money

A seven-member commission has begun meeting to try to recover what it says are billions of taxpayer dollars wasted on unnecessary or scrapped projects and fraud in Iraq, as well as to help the government learn from its mistakes so they are not repeated in Afghanistan, where operations will soon be ramped up.  First on the commission's agenda is a new report which details a number of failures "largely caused by waste and poor pre-war planning."

Bernard Madoff admitted that the investment firm he runs, which manages a lot of money from other investment firms, essentially rests on a giant Ponzi scheme.  (A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent practice similar to a pyramid scheme, where debts are continually paid back by creating new debt.)  That's $50 billion which is essentially now nearly worthless, including massive investments from Spanish banks among others.