-exchange reserves have contracted by as much as 75 percent in the last 12 months to $3.5 billion last week.

http://thepiratebay.org/

At the time of publication, The Pirate Bay tracks 25.064.271 peers, divided over close to 1.856.243 torrent files. Quite an accomplishment when you consider that it is not even 2 months ago since they the 15 million mark. Coincidentally, the server that tracks the statistics crashed due to a hard drive failure, right around the time they reached the new milestone.

Hollywood will probably not be too happy when they hear that the Swedish deviant has broken yet another record, but Peter and the other Pirate Bay founders couldn’t care less what they think. Peter has a message for them though: “Stop hating the future. Be smart and come over from the dark side.”

Read full story here: http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-sees-traffic-and-peers-surge-081115/

US auto execs plead for Congress to fund bailout

U.S. auto executives warned Congress on Tuesday that their industry was teetering on the brink of disaster as they pleaded for a $25 billion aid package despite political opposition to another multibillion-dollar government bailout.