• The global financial crisis

  ALAN GREENSPAN, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, America's central bank, yesterday described the financial crisis there as likely to be the most "wrenching" since the end of the second World War. On a day that saw global share prices slump and the dollar fall as oil and gold prices rose, no one was more qualified than he to make that judgment. For what happened on global stock markets provided a graphic illustration of his thesis. Trading screens turned red as bank stocks plummeted in value as nervous investors showed their declining confidence in financial institutions. The latest sharp fall followed the takeover of Bear Stearns, a major US investment bank, by JP Morgan Chase. p
  

• Funding universities

  THE VIEWS expressed by the UCD president and the provost of Trinity College on page 11 today should serve as a reality check to Government Ministers and policy makers. There has been much rhetoric in recent years about Irish universities helping to drive a so-called "knowledge society". But the article by Dr Hugh Brady and Dr John Hegarty paints a different picture of life on the university campus in 2008. It is a depressing one. Funding for the core teaching function is less than half that available in comparable other states; the student/staff ratio is much higher and the physical infrastructure is creaking. Most of the seven universities are now in deficit as financial cuts bite. p
  

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