Bloomberg

Bloomberg, an information services, news and media company was founded in 1981 by Michael Bloomberg, the current Mayor of New York. Like Reuters, Bloomberg is one of the biggest players in the information business, with an emphasis on business and finance news.

There's plenty on the site, including arts, culture and sports news, but you really do come to Bloomberg for everything money related. Market data occupies the right hand side of the screen, with the latest movements in such things as bonds, commodity futures and currencies listed in the US, Europe and Asia. Down the left hand side of the screen there are breaking news stories and the editor's video picks of the moment.

In addition to this, there's Bloomberg TV offering 24-hour business and financial news. There's also Bloomberg Radio and a series of podcasts on many themes, including news, economics, politics, sport and culture. A series of investment tools such as the Portfolio Tracker, Market Monitor and Fund Center, allow you to keep on top of things.

In this time of endless economic gloom and woe, Bloomberg is somewhere to go to find out how much you are losing on the markets and how depressed you should be about it. If, of course, you have nothing invested in the crumbling system of fundamentalist capitalism, then Bloomberg is a very useful source of information for following the ongoing story and trying to make sense of what exactly is happening.