Any bail out for small business owners?

 “Is the government handing out cash to small businesses the way it’s showering money on the banking industry?”

The answer is no. To get any of the $700 billion Congress has approved so far for the Troubled Asset Relief program, you pretty much have to be a bank that’s in deep trouble because it made loans to people who couldn’t pay them back.

Automakers see big sales declines in January

GM drops 49 percent, Ford 40 percent, as Subaru and Hyundai buck trend

DETROIT – Consumers frightened by the prospect of losing their jobs stayed away from auto showrooms again in January and sent U.S. car and truck sales falling 37 percent, a familiar refrain for the struggling industry but an unwelcome start to a critical year for U.S. carmakers.

MySpace removes 90,000 sex offenders

Lawman's idea of Myspace

RALEIGH, N.C. – About 90,000 sex offenders have been identified and removed from the social networking Web site MySpace, company and law enforcement officials said Tuesday.

Obama Admits Embarrassing Day for Administration

President on Tom Daschle: ‘Self-Induced Injury That I’m Angry About’

President Obama speaks with reporters in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Monday, Feb. 2, 2009, during a meeting with Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas.

President Obama acknowledged that it has been an embarrassing day for his administration, taking responsibility for three of his high-level nominees’ withdrawing their names because of tax troubles.

UPDATE Daschle Withdraws

Daschle Withdraws as Cabinet Nominee

The chief White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said that Tom Daschle “did not get a signal” from the Obama administration to withdraw.

WASHINGTON — Tom Daschle withdrew his name on Tuesday as President Obama’s nominee to lead the Health and Human Services Department, a startling decision that came only hours after the withdrawal of another candidate for a high White House office.

Job Killers

The firms responsible for the most layoffs.

By Douglas A. McIntyre | 24/7 Wall St.

Continuing jobless claims rose by 159,000 in the week ended Jan. 17 to a seasonally adjusted 4.78 million, the most since the government’s records began in 1967. The number of unemployed people in the US could rise by one million this month, almost twice the figure for December.

Obama’s Pledge to Reform Ethics Faces an Early Test

President Obama in the Oval Office on Monday. On his first day in office, he imposed perhaps the strictest ethics rules of any modern president.

WASHINGTON — During almost two years on the campaign trail, Barack Obama vowed to slay the demons of Washington, bar lobbyists from his administration and usher in what he would later call in his Inaugural Address a “new era of responsibility.” What he did not talk much about were the asterisks.