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At first blush such a move seems odd as the two fought such a ferocious battle during the primaries. The Democrats were so worried about the intensity of the campaign that they feared the two would damage each other irreparably in a political version of the Ali-Frazier “Thrilla in Manila” grudge match.

There is also the problem of Bill Clinton. Having Hillary in the Obama White House is one thing, but what about having Bill as an ex-president backseat driver? Could Bill resist meddling in presidential matters? Those are just some of the reasons the appointment might stretch credulity.

But with a little delving, the matter is not so implausible. Mike Allen on Politico reminds us that in an interview in January Obama referred to a biography of Abraham Lincoln, by Doris Kearns Goodwin, that pointed out Lincoln’s capacity to bring in opponents who had run against his cabinet.

It should also not be forgotten that despite their earlier rivalry, Clinton campaigned strongly for Obama towards the end of the campaign. Then there is the matter of Obama’s supreme confidence – he would have no problem appointing her.

The focus will be on “homeland defense and civil support,” a NorthCom press release states.

From November 12-18, it will be testing a “synchronized response of federal, state, local and international partners in preparation for homeland defense, homeland security, and civil support missions in the United States and abroad.”

NorthCom is short for the Pentagon’s Northern Command. President Bush created it in October 2002. (The Southern Command, or SouthCom, covers Latin America. Central Command, or CentCom, covers Iraq and Afghanistan. And the new AfriCom covers, well, you get the picture.)

Vigilant Shield ’09 “will include scenarios to achieve exercise objectives within the maritime, aerospace, ballistic missile defense, cyber, consequence management, strategic communications, and counter terrorism domains,” the press release states.

NorthCom’s press release also says that other participants in the exercise include the U.S. Strategic Command’s “Global Lightning 09,” which is a plan to use nuclear weapons in a surprise attack.

The Pentagon’s “Bulwark Defender 09” is also involved in the exercise, and it is a cyberspace protection outfit of the Pentagon.

Something called the “Canada Command DETERMINED DRAGON” also is participating, as is the California National Guard and California’s “Golden Guardian.”

California’s involvement appears to center around planning for a catastrophic earthquake.

“Under the leadership of Governor Schwarzenegger and direction of his Office of Homeland Security, the nation’s largest state sponsored emergency exercise will take place November 13-18,” a press release from the governor’s office states.

“Golden Guardian 2008 tests California’s capability to respond and recover during a major catastrophic earthquake. The Golden Guardian 2008 full-scale exercise scenario focuses on a simulated, catastrophic 7.8 magnitude earthquake along the southern portion of the San Andreas Fault.”

The Commerce Department said Friday that retail sales fell by 2.8 percent last month, surpassing the old mark of a 2.65 percent drop in November 2001 in the wake of the terrorist attacks that year.

The decline in sales was led by a huge drop in auto purchases, but sales of all types of products from furniture to clothing fell as consumers retrenched.

The 2.8 percent drop marked the fourth consecutive monthly decline in retail sales and was much bigger than the 2 percent fall economists expected.

The weakness was led by a 5.5 percent plunge in auto sales, the biggest drop since August 2005. Auto companies reported unit sales fell to the lowest level in 17 years as potential buyers, frightened by all the turmoil on Wall Street, stayed away from auto showrooms.

Excluding autos, retail sales fell by 2.2 percent, also a record decline, underscoring the widespread weakness last month.

Consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of total economic activity and weakness in this area was the major factor dragging down overall economic growth in the July-September quarter. The gross domestic product fell 0.3 percent at an annual rate during the third quarter, the strongest signal yet that the country has fallen into a recession.

Many economists believe the GDP will drop by an even bigger amount in the current October-December period and will continue falling through the first two quarters of next year. They are expecting that the financial crisis, the worst in seven decades, will produce the country’s worst recession since the 1981-1982 downturn.

The government reported last week that the unemployment rate shot up to 6.5 percent in October, and many economists believe it will top 8 percent before the economy starts to mount a sustained rebound.

