Movie review : Body of Lies (2008)

Big Stars Wielding an Array of Accents, Fighting the War on Terrorism
By A. O. SCOTT

Ridley Scott’s new movie, “Body of Lies,” raises a potentially disturbing question. If terrorism has become boring, does that mean the terrorists have won? Or, conversely, is the grinding tedium of this film good news for our side, evidence of the awesome might of Western popular culture, which can turn even the most intransigent and bloodthirsty real-world villains into fodder for busy, contrived and lifeless action thrillers?

The second answer seems more plausible, but there are other puzzles in “Body of Lies” that are not so easily solved and that may distract from sober contemplation of geopolitical pseudorealities. Such as: what exactly is going on with Leonardo DiCaprio’s accent, or Russell Crowe’s body mass index? Mr. DiCaprio, playing a high-strung C.I.A. operative named Roger Ferris, once again shows his commitment to full employment for dialect coaches, following the mock-Afrikaans of “Blood Diamond” and the South Boston braying of “The Departed” with some good-old-boy inflections that are helpfully identified by Mr. Crowe’s character as originating in North Carolina.

Mr. Crowe, meanwhile, plays Ferris’s supervisor, Ed Hoffman, who lives somewhere around Washington and has no specified regional background to explain his odd little drawl. At times Mr. Crowe, showing the linguistic chameleonism that is the birthright of every Australian actor, spits out his words with an emphatic twanginess that suggests, if not George W. Bush himself, then perhaps Jon Stewart impersonating Mr. Bush. It’s possible that this resemblance is meant to imply a parallel between the president and Hoffman, who is immune to self-doubt and allergic to second thoughts about the righteousness of his actions.

And also, it appears, to exercise (unlike the president). With an unusual display of impish delight, Mr. Crowe throws himself into the physicality of his character, a schlubby, tubby suburban dad whose near-parodic commitment to domestic routine contrasts amusingly with his professional fanaticism. Using a hands-free cellphone, Hoffman orchestrates elaborate schemes and double-crosses while going about his daily paterfamilias business: loading his kids into the minivan, helping his young son in the bathroom and tearing open a bag of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers on the sidelines of his daughter’s soccer game.

On the phone, and in his occasional surprise visits to Ferris in the field, Hoffman is fighting a war whose terms he lays out in a few set-piece speeches. The gist is that no one is innocent and that the ends justify the means. Deceit, torture, the sacrifice of non-American lives — all is permissible in the fight against a shadowy superjihadist named Al-Saleem (Alon Aboutboul), head of a network carrying out suicide attacks around Europe. The contradictions and unintended consequences of Hoffman’s tactics are borne by Ferris, who finds his credibility undermined, his friends and colleagues at risk and his life in danger.

All of which would be fine if “Body of Lies” — with a screenplay by William Monahan (“The Departed”) and based on a novel by David Ignatius, a columnist at The Washington Post — were clearer about its themes or its plot. As it is, the movie is a hodgepodge of borrowings and half-cooked ideas, flung together into a feverishly edited jet-setting exercise in purposeless intensity. Place names flash onto the screen — Amman! Amsterdam! Langley! — and shiny black S.U.V.’s and Mercedes sedans screech through teeming streets or kick up dust clouds on empty desert roads. From time to time an orange fireball erupts, and everything shows up on the satellite surveillance screens back at headquarters.

In Jordan, Ferris flirts with Aisha (Golshifteh Farahani), an Iranian refugee who works as a nurse and who has even less of an organic relation to the narrative than poor Vera Farmiga did in “The Departed.” The dramatic — I daresay the erotic — center of “Body of Lies” is an all-male triangle involving Ferris, Hoffman and Hani (Mark Strong), the head of Jordanian intelligence. Mr. Strong, also seen in the similar and superior “Syriana,” is a marvel of exotic suavity and cool insinuation. Hani calls Ferris “my dear” and may be more sincere in his affection than the ideologically driven Hoffman, who refers to his younger colleague more generically as “buddy.”

If the psychological tensions linking these three were allowed time and space to develop, “Body of Lies” might have been a more surprising and interesting specimen of its genre. Instead, it throws out a few gestures toward topicality — an opening quote from the W. H. Auden poem that flew around the Internet just after 9/11; glances toward Gitmo and the Green Zone; an awkward dinner-table spat about American foreign policy — without saying much of anything. Mr. Scott’s professionalism is, as ever, present in every frame and scene, but this time it seems singularly untethered from anything like zeal, conviction or even curiosity.

“Body of Lies” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has swearing and graphic violence.

BODY OF LIES

Opens on Friday nationwide.

Directed by Ridley Scott; written by William Monahan, based on the novel by David Ignatius; director of photography, Alexander Witt; edited by Pietro Scalia; music by Marc Streitenfeld; production designer, Arthur Max; produced by Donald De Line and Mr. Scott; released by Warner Brothers Pictures. Running time: 2 hours 6 minutes.

WITH: Leonardo DiCaprio (Roger Ferris), Russell Crowe (Ed Hoffman), Mark Strong (Hani), Golshifteh Farahani (Aisha), Oscar Isaac (Bassam), Simon McBurney (Garland), Alon Aboutboul (Al-Saleem) and Ali Suliman (Omar Sadiki).

