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The intervention designed by the U.S. Treasury Department, Japan’s Finance Ministry and the European Central Bank called for the central banks to purchase dollars and sell euros and yen, with Japan providing the yen needed for the currency swap if the greenback’s value dropped significantly, the news service said.

The three groups, which considered making an emergency statement through the Group of Seven industrial nations, did not stipulate a specific exchange rate for the potential intervention, nor did they detail the amount of money to be used, Nikkei said.

SEC commissioners today approved a “road map” that might allow corporations with market values exceeding $700 million to abandon U.S. accounting standards by 2014. Under the plan, about 110 U.S. companies that are global leaders in their industries may move to international rules as soon as 2010.

“A global set of high-quality accounting standards would be an international language of disclosure, transparency and comparability,” SEC Chairman Christopher Cox said at an open meeting in Washington. “It’s a goal worth pursuing.”

Meshing U.S. regulations with rules adopted by other countries is a priority for the agency, which has said companies will be able to reduce expenses by eliminating duplicate accounting. Investors will benefit because they ultimately bear the burden of higher compliance costs, SEC officials argue.

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At least one study has found companies show higher profits when they follow international standards.

“Gold sales are not a suitable way to sustainably consolidate the public accounts,” the Bundesbank said after a query about trade union proposals that it sell gold to fund some of a 25 billion euro ($37 billion) economic stimulus package.

“National gold reserves have a confidence and stability-building function for the single currency in a monetary union. This function has become even more important given the geopolitical situation and the risks present in financial market developments.”

The Bundesbank is the world’s second-largest holder of gold after the U.S. Federal Reserve, and has sold just 20 tonnes out of total reserves of over 3,000 tonnes in the past five years.

The borrowing could be needed to cover short-term cash-flow pressures caused by reimbursing depositors immediately after the failure of a bank, the paper said.

The borrowed money would be repaid once the assets of that failed bank are sold.

“I would not rule out the possibility that at some point we may need to tap into (short-term) lines of credit with the Treasury for working capital, not to cover our losses,” Chairman Sheila Bair said in an interview with the paper.

Bair said such a scenario was unlikely in the “near term.” With a rise in the number of troubled banks, the FDIC’s Deposit Insurance Fund used to repay insured deposits at failed banks has been drained.

In a bid to replenish the $45.2 billion fund, Bair had said on Tuesday that the FDIC will consider a plan in October to raise the premium rates banks pay into the fund, a move that will further squeeze the industry.

The agency also plans to charge banks that engage in risky lending practices significantly higher premiums than other U.S. banks, Bair said.

The last time the FDIC had borrowed funds from the Treasury was at nearly the tail end of the savings-and-loan crisis in the early 1990s after thousands of banks were shuttered.

If water is the new oil, T. Boone Pickens is a modern-day John D. Rockefeller. Pickens owns more water than any other individual in the U.S. and is looking to control even more. He hopes to sell the water he already has, some 65 billion gallons a year, to Dallas, transporting it over 250 miles, 11 counties, and about 650 tracts of private property. The electricity generated by an enormous wind farm he is setting up in the Panhandle would also flow along that corridor. As far as Pickens is concerned, he could be selling wind, water, natural gas, or uranium; it’s all a matter of supply and demand. “There are people who will buy the water when they need it. And the people who have the water want to sell it. That’s the blood, guts, and feathers of the thing,” he says.

In the coming decades, as growing numbers of people live in urban areas and climate change makes some regions much more prone to drought, water—or what many are calling “blue gold”—will become an increasingly scarce resource. By 2030 nearly half of the world’s population will inhabit areas with severe water stress, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development. Pickens understands that. And while Texas is unusually lax in its laws about pumping groundwater, the rush to control water resources is gathering speed around the planet. In Australia, now in the sixth year of a drought, brokers in urban areas are buying up water rights from farmers. Rural residents around the U.S. are trying to sell their land (and water) to multi- national water bottlers like Nestlé (BW—Apr. 14). Companies that use large quantities of the precious resource to run their businesses are seeking to lock up water supplies. One is Royal Dutch Shell, which is buying groundwater rights in Colorado as it prepares to drill for oil in the shale deposits there.

Into this environment comes Pickens, who made a good living for a long time extracting oil and gas and now, at 80, believes the era of fossil fuel is over. So far he has spent $100 million and eight years on his project and still has not found any city in Texas willing to buy his water. But like many others, Pickens believes there’s a fortune to be made in slaking the thirst of a rapidly growing population. If he pumps as much as he can, he could sell about $165 million worth of water to Dallas each year. “The idea that water can be sold for private gain is still considered unconscionable by many,” says James M. Olson, one of America’s preeminent attorneys specializing in water- and land-use law. “But the scarcity of water and the extraordinary profits that can be made may overwhelm ordinary public sensibilities.”

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U.S. crude for October delivery was up $2.98 at $119.25 a barrel after adding $1.16 on Tuesday. London Brent crude gained $2.31 to $116.94 a barrel.

Oil could head towards last week’s near-three-week high of just above $122 a barrel in the next few days depending on Gustav’s path, said Masaki Suematsu, analyst at broker Newedge in Tokyo.

“Gustav is headed right toward the centre of the Gulf of Mexico. Hurricanes taking this route are usually threatening,” he said.

Gustav was downgraded to a tropical storm on Wednesday after it came ashore in Haiti, but forecasters expect wind speeds to regain hurricane force as it crosses over warm waters south of Cuba.

This fact should be in equal parts incredible and nauseating. It is certainly enraging and despicable. Not even George Orwell in his most febrile moments could have envisaged a world in which every citizen could be so thoroughly monitored every moment of the day, spied upon, eavesdropped, watched, tracked, followed by CCTV cameras, recorded and scrutinised. Our words and web searches, our messages and intimacies, are to be stored and made available to the police, the spooks, the local council – the local council! – and “other public bodies”.

The White House announced Monday that Cheney will head abroad on Sept. 2 for stops in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine and Italy.

The vice president’s office described Cheney’s trip only in the broadest terms, saying Bush wants his No. 2 to consult with key partners on matters of mutual interest.

The dominant attention will likely fall on Georgia, where conflict with Russia has reignited Cold War tensions. Cheney will hold talks in Georgia with President Mikhail Saakashvili, as he will meet with presidents and senior officials in the other countries.

The news comes as Russia’s parliament voted unanimously Monday to urge the country’s president to recognize the independence of Georgia’s two breakaway regions, a move likely to stoke further tensions between Moscow and the small Caucasus nation’s Western allies.

The vote follows fighting earlier this month between Russia and Georgia over the separatist territory of South Ossetia.

With participants throughout the financial system saying that the credit crisis cannot end until the US housing market stabilises, the monthly data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) failed to show any unequivocal improvement.