All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

The two sides of the wall were like twins who had been separated...and raised in very different environments. To the west, colorful graffiti art, tourists walking up and touching it. To the east, stark white concrete...and armed guards.

But the faces on either side were the same.

On November 9th, 1989, East Germany's communist leaders...under pressure to ease travel restrictions...sent a spokesman to brief reporters on a new policy...allowing travel between East and West in the future. He mistakenly announced the new rules would take effect immediately. Hundreds of thousands descended on the border crossings. And the overwhelmed guards simply lifted the gates.

It would take months for the wall to be demolished...and years for the former soviet republics to build new governments.

But for those reunited with lost brothers, parents and cousins on the other side...it only took a moment to realize no one could build a wall around their hearts.

That's a page from my notebook.

I'm Katie Couric, CBS News.

Despite signs that the party was long over, there were diehards still dancing on Wall Street - until Ken Feinberg turned off the music.

He's in charge of overseeing executive pay at seven companies that received the most in bailout bucks. Today, he announced that cash salaries will be cut by as much as 90 percent, and total compensation packages by half. As for those free rides on private planes and in limousines, any perks beyond 25 thousand dollars need to be approved by the government.

Americans had a hard time watching firms like Citigroup and AIG pay out huge bonuses...when they were teetering on the brink of collapse.

Critics of the proposed cuts say the big salaries attract the best talent - and that capitalism keeps the government out of private sector pay.

But Wall Street's seven figure svengalis got us into this mess in the first place. And taxpayers kept them afloat. Now isn't the time to pat themselves on the back. A little humility, not hubris, is in order.

That's a page from my notebook.

I'm Katie Couric, CBS News.

Some of the nation's biggest banks are back in the black, and as President Obama stated today they have you to thank.

It was, after all, billions of dollars in taxpayer money that kept them afloat.

Today, as the financial community marks the one-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the President delivered a stern message about learning from mistakes.

While it's good for the economy to have those banks making money again - it can't happen in the same risky ways that got them into trouble in the first place. Consumers, Mr. Obama said, need protection and he's advocating a new agency to regulate financial products so you don't get burned next time.

Experts say it'll face a tough road in Congress, but didn't lax regulations get us into this mess in the first place?

For now, those financial institutions can express their gratitude to the American people by not letting history repeat itself.

That's a page from my notebook.

I'm Katie Couric, CBS News.

A new report (PDF) today from New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo revealed that big banks – including the recipients of billions in taxpayer-funded bailouts – paid their employees massive bonuses regardless of how the banks performed.

Correspondent Kelly Wallace is covering the story for tonight's "CBS Evening News". Earlier today, she discussed the report and previewed tonight's story in a conversation with CBSNews.com editor-in-chief Dan Farber.

It's the latest crisis to rock financial markets: insurance giant AIG teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.

The problems stem from AIG's financial products division, not insurance. But investors are nervous because this is a colossal firm. If it fails, the ripples would travel far and wide through the global economy. Businesses from banks to manufacturers which had insurance could find themselves exposed. An airline, for example, that bought a contract guaranteeing a certain cost for fuel, could suddenly have to pay full price.

There's better news for individuals. Life, auto, and homeowner policies are guaranteed by state funds. So, claims would still be paid up to certain limits. People with retirement annuities also have protection.

AIG is hoping for a bailout from its competitors. If it doesn't get one, fasten your seat belt. The fallout could touch every corner of our economy.

It seems we've been getting one piece of bad news after another since the subprime crisis first hit last year, but the failure of Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch really hit Wall Street hard. These are companies that weathered the great depression, but couldn't survive the mortgage meltdown – and a lot of investors are wondering how much worse it could get. Other large firms such as AIG and Washington Mutual are also in trouble.

Financial advisors say the worst thing you can do now is panic and raid your 401K. If you're diversified, your stocks will go back up eventually. If you're trying to get a loan, it might now be harder as banks become more afraid to lend money – something the Fed will consider when it meets tomorrow to discuss interest rates.

These latest troubles are ripples of the bigger mortgage mess. They won't end until that bottoms out – and no one can say when that will be.

Over in the Politics section, there's a real issue for the campaigns to deal with, and as Brian Montopoli reports, it has nothing to do with lipstick. It's Wall Street - tanking.

Both Obama and McCain are vying to take ownership of the economic issue, and are using very different approaches to doing so. You can read Brian's whole report here, or check out a preview below.

With 50 days left until Election Day, the battle for the presidency may have finally settled on a defining issue. And it has nothing to do with lipstick.

The collapse of financial industry titans Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch and subsequent stock market crash, just the latest pieces of bad economic news in a year that has been dotted with grim headlines, have forced the campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain to put aside some of the more trivial aspects of the campaign and try to cast their candidate as most prepared to properly guide the economy.

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Ward Sloane is a CBS News producer based in Washington.

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To paraphrase T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, I am not an economist, nor was meant to be. I never did very well at math and naturally shied away from the more complex courses, beginning with calculus.

Calculus, however, is not needed to understand exactly what is going on these days between the Federal Reserve and Wall Street. Over the weekend, the Federal Reserve Board's Ben Bernanke announced another billionaire bail-out. This time he has decided the American people should take on $30 billion in potentially and likely bad mortgage debt so that JP Morgan could then assume the other assets of the formerly venerable Bear Stearns investment house. We get $30 billion in bad debt; JP Morgan gets Bear Sterns at two dollars per share.

Wow.

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Our First Look at tonight's Evening News comes to us from correspondent Kelly Wallace, who is covering a big story in the business world: the anticipated sale of the Wall Street Journal to Rupert Murdoch.

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