Party Guests With Jazzy Moves and Political Leanings

By ROSLYN SULCAS

Dre.dance has a lot going for it. Since one of its artistic directors is Taye Diggs — yes, the one on ABC’s “Private Practice” — there’s a certain glamour attached to the enterprise. The company has fine dancers. And in concert programs shown over the last few years, it has offered unpretentious and generally well-made work.

In “the people,” performed at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center on Saturday night, Mr. Diggs and his co-artistic director, Andrew Palermo, try something different. An hourlong show with a political theme, with a score commissioned from the jazz composer Rob Reddy , it’s both less successful than dre.dance previous ventures and more intriguing.

Although the program says that the work uses a party setting, “the people” feels nonnarrative; the dancers move through ensemble pieces and smaller groupings in front of Mr. Reddy and his musicians in recurrent, stylized movements: jazzy hip swivels, feet pivoting and hands crossing and gesturing in front of the face.

The solos and duos — frequently overlaid by snippets of recorded political texts by Eleanor Roosevelt, President Ronald Reagan, Senator Barack Obama and others — are more nuanced and resonant, sensitive responses to the idiosyncratic rhythms and instrument pairings of Mr. Reddy’s score.

But there is much that feels extraneous: the dancer who offers puzzling bits of speech, the repetitive-movement vocabulary, the ironic bits of ballet, the sluggishly paced final section. “The people” is a 30-minute dance trapped in an hourlong body; Mr. Diggs and Mr. Palermo are surely capable of setting it free.

Couscous Shows Its Sweet Side

By MARK BITTMAN

“COUSCOUS” is one of the most misunderstood words in cooking. The problem is that it’s an ingredient and a dish using that ingredient. (It’s as if “flour” were used for a dish called “flour.”)

So. Couscous the dish, is most commonly a highly seasoned stew with lamb and vegetables, maybe with chickpeas (or with chickpeas and no lamb; or with fish; and so on), with the couscous — not the dish, the ingredient — steamed above the stew, or cooked separately from it and served with it.

And couscous the product is not, as many think, a grain. It’s a small semolina pasta, traditionally hand-rolled but now usually made by machine. But it’s often cooked and served like a grain.

Can you make anything with couscous besides couscous? Yes. Here it is.

This dessert is loosely based on the Moroccan seffa, essentially sweetened couscous sprinkled with rosewater. I’ve had it seasoned in a lot of different ways — with almonds, with citrus, with herbs, with dried fruit, with honey, with cream, and with more or less sugar. It’s a blank canvas, and you can season it the way you like.

I played around with most of these combinations and finally found that the version I like best starts with almond milk. You can make almond milk yourself, and sometimes people do. (Grind almonds with water; soak a bit; strain.) But since you can buy pretty decent almond milk just about anywhere you can buy soy milk, that’s what I do.

When couscous is cooked that way it gains a lovely, not-too-subtle almond flavor that takes to the other seasonings beautifully. Served warm, with a little rosewater, the dish is unlike most American desserts, but not that far from rice pudding. (Not everyone loves rosewater, but a sprinkling of it is exotic beyond belief, almost transporting.) The variation, with citrus and mint, is a close second. In any case, either of these will give you an appreciation for couscous in a role beyond lamb stew.

Global Markets Jump on Vows of New Capital

By DAVID JOLLY and BETTINA WASSENER

PARIS — Banking stocks led equity markets higher Monday in Europe and Asia after European leaders announced plans to inject new capital into troubled financial institutions and guarantee interbank lending, and central banks announced new measures aimed at restarting frozen credit markets.

In early afternoon trading, the FTSE 100 index in London was up 4.86 percent and the CAC-40 added 6.1 percent in Paris. The DAX in Frankfurt rose 6.9 percent.

Trading in Standard & Poor’s 500 index futures suggested Wall Street stocks would gain as much as 6 percent at the opening. The bond market was closed Monday for the Columbus Day holiday.

Deutsche Bank rose nearly 25 percent in Frankfurt, while BNP Paribas and other major French banks rose more than 6 percent.

Royal Bank of Scotland, which is raising billions of pounds worth of new equity with British government backing, rose more than 5 percent.

In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng index bounced 9.6 percent higher. The S&P/ASX 200 index in Sydney closed up 5.6 percent. Tokyo markets, which lost about a quarter of their value last week, were closed Monday for a national holiday.

In Moscow trading, the Micex index rose 4.5 percent.

“We’re extremely cautious,” Philippe Gijsels, senior equity strategist at Fortis Global Markets in Brussels, said. “This looks like the start of a typical bear-market rally.” He said measures Group of 7 countries announced over the weekend had helped banking stocks, but that the market had been due for a rally after major indexes posted some of their worst declines last week.

“To repair the market will take some time,” he said. “The problem is that the financial problem has now become a real economic problem. The damage has been done.”

“The G-7 was responding to a crisis of confidence,” David Thébault, head of derivative sales at Global Equities in Paris, said, comparing the new measures to “a defibrillator applied to a heart attack patient.” “We can see the end of the financial crisis, but at the price of an economic crisis,” he added. “But it’s better to have an economic crisis than to have the entire system endangered.”

