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The link for the list of nominees for the 81st Academy Awards Ceremony is here.
Here are my picks:

Best Actress – Kate Winslet
Best Actor – Mickey Rourke
Best Supporting Actor – Heath Ledger
Best Supporting Actress – Penelope Cruz
Best Director – Gus Van Sant
Best Foreign Film – The Baader Meinhof Complex
Best Picture – Slumdog Millionaire

The show starts at [...]

McGraw Hill is one of the major book publishers in the United States. It also happens to own Standard & Poors, a well-known rating agency. Fellow econblogger Barry Ritholtz was due to release a book via McGraw Hill titled “Bailout Nation.” In the book, he gets a bit rough with the rating agencies, which I see as analogues to the accounting firms in the shenanigans of the late 1990s.

Guess what? McGraw Hill, abruptly canceled the book, shortly before its release was due. Apparently, this is how business in the United States is conducted. Shambolic, if you ask me.

Here’s what Barry has to say.

Jim Leng, the new Chairman of troubled mining giant Rio Tinto has quit abruptly despite having been employed by the company for only one month. This does not bode well as the company’s mountainous debt is at the core of why Leng is leaving the firm.

Bloomberg quotes Leng as saying “there has been a difference of opinion over which option the company should pursue.” Rio has “‘a financial issue to resolve in terms of its debt and repayment. I am hopeful that my resignation will enable the board to reach a consensual decision.”

You may have heard about the Rags-to-riches movie “Slumdog Millionaire” which recently won a Golden Globe for Best Picture. I saw the film and thought it was brilliant. Nevertheless, not everyone agrees with this sentiment, as the video below will attest. Some are calling the film voyeuristic poverty porn and are quite upset about it.

I should also note that child actors in the film are said to still be living in the same slum circumstances they were plucked from before the film started.

Coming on the heels of the Rubin resignation as it does, the resignation of Ezra Merkin as Chairman of GMAC makes it seem like a bit of shake up in financial services management is underway as 2009 begins. Merkin was tainted by the Madoff scandal, making his situation more difficult at GMAC, the auto finance company which has needed a $6 billion bailout to continue as a going concern.

I am a bit of technophile — so much so my friends call me “Gadget Man.” While I have toned down the bad early adopter purchases, I do still love my gadgets. With that in mind, here is Walter Mossberg doing his thing at the Wall Street Journal with the Top 2009 gadgets.

Enjoy.

An issue that has received scant acknowledgment in the media is the likely hole in pension funds books resulting from the recent out in shares. Pension funds must invest the money they receive today in order to provide pensioners funds tomorrow. The problem is that pension funds have been overestimating the likely returns for years and now that we have hit a rough patch in the economy this poor actuarial accounting is about to catch up with them.

FT Alphaville, one of my favorite blog sites, has the latest on Glencore and its credit default swaps. They are exploding to the downside for firms issuing insurance against Glencore’s default. Here’s Alphaville’s chart:

The numbers for December are in and they are grim. 2008 was a year to forget in the auto industry. Sales plummeted around the globe as recession took hold. In the United States, every major car company saw sales fall at least 30% compared to 2007.

In truth, the global auto industry has been working in a situation of overcapacity for some time (much as the airline and financial services sectors have). However, the industry was propped up artificially by unsustainable excess demand that was a direct result of low interest rates (think zero percent financing). Now that this excess demand has evaporated, the auto industry is in dire straits. Expect the trend to continue into 2009. The auto industry desperately needs to consolidate if it expects to return to profitability anytime soon.

This is a very sad tale.