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Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, on Wednesday accused the US and other governments of making “cheap money” a central tool of their economic management, thereby planting the seeds of a similar crisis in five years.  Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley said aggressive policy actions will avert both depression and deflation.

Principal news stories from the Irish Independent, Irish Times, Irish Examiner, Financial Times and New York Times.

Slow-motion Government is the style of current Taoiseach Brian Cowen and after 11 years in power, the Government on Wednesday confirmed its state as being clapped-out, drained of any evidence of political courage and bereft of ideas, as it launched what was bizarrely called an action plan for Irish public service reform. It published a report from a “Task Force” of senior civil servants and announced a new “Expert Group” that is tasked with finding public spending savings. “Festina lente” - make haste slowly - is said to have been the motto of the first Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus but amidst an economic crisis, Cowen brings to mind another Roman Emperor called Nero. The Taoiseach simply has no interest in supporting serious reform.

Investment units of Irish banks AIB, Irish Life Permanent and Bank of Ireland and a number of other Irish and international institutions are reported to be developing a plan to recapitalise the domestic banking system as co-investors with the State.

In the first 23 days of November, US consumers spent $8.19 billion online, a 4 percent drop from the same period last year. The fall marks the first annual drop since e-commerce took off according to research firm comScore.

The Government has published an action plan for reform of the Irish public service and it hopes implementation will help to eliminate the current budget deficit of €4.7 billion by 2011. A new public spending review group is to report by June 2009.

Markets news on stocks, currencies and oil.

Entrepreneurs are rushing to set up online marketplaces in an attempt to cash in on the market for bulk sales of foreclosed homes.

Sales of US new one-family houses in October 2008 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 433,000, according to estimates released jointly today by the US Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This is 5.3 percent below the revised September of 457,000 and is 40.1 percent below the October 2007 estimate of 723,000 and the lowest since January 1991.