Meeting in Paris late Sunday, officials European financial and political leaders agreed late Sunday to a plan that would inject billions of euros into their banks in a bid to restore confidence to the teetering financial system.

Taking their cue from a rescue plan announced last week by Britain, the European countries led by Germany and France pledged to take equity stakes in distressed banks and vowed to guarantee bank lending for periods up to five years. Both France and Germany were planning to unveil national rescue packages on Monday worth hundreds of billions of euros, officials said.

The Federal Reserve said early Monday in Washington that it would create swap lines with the Bank of England, the European Central Bank and the Swiss National Bank “to accommodate whatever quantity of U.S. dollar funding is demanded.”

The Bank of Japan, it said, will consider the introduction of similar measures.

Stocks in Sydney rose a day after Australian and New Zealand governments joined the scramble to calm markets, saying they would guarantee all bank deposits and some interbank lending.

Elsewhere, the Kospi index in South Korea rose 3.8 percent, the Straits Times index in Singapore rose 4.2 percent. In Hong Kong, financial secretary John Tsang warned of an increased risk of recession in 2009 because of the global financial crisis, and PCCW, a leading telecommunications company, on Sunday scrapped the planned partial sale of its HKT unit, citing the market upheaval. The company’s stock slumped nearly 9 percent to its lowest level since 1999.

The dollar lost ground against other major currencies. The euro rose to $1.3637 from $1.3408 late Friday in New York, while the British pound rose to $1.7151 from $1.7042. The dollar slipped to 100.58 yen from 100.68 and fell to 1.1345 Swiss francs from 1.1388.

U.S. crude oil for November delivery rose $3.96, or 3.1 percent, to $80.78 a barrel.

David Jolly reported from Paris and Bettina Wassener from Hong Kong.

Bold Pledges From Leaders, but Investors Await Details

By MARK LANDLER and KATRIN BENNHOLD

WASHINGTON — After a whirl of emergency meetings, government leaders on both sides of the Atlantic made bold promises to rescue the global financial system, but were still racing to work out the details to calm battered stock markets before they opened on Monday morning.

In the wake of the carnage in last week’s markets, European countries pledged to inject capital into ailing banks and guarantee some forms of bank debt, a step analysts said was critical to restoring lending between banks and easing a crisis of confidence.

Europe’s action throws the spotlight back to the United States, where officials said Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. was studying the feasibility of backing up loans between banks here. Lending between banks is considered crucial to the smooth operation of the financial system and the broader economy, but it has slowed considerably because banks are concerned about being repaid should the other bank run into financial trouble.

The Treasury was not expected to announce anything before Monday, officials said. But the government was helping an American financial giant, Morgan Stanley, in its effort to salvage a $9 billion investment by a Japanese bank, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial.

The initial reaction of investors was positive, with stocks up in several Asian markets and stock futures in the United States — which are bets on the direction of the market before its opening — higher as well. The early signs, after one of the worst weeks ever for stock markets, are not a definitive shift in sentiment but were seen as a potential hope that the markets may at least stop their free fall.

“It’s going to take actions more than words at this time, given the extreme distress that the money markets are in and the extreme distress that the equity markets were in,” said Douglas Peta, a market strategist at J.& W. Seligman & Company. He predicted further drops in the stock and bond markets; the Dow Jones industrial average fell 18 percent last week.

But there were some significant steps. In Paris, European leaders agreed to a unified plan that would inject billions of euros into their banks and guarantee bank debt for periods up to five years. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, who led the talks in the 18th-century Élysée Palace, said governments would announce concrete rescue plans tailored to their national circumstances on Monday simultaneously.

“We need concrete measures, we need unity,” Mr. Sarkozy declared. “That’s what we achieved today.”

Leaders of the 15 countries that use the euro did not put a price tag on any of their promises — contrary to Britain, where last week Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced $255 billion in government funds and other measures to stabilize its banks, or the United States, where a $700 billion bailout plan will now be used partly to infuse banks with fresh capital.

The United States is overhauling its rescue package, which had originally focused on buying distressed assets from banks. Mr. Paulson said on Friday the government would now take equity stakes in banks; the government’s role in the Morgan Stanley negotiations may be an early test of the Treasury’s retooled strategy.

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White House overhauling rescue plan

By Edmund L. Andrews and Mark Landler

WASHINGTON: As international leaders gathered here on Saturday to grapple with the global financial crisis, the Bush administration embarked on an overhaul of its own strategy for rescuing the foundering financial system.

Two weeks after persuading Congress to let it spend $700 billion to buy distressed securities tied to mortgages, the Bush administration has put that idea aside in favor of a new approach that would have the government inject capital directly into the nation's banks — in effect, partially nationalizing the industry.

As recently as Sept. 23, senior officials had publicly derided proposals by Democrats to have the government take ownership stakes in banks.

The Treasury Department's surprising turnaround on the issue of buying stock in banks, which has now become its primary focus, has raised questions about whether the administration squandered valuable time in trying to sell Congress on a plan that officials had failed to think through in advance.

