Goldman Sachs announced last week that it will set aside $500 million for 10,000 Small Businesses.

Samuel Sherraden

Special to CNN

Goldman Sachs, the most profitable firm on Wall Street, announced last week that it will set aside $500 million for "10,000 Small Businesses," a charity co-sponsored by famed investor Warren Buffett and devoted to helping small American businesses survive the economic crisis.

While Goldman may see this as a generous move, its charity is an offense to struggling entrepreneurs and a symbol of failed government policy.

The $500 million allocated to fund the initiative is a small share of the massive profits Goldman has earned on the back of huge government subsidies it has received since the onset of the financial crisis.

When the financial system collapsed in fall 2008, the federal government supported "too big to fail" firms like Goldman Sachs with generous lending conditions, government guarantees, and outright subsidies.

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More Americans are expected to travel for the 2009 Thanksgiving holiday than they did last year, although air travel will decline.

Andrew Torgan
CNN Financial News Producer

When it comes to the financial crisis, there's been a lot of blame-shifting and finger-pointing. But in a surprise move, one of the nation's biggest banks is now admitting it played a part in the debacle.

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein has apologized for taking part in the era of free and easy money.

"We participated in things that were clearly wrong and have reason to regret," Blankfein said at a corporate conference in New York. "We apologize."

Blankfein’s comments came the same day that Goldman announced it’s launching a $500 million initiative called "10,000 Small Businesses," aimed at unlocking the job creation and economic growth potential of America's small companies.

The project's advisory council features an array of business luminaries, including Warren Buffett, the bank’s largest shareholder

It’s worth pointing out that Goldman Sachs earned an eye-popping $3.2 billion in the third quarter, as revenue from trading rose fourfold from a year ago.

We have new signs today that the recovery in the housing market is tenuous at best.

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General Motors recently showed reporters and select members of the public what it plans to build over the next two years.

Andrew Torgan
CNN Financial News Producer

Home prices rose in August and also suffered a smaller-than-expected annual drop, according to a report issued today.

Prices in the S&P Case-Shiller Home Price index of 20 cities rose a non-seasonally adjusted 1.2% in August. That’s the fourth consecutive monthly increase and followed a 1.6% gain in July.

And while prices were down more than 11% versus August 2008, that drop was less severe than expected.

On a city-by-city basis, Minneapolis had the biggest increase, with home prices rising 3.2% from July to August.

Home prices in California have recovered from depressed levels in recent months as well, with prices rising 2.8% in San Francisco during August, 2.5% in San Diego prices and 1.8% in Los Angeles.

But prices continued to slide in areas that have been hit hard by foreclosures. Prices dropped 0.5% in Cleveland and 0.3% in Las Vegas.

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Obama's Pay Czar Kenneth Feinberg is in charge of reviewing pay plans at biggest bailout firms.

David Ellis
CNNMoney.com

The Obama administration will soon order the nation's biggest bailed-out companies to drastically cut pay packages for their top executives, a senior administration official confirmed to CNN Wednesday.

Kenneth Feinberg, who was named the White House's pay czar in June, will demand that the seven largest bailout recipients lower the total compensation for their top 25 highest paid employees by 50%, on average, the official told CNN.

For the past two months, Feinberg has been reviewing pay plans at Citigroup (C, Fortune 500), AIG (AIG, Fortune 500), Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), General Motors, Chrysler, GMAC and Chrysler Financial in an effort to put these firms in a position to pay back bailout money as soon as possible.

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Products like Apple's iPhone have lifted the company's quarterly profit and beat Wall Street's forecasts.

Andrew Torgan
CNN Financial News Producer

Stocks on Wall Street struggled amid a deluge of corporate earnings reports. More than a third of the companies that trade on the Dow Jones Industrial Average are reporting this week. Today we heard from Caterpillar, Coca-Cola, Pfizer, DuPont and United Technologies.

And in the tech sector, we got solid results from Apple and Texas Instruments after the closing bell Monday night.

In fact, Apple said that record sales of Macintosh computers and iPhones lifted its quarterly profit and revenue, which trounced Wall Street's forecasts. Apple raked in nearly $10 billion in revenue and $1.5 billion in earnings in what the company says was its most profitable quarter ever.

Mac sales soared 17% from a year ago to 3.1 million units, a quarterly record. And iPhone sales climbed 7% to a record 7.4 million.

But iPod sales slumped 8% to 10.2 million for the quarter, despite slashed prices in September.

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U.S. professors Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson are joint recipients of the Nobel Prize for economics.

Andrew Torgan
CNN Financial News Producer

Two American scholars who are experts in how businesses and the economy are regulated have won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics.

Elinor Ostrom, a professor at Indiana University, is the first woman ever to win the Nobel in Economics.

Ostrom will share the $1.4 million prize with Oliver E. Williamson, a retired professor at the University of California-Berkeley.

The issue of government control of the economy has become a significant issue since last year's financial meltdown. The Obama Administration and governments of major developed economies around the globe are now working reform their regulatory oversight of businesses and markets.

Ostrom, a professor of political science, was recognized for her work demonstrating how common property, such as forests and lakes, can be successfully managed by those who use the resources, rather than government officials.

As for Williamson, the Nobel committee said his theories show that large private corporations exist primarily because they can be the most efficient way to complete some economic transactions, challenging the belief that markets are always the most rational and efficient way to conduct business.

Survey says… the recession is over

More than 80% of top economists believe that the recession that started almost two years ago is finally over. But most don't expect meaningful improvement in jobs, credit or housing for months to come.

That's according to a survey released Monday by the National Association for Business Economics. The group asked 43 top economists last month if they believe the battered economy has pulled out of the worst U.S. downturn since World War II.

