President Bush has extended invitations to leaders of 20 major economies for the November 15 summit to be held at Washington. The summit would discuss and explore ways for world leaders to offer a coordinated response to the global financial crisis.

The White House announced on Wednesday that formal invitations to attend the summit would be extended to the members of the Group of 20 nations which not only includes the richest G 7 countries but also emerging economic powers like China, Brazil and Saudi Arabia. Heads of key multilateral organizations like the United Nations, International Monetary Fund and World Bank will also be invited, according to the White House.

The top concern of the participants in the summit would be to ensure that such a financial crisis of global proportions does not recur. The leaders will also try and find ways to agree on a common set of principles which will guide the reform of the regulatory structure governing the global financial market. Among other things the summit will also be the first crucial test for the newly elected President of United States who will be forced to choose between agreeing directly to the conclusions of the summit or delaying the decisions till he formally enters the Oval office.

American International Group Inc decided on Wednesday to freeze payments worth around $19 million to former chief executive Martin Sullivan. The decision comes in the wake of New York Attorney General undertaking a review of the executive compensation and other expenditures paid out as the company teetered on the edge of collapse earlier this year.

AIG is the largest insurance company in the United States. Along with imposing a freeze on payments to Mr. Sullivan, the company has also agree not to distribute any funds from the deferred compensation and bonus pools of its subsidiary, AIG Financial Products which is estimated to hold around $600 million. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has held the subsidiary primarily responsible for bringing AIG on the verge of collapse.

Recently AIG has received credit lines from federal agencies to the tune of $122.8 billion and the office of the Attorney General is reluctant to see this fund being used to pay those very managers who virtually bankrupted the company a few weeks ago. The case of AIG is being seen by regulators and lawmakers as an instance of excessive greed in corporate America under which the AIG executives continued to receive outsize pay packets even after the company received an $85 billion bridge loan from the Federal Reserve.

Till now a political underdog and fighting to be taken seriously by its more powerful neighbours, Cuba seems finally to have got its due – from Mother Nature. Recently the Cuban government announced that there may be over 20 million barrels of recoverable oil reserves in offshore fields in Cuba’s share of the Gulf of Mexico. If confirmed, then the discovery squarely puts Cuba into the league of top oil producing nations of the world.

The discovery of such vast reserves of oil holds great promise for the Cuban economy. It not only means that Cuba would cease to be dependent on other nations for its supply of oil, thus saving valuable foreign exchange, but also holds out the possibility of Cuba emerging as an oil exporting nation thus bringing in revenues and wielding a certain amount of leverage in global economic matters. However this scenario depends upon how big are its oil reserves and how far will they yield quality petroleum.

If reports of the discovery are true, then it means that the extent of its oil reserves, which is estimated to hold 20 billion barrels of oil, are double the previous estimates of its energy reserves and at par with the reserves of United States. The Cuban government has announced that drilling in its newly-discovered oil reserves will begin next year by the state-owned drilling company, Cubapetroleo or Cupec.

Mobile carrier AT&T revealed on Wednesday that the better-than-expected sales of the iPhone 3G in the third quarter has significantly cut into its earnings as the subsidies it pays on the phone has shot up.

Telecommunications company AT&T pays a subsidy of around $375 per phone which is then sold at stores for $199 or $299 according to the model. In the third quarter as the sales of iPhones exceeded 2.4 million, AT&T lost more than $900 million or 10 cents a share in subsidies, thus costing the company in just one quarter what it had forecast for the whole year. besides being slammed by subsidies, AT&T also suffered 2 cents per share decline in earnings due to damages caused by hurricanes.

Eventually however, AT&T expects the subsidies to pay off since customers are paying more for services on the Apple phones. It is estimated that iPhone owners pay as much as 60% more than other phone users in service fees. Moreover AT&T estimates that of the 2.4 million iPhones sold, around 40% were to new wireless customers which bodes well for the company’s future earnings.

Overall the third quarter report of AT&T revealed earnings of $3.2 billion or 55 cents per share which recorded a 3.2% rise from $3.1 billion or 50 cents a share which the company had earned in the previous year.

Economic inequality is widening in the richest countries of the world, according to a 30-nation OECD study that released its results on Tuesday.

According to the report compiled by the Organisation for Economic Development and Co-operation, the gap between the rich and poor has widened over the last 20 years in almost all the 30 developed nations included in the study, despite rapid economic growth ushered in by trade and technological advances. However the gap between the rich and poor was found to be greatest in United Kingdoms among all the developed countries of the world.

Europe correspondent Emma Alberici points out that from 1985 to 2005, the distance in the earnings between Britain’s rich and poor widened by 20%. Contributing to the problem of economic inequality in UK is that of unemployment. The OECD report found that 16 % of all households with a working-age head in the country were found to be jobless. Only three other European nations, Hungary, Germany and Belgium were found to have households where none of the members have a job.

OECD researchers also discovered that the proportion of single-parent households in the United Kingdoms has shot up three times as fast as the OECD average.

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