It has also raised questions about whether the administration's deep philosophical aversion to government ownership in private companies hindered its ability to look at all options for stabilizing the markets.

Some experts also contend that Treasury's decision last month to not use taxpayer money to save Lehman Brothers worsened the panic that quickly metastasized into an international crisis.

The administration's new focus was announced late Friday as part of a rescue plan in coordination with six of the world's richest nations. It came during a week when the Dow Jones industrial average plummeted 18 percent, one of the worst weeks in stock market history.

While the Treasury says it still plans to buy distressed assets, the scope of that plan is unclear. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr. has refused to say whether the capital infusion program for banks would be bigger than the original plan to buy troubled assets.

Still, Treasury has directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-controlled mortgage giants, to ramp up their purchases of hard-to-sell mortgage bonds, in what could be a speedier and less formal process than the auctions proposed by the Treasury.

Underscoring the gravity of the situation, President George W. Bush convened an early morning meeting at the White House on Saturday with finance ministers from the Group of 7 industrialized countries.

"All of us recognize that this is a serious global crisis, and therefore requires a serious global response, for the good of our people," Bush said afterward in the Rose Garden, flanked by the ministers, who are in Washington for the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Bush said the countries had agreed to general principles to respond to the crisis, including working to prevent the collapse of important financial institutions and protecting the deposits of savers. But he offered no details on other measures, suggesting that there were still differences among countries about which steps to take to shore up their respective financial systems.

To some extent, the effort to agree on a coordinated plan is being driven less by the hope that such measures will carry more punch than by the fear that nations acting alone could destabilize the system.

Those worries grew in recent days when Iceland seized its three major banks, which were failing, and appeared to guarantee the deposits of Icelanders over those of foreigners. That provoked a fierce reaction from Britain, which is now in talks with Iceland to get back the deposits of British citizens.

With the United States and Europe working together on ways to secure their banking systems, economists are concerned that money may flow out of other countries, particularly emerging markets, to Western countries if investors decide that those markets are not as safe.

The United States sought to reassure these countries in a meeting on Saturday evening of the Group of 20, which includes countries with large emerging markets, like China and Russia.

"We want to reaffirm, reinforce our commitment that we're going to take these actions in a way that doesn't undermine the economies of other countries," said David McCormick, the under secretary of the Treasury for international affairs.

Like the United States, Britain plans to provide capital directly to banks. But the United States and other countries have not adopted Britain's proposal to guarantee lending between banks as a way to unlock the credit market.

Germany has been reluctant to put state capital directly into banks, though officials said there were signs of movement in that position on Saturday. Europeans leaders were scheduled to meet in Paris on Sunday, amid reports that Germany may announce a large rescue plan of its own.

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Euro-zone leaders to meet over financial crisis

PARIS, France (AP) -- European leaders meet Sunday in search of a common response to a spreading financial crisis that has ricocheted across the Atlantic to their shores and to try to preserve the bloc's unity.

It could be a complex exercise for the 15 heads of state or government of the euro-zone, where the euro currency is used, because of the varied financial landscapes in each country.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, stressing the need for a synchronized response, said Saturday that a "common tool box" could be the outcome. Individual countries can use these "tools" to respond to their particular situation, she said.

"We need a common approach in Europe but we must be able to adapt to each national situation in a flexible way," she said after a meeting outside Paris with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Both Merkel and Sarkozy stressed that coordination is vital to taming the crisis and putting an end to the go-it-alone approach that has predominated thus far in Europe.

France, the current president of the European Union, and Germany have long been considered the motor for European construction. Decisions made by the euro-zone would likely be later enlarged to include other members of the 27-nation EU.

British Prime Minister Gordan Brown was meeting with Sarkozy ahead of the summit. Britain is not in the euro-zone.

Sarkozy and Merkel each rejected as out of the question any common financial rescue fund based on the U.S. model approved last week.

"The crisis demands extremely rapid responses" and a "European fund would pose gigantic problems" in decision-making among so many nations, Sarkozy said at a news conference with Merkel.

Merkel did not exclude support for banks seeking it but said in that case conditions would be attached. "One cannot talk of nationalization," she said, adding nothing has yet been decided on the subject.

Monday is when decisions should be put into practice nationally, for Germany at least, Merkel said. She called taking things to the national level the "third step" after a weekend meeting in Washington of finance ministers from the Group of Seven -- Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and the U.S.

President Bush later appealed for a global approach to the crisis that he said was needed in an interconnected world.

So far, European countries have reacted diversely on a case by case basis.

Ireland's unilateral move to guarantee all bank deposits caught other EU nations off balance and fearing a flight of capital to the Emerald Isles.

Britain announced a $88 billion plan to partly nationalize major banks and promised to guarantee a further $438 billion in loans to shore up the banking sector. The Belgian-Dutch bank Fortis got a bailout and so did lender Dexia SA, helped by France, Belgium and Luxembourg.

In Japan, hope fades for disposable workers

By Norimitsu Onishi

OSAKA, Japan: With job signs stuck to their vans' windshields and sliding side doors left open in expectation, the recruiters were sizing up the potential hires at Japan's largest day labor market here recently.

