by Frank James
A quick guided tour of some of the morning’s most important, most interesting, or both, Washington-related stories.
Experts are worried that rising credit-card debt delinquencies are signaling worse to come in the credit crunch as the aftershocks of the subprime mortgage crisis spread.
Lawmakers around the country are trying to constrain high real-estate property taxes which rose greatly during the housing boom but are declining more slowly than housing prices.
Central Intelligence Agency officials destroyed the interrogation videotapes involving high-value al Qaeda detainees, even after the then-CIA director warned against it, because they believed they would be abandoned by the nation’s political leadership if the tapes ever became public. U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker said the reduced violence in that nation has led to new challenges – the absorption of returning refugees and the continued gap between reality and expectations in terms of political reconciliation.
Holiday spending appears to be better than many analysts had feared based on consumer sentiment.
U.S. officials acknowledge that much of the $5 billion in military aid that was sent to Pakistan to assist the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban was wasted, spent on military systems to counter India, because of the lack of sufficient oversight and controls.
With Christmas fast approaching, many of the presidential candidates kept up their efforts to the cusp of Christmas Eve, though they veered away from attacks on opponents, choosing instead to spread holiday cheer or talk up their candidacies.
U.S. officials ignored years of warnings from defense and security experts about the dangers presented by private-security contractors, More Top Picks Best Acupressure Pillows For Neck Tension
The declining U.S. dollar is effecting people globally, causing lost jobs and reduced earnings for many whose livelihoods are somehow tied to the dollar because of falling exports to the U.S. and other trends.