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Michael Lewis on the Bailout
Coyote Blog — I liked this bit in particular: Think of Wall Street as a poker game and Goldman as the smartest player. It's sad when you think about it this way that so much of the dumb money on Wall Street has been forced out of the game. There's no one left to play with. Just as Goldman was about to rake in its winnings and head home, the U.S. government stumbles in, fat and happy and looking for some action. I imagine the best and the brightest inside Goldman are right this moment trying to figure out how it uses the Treasury not only to sell their own crappy assets dear but also to buy other people's crappy assets ...

China says that we made a lot of bad loans?
Eidelblog — ... However, the nature of the loans is different. E&Y calculated "non-performing" loans that will never get paid back. The federal government wants to blow $700 billion in this "bailout," when in fact that figure was simply chosen arbitrarily. As with all federal spending, the wrangling isn't over how much to spend, but how to spend it, and how to finance it (Democrats like taxes, Republicans like passing debt on to our children). Even combined with the ...