By 4:30 a.m., thousands of aging day laborers had spilled out of the neighborhood's flophouses and homeless shelters, or risen from its parks and streets, to form a potential work force of mostly graying men.

A sign on one blue van, barely legible in the twilight, offered a 15-day construction job paying $95 a day, minus $33 in room and board. Although the terms were comparatively decent, the recruiter sitting in a folding chair in front of the blue van had found only one suitably young laborer by 5 a.m. Most were above the unwritten cutoff age of 55.

"It's really hard to use the men here because they've gotten old," said the recruiter, Takuya Nakamae, 55, turning his head toward his prize catch, a recruit in his 30s. "If you're this young, everybody wants you and you get plenty of offers. Just look at how young you are!"

And yet it was the older men who really knew how to work, he said, adding: "They're the ones who worked during Japan's decades of economic boom, so they know the ins and outs of every job. It's just that they don't have the strength anymore."

Nowadays, few young men gravitate here, the Airin district of Osaka. Little is being built in Japan's stagnant economy, and young day laborers or part-time workers find jobs by registering their cellphone numbers with temporary employment agencies.

Many of the older men who remain arrived here to work on the 1970 Expo in Osaka, which, like the Tokyo Olympics six years earlier, became a symbol of postwar Japan's rebirth. Over the decades, they left to work on bridges, buildings and highways all over the country, performing the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs in helping build Japan. Some made it out of here and moved on to steadier jobs and lives.

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Red Chard, Potato and White Bean Ragout

By MARTHA ROSE SHULMAN

This comforting stew makes a hearty meal when served with a salad and crusty bread.

1 cup dried white beans, soaked for 6 hours or overnight in 1 quart water

A bouquet garni made with 1 bay leaf, a couple of sprigs of fresh thyme, and a Parmesan rind, tied together with kitchen string

Salt

1 generous bunch red chard (3/4 to 1 pound)

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped

2 to 4 garlic cloves (to taste), sliced

1 pound Yukon gold potatoes, scrubbed and cut into 1/2-inch dice

1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves

Freshly ground pepper

1 to 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley (optional)

Freshly grated Parmesan cheese for serving

1. Drain the beans and combine with 1 quart of fresh water in a casserole or Dutch oven. Bring to a simmer. Skim off any foam, then add the bouquet garni. Reduce the heat, cover and simmer 1 hour. Add 1 teaspoon salt.

2. Meanwhile, stem and clean the red chard leaves in 2 changes of water. Rinse the stems and dice. Set aside. Cut the leaves in ribbons, or coarsely chop, and set aside.

3. Heat the olive oil in a heavy nonstick skillet over medium heat and add the onion and chard stems. Cook, stirring often, until tender, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and continue to cook, stirring, until the garlic is fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the potatoes and stir together, then transfer to the pot with the beans. Bring back to a simmer, cover and simmer 30 minutes, or until the potatoes and beans are tender. Salt to taste.

4. Add the chard and thyme leaves to the pot, cover and simmer for 15 minutes. The chard should be very tender. Stir in freshly ground pepper to taste and the parsley. Taste, adjust seasonings and serve, passing the Parmesan to sprinkle on the top.

Yield: Serves 4 to 6

Advance preparation: The dish will keep for 3 or 4 days in the refrigerator. If you are making it ahead, make it through Step 3 and proceed with Step 4 shortly before serving, so that the color of the chard doesn’t fade too much.

Economic Uncertainty Spreads

By KEITH BRADSHER and CARTER DOUGHERTY

In Korea, exporters are suddenly struggling.

In India, industrial growth has slowed drastically.

In Sweden, Volvo is cutting thousands of jobs.

In Japan, which thought it was immune to the market chaos, a credit squeeze seems to be forcing small companies into bankruptcy.

Around the world, fears of recession have fed a stock market panic, as worries about toxic assets spread from the financial sector to the credit markets and now to the broader economy.

Companies from Germany to Asia are hoarding cash because credit markets are tight. The sheer uncertainty of it all is upending plans for businesses to expand. Consumers have pulled back, just as they received some relief from high oil prices.

Even creditworthy companies cannot get money in Europe. And across Asia, export growth has slowed to a crawl or started declining in real terms — and that was before American retailers announced steep sales declines on Wednesday.

The United States, once the engine of the global economy, is ailing and in no position to inspire confidence, much less point the way around or out of recession. Americans are seen as both the root of the problem, and powerless to solve it.

But no government effort has been able to stanch the bleeding — even the unprecedented coordination of central banks on three continents, which only generates more fear.

The liquidity provided by the European Central Bank seems to be going through a revolving door. After releasing billions of euros into the market, the bank took in a record 102.8 billion euros on Sept. 30 and 64.4 billion euros on Thursday for banks. Instead of lending their spare cash to each other or the rest of the economy, banks have parked it with the central bank at extraordinarily low interest rates.

“No sane banker with good contacts and clients would do this,” Erik Nielsen, chief Europe economist at Goldman Sachs in London, said. “It would be a huge arbitrage profit if they wanted to lend, but they don’t.”