Thirty-five respondents, or 81%, believe the recovery has begun. Only four, or 9%, believe the economy is still in a recession. The other four say they're uncertain.

Economists in the survey forecast that the economy grew at an annual rate of 3% in the three months that ended in September, though the official reading of gross domestic product won't be out for weeks.

And all of the economists surveyed expect the recovery to be slow and painful, leaving many people and businesses feeling the effects of the downturn for years to come.

The only organization that can officially declare the beginning or the end of a recession is the National Bureau of Economic Research. But that group doesn't make any sort of declaration until months after the fact, in order to take into account final readings of various economic measures such as employment, income and industrial production. For example, the NBER didn't declare that the recent recession had begun in December 2007 until a full year after the fact.

Big Week on Wall Street

The stalled-out stock-market rally got a reboot last week, pushing the Dow and S&P 500 to fresh one-year highs. But that resilience will be tested in the week ahead with the release of the first big batch of third-quarter financial results.

Dow components Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, IBM, Intel, Johnson & Johnson and General Electric are all on tap. Google, Nokia, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs are among the other big names due to report.

Today, with no economic or major earnings news on the docket, stocks are making some fairly solid advances, with the Dow topping 9,900 for the first time in more than a year.

Senate considers benefits extension

The Senate may vote this week on whether to extend unemployment benefits to the millions of jobless workers across the country.

This after Senate Democrats reached a deal to give an additional 14 weeks to workers in all 50 states, and 6 weeks on top of that to workers in states with unemployment above 8.5%.

The measure differs significantly from the version passed in the House last month. That one grants 13 weeks of extended benefits only workers in high unemployment states.

All this wrangling over details comes as 400,000 people ran out of benefits in September and another 208,000 are set to lose them this month.

Follow the money… on Twitter: @AndrewTorganCNN

Gene Bloch
Managing Editor
CNN New York

We kick off this morning with one of those “green shoots” in the economy: better than expected retail sales; they surged 2.7 percent in August, as the Cash for Clunkers program provided a lift to auto sales. But even without auto sales and auto parts in the mix, retail sales rose a respectable 1.1 percent.

On the less positive side, wholesale inflation as measured by the Producer Price Index surged 1.7 percent last month. Most of that increase however was due to a surge in energy prices. If you strip out food & energy costs, the PPI’s “core rate” edged up just 0.2 percent.

President Obama is talking about the economy today as he addresses GM workers at a GM plant in Ohio; he then travels to Pittsburgh to address an AFL-CIO convention, before making his way to a fundraiser for Sen. Arlen Specter in Philly. Fed Chief Ben Bernanke today is out talking economy as well, going farther than before in saying the recession is “very likely over.” Of course, we know that only the National Bureau of Economic Research can conclude when recessions begin and end. And it doesn’t happen until after the fact.

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Financier Bernard Madoff is serving a 150-year prison term for defrauding thousands of investors.

Gene Bloch
Managing Editor
CNN New York

How is President Obama’s health care address going over with Americans? Ali Velshi is aboard the CNN Express and will be live at noon in Scranton PA, where the Tea Party Express has a rally scheduled.

Meanwhile, the Census Bureau updated us today on the number of people without health insurance coverage – it stood 46.3 million in 2008, up 600-thousand from the 2007 level – but down from the 47 million reported in 2006. In the same report, the Census announced real median household income fell 3.6 percent to $50,303, and the poverty rate rose by 7-tenths of a percentage point to 13.2.

The jobs picture is still dire, but the latest weekly figures are “moving in the right direction” as economists like to say. The number of people filing first time jobless claims fell by 26-thousand last week to 550-thousand. The number of people continuing to collect unemployment is still above 6-million, but that number fell slightly as well.

Is the stimulus helping create jobs? This afternoon the Obama administration is releasing its first report to Congress about the stimulus, which is formally called the Recovery Act.

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Gene Bloch
Managing Editor
CNN New York

As President Obama prepares to outline his health care reform plan to a joint session of Congress tonight, we take a look at how the plan might be financed. The compromise proposal floated by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus includes a new tax on insurance companies.

The 35% tax would be levied on any plan that costs more than $8-thousand for individual and $21-thousand for family coverage. Supporters say taxing the most expensive health care plans will raise revenue and curb overall health care costs. But critics say this tax could mean higher premiums for everyone, if insurers try to pass the cost on to consumers. Poppy Harlow reports today in The Breakdown.

The battle to shape health care reform has been bitter...and very expensive. Health care lobbying, advertising, political donations have cost about $375 million so far, the most expensive fight ever to hit Congress. Jennifer Liberto has this story on CNNMoney.

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Andrew Torgan
CNN Financial News Producer

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke says that the economy is about to start growing again, although he cautioned it will be a slow recovery with continued high unemployment in the near term.

Speaking at an annual symposium in Jackson Hole, WY, Bernanke echoed a statement made by the Fed earlier this month, saying that "economic activity appears to be leveling out, both in the United States and abroad."

Bernanke went a step further though, indicating that "prospects for a return to growth in the near term appear good."

But the central bank chief warned that problems remain in financial markets around the globe, and that with banks facing "substantial" additional losses ahead, businesses and consumers will continue to have trouble accessing credit.

Home sales spike

Sales of previously-owned homes, the biggest portion of the housing market, soared more than 7% in July - the largest monthly increase in 10 years.

The National Association of Realtors says home sales rose 7.2% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.24 million last month, from a pace of 4.89 million in June. That’s the fourth-straight monthly increase and the highest level of sales since August 2007.

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