A British charity, the UK Autism Foundation has appealed to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to reach out to families with autism who are below the poverty line in his second budget, on Wednesday 22nd April 2009.

Charles Moore of the Telegraph criticises the leadership of Gordon Brown, Britain's Prime Minister, and the consensus of expert opinion that has so greatly damaged the UK's economy.

How did billion become the new million? Well, that's the trillion-dollar question. And as the year comes to a close, everyone is looking backwards to figure it out. But in the deluge of financial news this year, many stories are bound to get overlooked. So here are three of this year's forgotten scandals from the subprime mortgage crisis and the subsequent market collapse:

Telephonetics VIP, a leading provider of speech recognition and intelligent customer interaction technology, surveyed attendees at Call Centre Expo [1] to ascertain how they are going to exit the current economic climate in a stronger position. Loud and clear, we heard that focus on the customer is key. The winners will be those who strive to keep their customers happy, whilst also trying to save money.

AIG plans to absorb $5 billion in losses for a dozen insurance units after their securities-lending accounts suffered $13 billion of write-downs related to subprime-mortgage exposure. AIG will also inject an undisclosed amount of capital into some of the subsidiaries. Investors, in general, never want to see the words "undisclosed amount of capital" in a press release.

American Express announced intra-quarter guidance today saying that the company would be impacted by worse-than-expected credit conditions. They expect their business to be impacted as economic activity slows and consumer late-pays and credit defaults on AMEX cards continue to mount.

A report released by KPMG, FTSE Group ("FTSE") and Asian Public Real Estate Association ("APREA") today states that the credit crisis in the U.S. and Europe has put pressure on the decade of sustained growth in global real estate. On the other hand, the report observes the inflow of capital to Asia's real estate market is accelerating off the back of a prolonged period of steady growth which is powered by a combination of opportunistic and increasingly longer-term investments.

MBIA posted a loss twice as large as anticipated by analysts, as the company was forced to write-down the value of its credit default swaps by $3.58 billion.

Many on Wall Street, the epicenter of the credit mess, seem to think that the worst is over. For the first time in months, analysts and executives sound upbeat again. Many of them see a broad, sustained recovery in both the economy and the financial markets coming in the second half of this year, a prediction some market strategists call hopeful at best.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson continued the recent PR blitz begun by Wall Street CEO's, claiming that as far as the credit crisis is concerned, "we're closer to the end than we are to the beginning."

The Premium Class New York-London carrier EOS Airlines is forced to shot down flight operations, but the planned investment does not close.

Want to know why stated income loans are called liar loans? Because people lie on stated income loans. Not just some people, some of the time and by some little exaggeration. It’s most of the people, most of the time by mostly large exaggerations.