John Berry: If Tax-Cut Lapsing Is Class Warfare, Let’s Fight, by John M. Berry, Commentary, Bloomberg: If letting top income-tax rates go back to where they were in 2000 is class warfare against the rich, I’m ready to snap to attention with my old M1 rifle on my shoulder. What a ridiculous label...

Were chief executives at financial firms caught in "a financial tsunami" beyond their control, or are they partly responsible for what happened?: A Tsunami of Excuses, by William Cohan, Commentary, NY Times: It's been a year since Bear Stearns collapsed, kicking off Wall Street’s mel...

George Waters of Illinois State University on the economic crisis and the state of macroeconomics: Equilibrium and Meltdown, by George A. Waters: Equilibrium in economics is such a ubiquitous concept some might be surprised to hear that it is also controversial. It is hard to imagine doing much econ...

James Surowiecki takes on John Taylor: Did Lehman Brothers’s Failure Matter?, The Financial Page: By this point, it’s become conventional wisdom that the failure of Lehman Brothers last September was the catalyst for a massive selloff in the credit and stock markets and a general flight to safet...

Martin Wolf looks at some of the ways the world may change in response to the crisis: Seeds of its own destruction, by Martin Wolf , Commentary, Financial Times: ...In the west, the pro-market ideology of the past three decades was a reaction to the perceived failure of the mixed-economy, Keynesian ...

Robert Shiller: A failure to control the animal spirits, by Robert Shiller, Commentary, FT: ...We are seeing, in this financial crisis, a rebirth of Keynesian economics. We are talking again of ... the Great Depression. This era, like the present, saw many calls to end capitalism as we know it. The ...

Alan Blinder is not a fan of nationalization: Nationalize? Hey, Not So Fast, by Alan S. Blinder, Commentary, NY Times: ...When philosophical conservatives like Alan Greenspan start talking about nationalizing banks, you know you’ve passed into some kind of parallel universe. ... Like Ben Bernanke ...

Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution says that "hyperbolic attacks on earmarks do a disservice to the public": Put Earmarks in Perspective, by Thomas E. Mann, Senior Fellow, Brookings: It is hard to take seriously a political opposition whose major antidote to the most serious and frig...

Reading through a few anti-stimulus sites today, I am unusually annoyed. All of you that say this recession isn't as bad as [pick recession and series of your choice], and are showing this or that graph to prove it, what, exactly is your point? That people are just a bunch of whiners, that it...

This outlines the different sources of credit for small banks and their customers, and which of those sources are likely to dry up in a credit crunch: How Will a Credit Crunch Affect Small Business Finance?, by Gregory F. Udell, FRBSF Economic Letter: There is considerable concern about the duration...