Tom Bozzo In this round-up of "experts" (Cramer?!) on whether to "soak the Rich" at the WaPo (the title of which, given the actual Obama budget plans, reminds one that mainstream discourse has really lost sight of the true rich-soaking possibilities), what really bugged me was this from Laura D'Andr...

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...

That is the pretty damning viewpoint of Liam Halligan in an article about Tory economic strategy in this morning's Sunday Telegraph. He continues: "For months, HM Opposition has remained tight-lipped about what it would actually do to escape this crisis, content just to throw darts at Labour an...

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 ...

Last October at the Tory Conference in Birmingham George Osborne told the British people that the cupboard was bare.  Back in Birmingham later today he will issue more "uncomfortable truths": "“Britain is going to have to work hard and save hard to get out of this hole. The Con...

by Tom Bozzo Much like the largely if not totally hypothetical family farm that might need to be sold off to cruel agribusiness to pay "death taxes," I suspect that trotting out charities as the Real Victims of Obama administration plans to reduce tax expenditures on the wealthy is the latest Luntzi...

Richard Green versus Christopher Thronberg: Last Dust-up Point Counterpoint:  Point: Christopher Thornberg The homeowner rescue plans so far have been failures. Either few troubled borrowers have signed up or, more significantly, within just a few months of having their loans modified a shocki...

Tyler Cowen is pessimistic about about the near term future of the banking industry: Message to Regulators: Bank Fix Needed Quickly, by Tyler Cowen, Economic View, NY Times: A new bank rescue plan may be more crucial right now than the fiscal stimulus package enacted last month. Yet we don’t seem ...

That's the stark economic message which Martin Ivens says it will be no fun telling voters in his column in the Sunday Times today. He writes: "To seal its deal with voters, the opposition will have to convince them it has a plan to deal with this mess. Tory public service reforms and a program...

This voxeu.org column argues that bank nationalisation is the best hope we have for avoiding a “lost decade like Japan": The case for and against bank nationalisation, by Matthew Richardson, Vox EU: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s financial plan calls for stress tests at the large com...