The short-lived notion that Asia had decoupled from the United States and was now operating independently of the American business cycle is all but dead. Asia has been the biggest beneficiary of the rise in global trade over the last two decades. Its corporate earnings, real estate prices and much more are dependent on a steady inflow of dollars and euros through exports to the West.

But the International Monetary Fund predicts that growth in the 15 nations that use the euro will fall during the second half of this year and barely rise in 2009. (And that estimate was prepared in advance of this weekend’s meetings of the monetary fund and World Bank in Washington and is already considered out of date by many experts.) Britain’s economy, the only major European one outside the euro zone, is expected to shrink through next year.

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YouTube to Offer TV Shows With Ads Strewn Through

By BRIAN STELTER

After months of experimenting with long-form video, YouTube said on Friday it would start offering full-length episodes of some television shows on its sprawling Web site.

The staggering growth of YouTube — five billion videos were viewed there in July — has come primarily from short videos that last only a few minutes. But Internet users are gradually becoming more comfortable watching longer videos online, prompting YouTube’s commitment to the format.

“This is what the users want,” said Jordan Hoffner, the director of content partnerships for YouTube.

With the addition of TV series like “Dexter,” “Beverly Hills, 90210” and “Star Trek” through a deal with CBS, YouTube is catching up to other Web sites that have promoted long-form video for some time.

Most important for YouTube’s owner, Google, the longer videos will include advertising before, during and after each episode. Google is under pressure to raise more revenue from the nearly four-year-old video sharing site.

The founders of YouTube had resisted so-called preroll, midroll and postroll advertising on short videos for fears that it would alienate users. (Sitting through a 15-second advertisement to watch a 45-second clip is hardly appealing.) But the video ads are now standard on the full-length video sections of network television Web sites.

Shiva Rajaraman, a senior product manager for YouTube, said the company was trying to match the “the right ad format for the right content experience.” For short videos, the company is “very much committed” to in-video overlays, he said. The overlays resemble the banner advertisements that sometimes appear on the bottom of videos.

Short-form videos remain the most popular type online. The measurement firm ComScore reports that the average duration of an online video was 2.9 minutes as of July, the most recent month with data. But the attention spans of viewers are getting (at least slightly) longer: one year ago the average duration of a video was 2.6 minutes.

YouTube’s 10-minute limit on video length has steadily eroded as the site has hosted college lectures, documentary films and promotional episodes of HBO and Showtime series in the last year.

On the CBS page on YouTube, classic TV shows like “MacGyver” are joined by “Dexter” and “Californication,” two series that appear on Showtime, a cable channel subsidiary of CBS. The company is selling its own advertising inventory for the series being shown on YouTube; the two entities will share the revenue.

Copyright concerns linger for some major media companies. CBS’s sister company Viacom — both are controlled by Sumner M. Redstone and his family — is pursuing a $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube and Google over copyright infringement.

As YouTube tries to add TV content, it faces competition, particularly from Hulu, the joint venture between the News Corporation and NBC Universal.

Hulu now reports more than 100 million video streams a month. But that pales in comparison to YouTube. Its five billion video views, as reported by ComScore, represent 44 percent of all online video consumption in the United States.

Earlier this week YouTube added “theater view,” a larger video player for longer content.

G.M. and Chrysler Explore Merger

By BILL VLASIC and ANDREW ROSS SORKIN

DETROIT — General Motors is in preliminary talks about a possible merger with Chrysler, a deal that could drastically remake the landscape of the auto industry by reducing the Big Three of Detroit automakers to the Big Two.

The talks between G.M. and Cerberus Capital Management, the private equity firm that owns Chrysler, began more than a month ago, and the negotiations are not certain to produce a deal. Two people close to the process said the chances of a merger were “50-50” as of Friday and would most likely still take weeks to work out.

A merger would be a historic event, with two of the most iconic names in American industry coming together to survive in an increasingly difficult environment. Both have roots dating back decades in Detroit and, with Ford, long dominated the auto industry — until Japanese and other foreign car makers began making inroads into the American market.

The auto industry is being pummeled from all sides — by high gas prices that have soured consumers on profitable S.U.V.’s, by a softening economy that has scared shoppers away from showrooms, and by tight credit that is making it difficult for willing buyers to obtain loans. Both G.M. and Chrysler have been struggling with product lineups that are out of sync with consumer demand for smaller, more fuel-efficient cars.

General Motors’ stock has fallen from more than $43 a share last year to less than $5, and it is burning through its cash hoard at a rapid rate. Chrysler, as a private company, no longer needs to report its finances.

The meetings between General Motors and Cerberus began more than a month ago, said people familiar with the discussions, and the companies have held several talks involving their most senior executives. Given that both G.M. and Chrysler are struggling, the two sides may determine a merger may not be in their best interests.

The exploratory talks have included debates over various calculations of the savings that would result from a merger, these people said, but neither side has yet to dig into each others’ private financial books and records.

At the same time, Cerberus is continuing to hold talks with other automakers including Nissan and Renault, said people familiar with the discussions. It is unclear at what stage those discussions have reached.

Speculation about a possible bankruptcy filing by G.M. has mounted in recent weeks because of the automaker’s dwindling cash reserves. The automaker had $21 billion in cash on hand at the end of the second quarter, but it was burning through more than $1 billion a month.