The retail sales report showed that sales at general merchandise stores, the category that includes big chains such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and department stores, fell by 0.4 percent, while sales at specialty clothing stores were down a bigger 1.4 percent.

Sales at furniture stores dropped by 2.5 percent, with sales at appliance stores and sport goods stores also showing declines.

Philadelphia, Phoenix and Atlanta are asking U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to release funds from the $700 billion financial bailout authorized by Congress last month.

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter will hand-deliver the request to Paulson on Friday, spokesman Luke Butler said. Five or six other cities, including Chicago, may also sign on, Butler added.

Congress set up the so-called Troubled Asset Relief Program to help banks and other institutions that were ensnared in the global credit crisis. But since President George W. Bush signed the bill into law, numerous other entities, including the U.S. auto industry, have lined up for help.

In recent weeks, some cities have announced layoffs and service cuts as slumping tax receipts create budget shortfalls. Philadelphia, for example, will eliminate hundreds of jobs and shut libraries and swimming pools to close a $108 million gap in its current $4 billion budget.

“We who run some of America’s larger cities are dealing with the economic damage wrought by the credit and housing crises,” the mayors’ letter to Paulson said.

“The economic contraction precipitated by these twin crises is forcing us, and mayors all over the country, to dramatically reduce programs and services for millions of residents.”

Participating cities are asking Paulson to set up a $50 billion fund to rebuild infrastructure.

The fund would consist of $25 billion in grant money for cities that are unwilling or unable to take on debt, and another $25 billion for loans to cities at an interest rate of 50 basis points above that of 30-year Treasury bonds.

In order to fully fund pension obligations, the cities are also seeking loans of an unspecified amount to cover pension liabilities that have become increasingly expensive because of a decline in investments with the slump in global markets.

Philadelphia’s pension fund lost more than $650 million in value in the first nine months of this year, and the city faces $300 million in increased pension costs between the fiscal years 2010 and 2013, the letter said.

Because of the credit crunch, cities are essentially unable to borrow in the private capital markets to meet their pension obligations, according to the letter.

The mayors are also asking the Treasury to provide unspecified one-year loans to cities to allow them to meet cash-flow needs resulting from an inability to borrow.

Demand is expected to rise still higher as more investors turn to gold as a safe haven in the midst of the global financial crisis, according to market sources.

Sami Al Mohna, an expert on the gold market, said the trend had resulted in a substantial rise in the gold reserves of Saudi investors.

Since soaring to an all-time high of $1,033.39 per ounce in March this year, gold has plummeted 30 per cent.

Gold for December delivery on Monday rose $8.60 to settle at $726.80, roughly the same level at which it traded a year ago.

As CBS 2’s Joanie Lum reports, the news is especially alarming because the discussion concerns not just city jobs, but the private sector. Thus, it seems the City That Works is about to become the city that gets laid off.

Mayor Daley says chief executive officers told him huge layoffs will impact the city this month and into the new year. He also says city, county and state governments should be prepared for their revenue to fall dramatically because of the souring economy.

In addition, the federal bailout plan is changing, and the big three automakers are all warning they could go bankrupt, and lawmakers say if the auto industry goes down, the huge number of jobs lost would cause more house foreclosures.

On Wednesday, Mayor Daley joined with local gas company officials to announce new programs to help low-income customers pay their heating bills.

He disclosed that corporate leaders are telling him they are planning huge layoffs in November and December, which will leave many Chicagoans out of work.

“We never experienced anything like this except people who came from the Depression,” Mayor Daley said. “When you have that many layoffs early – and they’re telling me this is only the beginning of their layoffs – that is very frightening.”

Their goal was some four blocks distant, in the heart of Tepito, a legendary neighborhood that in the centuries since the Spanish Conquest has remained stubbornly insubordinate. Venders were everywhere along the pilgrims’ path, hawking T-shirts and baseball caps and medals decorated with the Santa Muerte.

