NEW YORK (Reuters) –
Two years ago, a poisonous brew of bad economics, lax regulation, and egregious behavior boiled over, scalding the financial system and pitching the United States into its steepest downturn since the Great Depression.

The antidotes to the crisis, concocted by many of the players who stirred the original toxic brew, have pulled the U.S. economy back from the brink.

But those remedies won’t prevent future crises, Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize for Economics, writes in “Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy” (Norton, $27.95).

In contrast to the regulations that emerged from the Great Depression, which promoted growth and stability, the response to this crisis has led to a less-competitive financial system dominated by banks that are too big to fail, he writes.

Stiglitz, former chief economist at The World Bank and now a professor at Columbia University in New York, focuses on banks’ failure to assess and manage risk, especially when risk is disguised by complex financial instruments. Such “modern alchemy” transformed risky sub-prime mortgages into A-rated products dubbed safe enough to be held by pension funds, he says.

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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Kidnappers have freed two Swiss women snatched off the streets of Haiti’s capital and held for five days, officials said Thursday.

It is the first reported kidnapping since Haiti suffered a magnitude-7 earthquake with catastrophic damage on Jan. 12. More than 5,000 prisoners fled jails that collapsed or were damaged in the temblor. Only about 200 have been captured.

Doctors Without Borders, among hundreds of international aid agencies that have flooded into Haiti to help, refused to identify the victims of Friday’s kidnapping.

But a security alert sent to nongovernmental agencies, obtained by The Associated Press, said the two were Swiss women working for the agency. The alert said that they were kidnapped at night near the posh Plantation restaurant in a Petionville suburb.

Doctors Without Borders spokesman Michel Peremans said the victims were released Wednesday night. He would not say if a ransom was paid.

Aid groups told the AP that they have imposed dusk-to-dawn curfews following the kidnapping and amid increasing signs of insecurity in the capital, Port-au-Prince. Doctors still treating earthquake victims report that they are seeing many gunshot wounds, and it is common to hear cracks of gunfire at night.

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ATHENS, Greece – Serious street clashes erupted between rioting youths and police in central Athens Thursday as some 30,000 people demonstrated during a nationwide strike against the cash-strapped government’s austerity measures.

Hundreds of masked and hooded youths punched and kicked motorcycle police, knocking several off their bikes, as riot police responded with volleys of tear gas and stun grenades.

The violence spread after the end of the march to a nearby square, where police faced off with stone-throwing anarchists and suffocating clouds of tear gas sent patrons scurrying from open-air cafes.

Police say 12 suspected rioters were detained and two officers were injured.

Rioters used sledge hammers to smash the glass fronts of more than a dozen shops, banks, jewelers and a cinema. Youths also set fire to rubbish bins and a car, smashed bus stops, and chopped blocks off marble balustrades and building facades to use as projectiles.

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LONDON (AFP) –
The government is locked in a battle with the media for refusing to say why a notorious child killer has been sent back to jail, amid warnings he faces a “lynch mob” if his identity is revealed.

Newspapers want to know what Jon Venables — who has been given a new identity — did to breach his parole on the life sentence he and another boy received for the brutal 1993 murder of toddler James Bulger when they were 10.

Bulger’s mother, Denise Fergus, has accused ministers of “closing doors in my face” on the issue.

“As James’ mother, I have a right to know,” she insisted.

But Justice Secretary Jack Straw has refused to release the information for fear of compromising the anonymity granted to Venables and co-conspirator Robert Thompson.

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BRASILIA, Brazil – Brazil’s president came under withering criticism Wednesday at home and in Cuba for his deference to the island’s communist government over political prisoners and hunger strikes for human rights.

A Cuban dissident on hunger strike to demand the release of ailing political prisoners accused President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of complicity with “the tyranny of Castro.” Brazilian pundits also criticized Silva and a political ally called the president’s words disappointing.

In an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, Silva said that “we have to respect the decisions of the Cuban legal system and the government to arrest people depending on the laws of Cuba, like I want them to respect Brazil.”

Silva said hunger strikes should not be used to free people from prison, despite the fact that he himself engaged in a hunger strike as a union leader during his resistance to Brazil’s military dictatorship.

Brazil’s media and critics focused most on a statement by Silva that they interpreted as comparing Cuba’s dissidents with criminals in Brazil’s largest city who run lucrative drug rings from behind bars and orchestrated a wave of killings on the streets in 2006.

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