The credit rating firm Standard & Poor’s put G.M. on negative credit watch on Thursday.

But G.M. has said it is confident that it can increase its liquidity, and emphasized in a statement released Thursday that it was not considering a bankruptcy filing.

G.M. once commanded about 50 percent of the American vehicle market, but its share so far this year has fallen to 22 percent, according to the research firm Autodata. Chrysler had a market share of about 15 percent before its acquisition in 1998 by Daimler, but its share this year has dwindled to 11 percent.

How government and labor might react to a potential merger of G.M. and Chrysler is unclear. Antitrust questions could be raised, but political issues could be overshadowed by the precarious financial prospects of both automakers.

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WHY spin casting?

Our Commitment
With more than 35 years of experience in white metal casting, The Contenti Company has made a permanent commitment to quality and improvement in spin-casting and investment casting technology. Throughout the years, Contenti has expanded the use of spin-casting equipment for jewelry and other parts to include the casting of engineered, prototype, and industrial parts. Our acquisition of the Frank Pertot Company in 2000 has added two exclusive formulations to our selection of organic mold rubber.
Versatility
Spin-Casting is an asset as a manufacturing process, allowing thermoset plastics, pattern waxes, and metals all to be cast effectively. Fast setting liquid thermoset plastics can be spin-cast as an alternative to injection molding. Plastic production parts can now be manufactured economically when injection molding isn’t cost effective. Pattern wax can also be spin-cast to create wax patterns for investment casting, greatly increasing productivity.
Die Cast Quality
The Contenti Company has always dedicated itself to development and research of new materials and processes for spin-casting. Contenti offers the highest quality tin and lead based casting alloys. These alloys, as well as other metals such as zinc/aluminum alloys, can be used in spin-casting to produce tens, hundreds, and even thousands of high quality production parts. Spin-Casting can offer die cast results in cases where die casting is cost prohibitive.
Technology
Manufacturing isn’t the only area benefiting from Spin-Casting. Rapid prototyping and product development is quickly finding Spin-Casting to be a strong ally. Engineers and product designers can create numerous quick, economical, and functional parts in high strength metal or plastic from delicate stereo-lithography models. Molds can be made and parts can be cast in as little as 3 hours, or for complex parts, rarely more than one day. Design changes in size, function, fit, or appearance can be quickly reproduced without making or wasting a large investment in tooling and machine time.

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WHAT can be spin cast?

a. Machine Components
Industrial Hardware Parts
b. Automobile Parts
Steering Wheel Mold
Tire Balancing Weights and Battery Terminals
Assorted Automobile Restoration Parts
c. Marine Parts
Fishing Lures
Marine Hardware
d. Hardware
Furniture Hardware, Switch Plate & trim parts
Door Handle Plate and Knob
Brackets, Threaded Handles, and Trim Plates
e. Jewelry
Belt Buckles
One Piece Chain with movable links
f. Ornamental Items
Heavy Figurines
Figurehead
Frames, Decorative Items, and Plaques

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How to Spin Cast

STEP 1 Preparing The Mold

• Choose an appropriate mold rubber based on your needs. Place your models on the uncured rubber disc, using a pair of dividers to ensure a symmetrical mold. Insert a center plug into the middle of the rubber disc and arrange locknuts to ensure proper alignment of the two mold halves. Place the rubber disc in a ring frame and dust with mica powder before adding the second mold half.

STEP 2 Vulcanizing The Mold

• Preheat your vulcanizer and mold frame to the correct temperature before inserting the mold. Place the mold frame into the vulcanizer and slowly increase the pressure on the mold using the jack to raise the lower platen. As the pressure increases and the heat is transferred from the vulcanizer platens to the mold, the rubber flows around your models, filling every void and capturing every detail

STEP 3 Gating and Venting

• Once the rubber mold has been vulcanized, removing your models is as easy as removing the mold frame set from the vulcanizer and flexing the rubber mold. Gates are now cut into the rubber mold to direct the molten metal into the model cavities during casting. In addition, vents are cut i nto the mold to prevent the buildup of gasses. The gates and vents are easily cut using a sharp knife and are specifically shaped to take advantage of the spin casting process.

STEP 4 Spin Casting

• With all of the gates and vents cut, the mold is placed into the spincasting machine. Adjustments are made for table spin speed, cycle duration, and clamping pressure and the cycle is starting by simply closing the lid of the spin casting machine. Molten metal is then poured into the funnel at the top of the machine. The centrifugal force created by the spinning of the casting table forces the molten metal into all of the cavities within the mold. The result is a perfectly cast part which retains all of the detail of the original model, right down to the surface texture.

If done properly, the cast parts can be snapped off at the gates without the use of tools and should require little or no finishing.

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The Basic Spin Casting Setup

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Spin Casting Machine

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As Crisis Spreads, Global Approach Weighed

By MARK LANDLER and EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON — The United States and Britain appear to be converging on a similar blueprint for stemming the financial chaos sweeping the world, one day before a crucial meeting of leaders begins in Washington that the White House hopes will result in a more coordinated response.

The British and American plans, though far from identical, have two common elements according to officials: injection of government money into banks in return for ownership stakes and guarantees of repayment for various types of loans.