The shrine of the Holy Death is just blocks away from a compound of low-income housing where, in 2007, Mexico City police conducted a full-scale assault in search of drugs, weapons, and other illegal goods. Enriqueta Romero Romero, known as Queta, or Quetita, set up the shrine on this spot seven years ago after one of her sons, who was himself a devotee of La Santa, made her a gift of the skeleton. The bewigged saint now stands in a glass case, elaborately robed and veiled according to Queta’s inspiration—sometimes in rainbow gauze, sometimes in white lace. Queta and her son also more or less invented the 8 P.M. “Rosary” that is held on the first of every month, and draws thousands of the faithful, including the skull-ringed young men who, at a guess, make a paltry living running many kinds of errands for the lords of Tepito. Queta says the skeleton is feminine—the Niña Blanca, or White Girl-Child—and that those who say there is such a thing as a He-Death, and that one should have both on one’s home altar, so the two can meet and marry, are charlatans. Queta is small, sixtyish, and bustling; she blows kisses at her Niña every other sentence and has a benevolent smile for everyone. But her gaze can narrow with suspicion in an alarming fashion, and one has the sense that she can summon dangerous help to her side very quickly.

The Santa Muerte had been hanging around the fringes of popular belief in Tepito and other raffish neighborhoods for decades—Queta says that she learned to pray to her from her aunt—but thanks to Queta her cult now extends throughout Mexico City and far beyond. There are, by Queta’s count, two thousand shrines like hers in Mexico, and who knows if she is including the charlatans in her tally? (The cult is known for the drug traffickers’ devotion to it, but it certainly embraces a far larger number of believers.) Hers, at any rate, was the first public shrine, and it holds a cathedral-like status for worshippers like Felicitas Castillo, a young woman who for the past five years has travelled once a month from the city of Xalapa, two hundred miles away, in order to offer the “Utmost Holy Death” roses and a mariachi serenade. On the day that I visited the shrine, the musicians played ranchera songs that are normally dedicated to the Virgin of Guadalupe, and Castillo provided an answer heard many times when I asked the faithful what they prayed for. “I don’t ask for much,” Castillo said. “Health for my family, work.” This is an answer recommended by Queta, who doesn’t think that one should bargain with Death or be greedy. But the following afternoon, as the time for the Rosary drew near and worshippers pressed more and more tightly into the narrow street where the shrine is situated, one crawling young man said that he was praying for his ex-girlfriend, who lived in another state, to let him see his five-month-old daughter. A woman wanted the holy figure to help her get over the suicide, last year, of her fourteen-year-old son.

Along the edges of the packed street, young men took quick snorts of glue and sometimes wept. A thin tattooed and pierced man with terrible skin was the only one of the many young toughs present who was willing to talk to me, and his amiability may have had something to do with the fact that he had just absent-mindedly assembled a joint about the size of a Robusto and was now wreathed in its smoke. The Holy Death had restored to him the love of the excruciatingly shy woman at his side, the man said, and he was now Death’s devotee forever. At the front of the crowd, banks of flowers to rival those laid at Princess Diana’s grave paid tribute to the skeleton. Half hidden by the flowers was a large, clear plastic death figure, and behind it was a sound system at which one of Queta’s sons would soon lead the Rosary. Behind that, Queta cackled in answer to a question. Yes, it was true that the Catholic Church disapproved of her “Little Skinny One,” she said. “But have you noticed how empty their churches are?”

As of Tuesday, November 4, traders classed by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as commercial held a collective net short position (LCNS) of just 76,406 out of a total 303,908 contracts on the COMEX, division of NYMEX in New York. A net short position means that the trader profits if the commodity goes lower in price.

Yes, the current COMEX commercial gold net short positioning is the lowest in years. Indeed, we have to go all the way back to June 7, 2005 to find a reporting week which shows a lower LCNS (67,052 then), back when gold closed at $424.87.