Both remedies will be center stage on Saturday, when President Bush meets with finance ministers from the world’s richest countries at an unusual White House meeting to swap ideas.

Mr. Bush’s invitation to finance ministers from Britain, Italy, Germany, France, Canada and Japan came on a day of phone calls and letters between European leaders and with Washington.

Adding to the urgency, the Japanese stock market plunged more than 10 percent Friday morning, after having dropped 9 percent on Wednesday.

Government officials struggled to fashion a coordinated response to the ailing global banking system before going to Washington for annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

“As this thing has spread, the opportunities for cooperation have risen,” David H. McCormick, the under secretary of the Treasury for international affairs, said. “We need to promote and highlight these common areas.”

With credit markets still frozen and stock markets around the world in a deep swoon, there is a growing consensus that the crisis is now so fast-moving and harmful to the global economy that it demands an unprecedented degree of worldwide coordination.

The Treasury’s openness to direct infusions of cash is a remarkable change in tone from a few weeks ago, when the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., and the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, discouraged such actions in testimony before Congress. “Putting capital in institutions is about failure,” Mr. Paulson declared on Sept. 23. “This is about success.”

Treasury officials, however, said the emphasis changed in the last week, largely because stock markets kept spiraling down.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain made the case, in a letter to President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, for another option gaining favor among economists — guaranteeing short- and medium-term loans between banks. By persuading banks to resume lending to each other, the plan aims to shake loose the paralyzed credit market. “This is an area where a concerted international approach could have a very powerful effect,” Mr. Brown said Thursday in the two-page letter.

Administration officials are discussing aspects of the British proposal but said different economies have different rules that complicate a single joint action.

One senior administration official argued that expecting an agreement on proposals like Mr. Brown’s would be “irrationally raising expectations.”

Still, recapitalizing the banks and jump-starting their lending are at the top of the list of remedies that many economists are now suggesting. By acting in concert, countries can maximize the punch of their actions, these experts said, while avoiding distortions that occur when countries go different ways.

“At a minimum, you want to curtail damage,” said Carmen M. Reinhart, a professor of economics at the University of Maryland. “You don’t want the beggar-thy-neighbor policies that characterized the Great Depression.”

“At a maximum,” she continued, “you can get general principles — the need for a swift recapitalization of the banks, the need for liquidity — so we don’t get an even bigger credit crunch.”

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, warned countries against taking actions that could destabilize the financial systems of their neighbors. Unilateral acts, he said, “have to be avoided, if not condemned.”

Mr. Strauss-Kahn announced that the fund had activated an emergency financing mechanism, which would allow it to lend money more quickly to countries facing financial problems, as a result of the crisis.

The White House confirmed that the Treasury Department was considering taking ownership positions in banks as part of its $700 billion rescue package. But officials said the idea was less developed than the plan to buy distressed assets from banks through “reverse auctions.”

The goal, Treasury officials said, is a plan that would be broadly available to all banks, rather than through specific rescue packages negotiated on a case-by-case basis. That makes it likely that the government could afford to take only a small stake in any single institution.

The direct injections of cash would be for comparatively healthy banks. If a bank is failing and needs to be rescued or shut down, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation would handle it through its own procedures.

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BB exclusive: sneak peek at South Park's sweet, yet-unreleased iPhone app

by Xeni Jardin

The new season of South Park debuts tonight on Comedy Central, with a timely episode about America's fears that China will pwn us. A BB pal who's seen a few clips says it's sick; perhaps as gamechanging-ly great as Imaginationland. And as reported previously on Boing Boing, the show's new website offers fans the ability to view episodes in entirety online. You can also buy them in iTunes.

What hasn't been announced yet is this: The South Park guys have cooked up a killer iPhone application. It's not yet available in the iTunes App Store, but I visited the South Park headquarters recently for a sneak peek with Matt Stone (iPhone snapshot above) and the South Park digital team.

Full-size screengrabs follow after the jump.

The app functioned beautifully, with the ability to stream clips, grab wallpapers for your device, read news, and browse the complete episode index. Also: choose character likenesses as "contact images" for your iPhone -- assign a face to the phone book entry of your choice. An incoming call from best friend displays Kyle or Cartman; your weed dealer medical marijuana dispensary is Towelie, and so on.

Some statsporn I gathered:

* The South Park website has had 134 million hits since launch in March. On an average day, the site receives 600,000 - 700,000 hits.
* When a new episode goes online, the website receives one to one and a half million hits in a day.
* There are nearly 300,000 registered users.
* 55 million full shows have been streamed since launch, the most-viewed episode being "Major Boobage" viewed 1.5 million times. The least viewed episode is "Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics," at 94 thousand views, which I believe to be a crime against all that is good in the world because Mr. Hankey is awesome.

Other newly-launched goodies online that fans may enjoy:

* The Cult of Cartman
* Major Boobage Behind the Scenes
* Super Fun Time: Six Days to South Park
* And the South Park games page.

Speaking of games, there's unannounced news in the works on that front, too. More here on the blog, as soon as we can. Click onward for more iPhone app preview images. Release this thing already!