rdan Seeking Alpha has Felix Salmon, James Kwak, Brad Delong, and Mark Thoma in conversation on the Recovery Plan. Follow the link.

Via Robert’s Twitter Feed, and to avoid ranting about 401(k)s before the end of May, here’s a Rant Well Worth Reading. (Warning: PG-13 or R rating; D. Aritophanes channels The Rude Pundit). Clean Excerpt: What’s the catch? That’s the beautiful thing … there is none! It’s all totally risk-free for you from start to finish! […]

Effect Cause

Ken Houghton wants to sidebar today into looking at the general application and implications of an Accounting Identity: Assets = Liabilities + Equity (A=L+E, or the ALE Rule). Let us assume that, since the housing bubble burst, I believe that my house has fallen in value by too much. I would understand a 20% decline, […]

Robert Waldmann is sooooo naive I have been asking “if the toxic sludge is so under-priced, why isn’t Warren Buffet buying it ?” Turns out that Mr Buffet had a better idea, get the US Treasury to pay him to buy it — he’s one of the inventors of the Geithner plan. the WaPo reported […]

Robert Waldmann A while ago I read a long article on AIG whose url I don’t remember. The story was the usual success -> hubris -> fall, but to me, one striking thing was that the success, the stuff AIG-FP did before going crazy, was mostly related to tax avoidance. In fact, they seem to […]

rdan Ezra Klein says: …So the Geithner plan is really two bets in one. The first is that this is not the worst case scenario and does not require the fixes developed for the worst case scenario. The second is that if this turns out to be the worst case scenario, then we still have […]

Robert Waldmann One of Mark Thoma’s links of the day is beyond awesome. Researchers report Experiments in the Brain Scanner A total of 24 subjects participated in the study which has just been published. Whilst recumbent in a scanner, they were called upon to solve simple problems. Success brought a financial reward. At the same […]

rdan (Links provided by MG) Treasury Department Releases Details on Public Private Partnership Investment Program The Role of the Federal Reserve in Preserving Financial and Monetary Stability: Joint Statement by the Department of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve TREASURY DEPARTMENT PUBLIC ENGAGEMENTS SCHEDULE FOR THE WEEK OF MARCH 23 � MARCH 29

Robert WaldmannDefenders of the Geithner plan argue that, even if Obama knows he will eventually have to nationalize banks, he has to show he is willing to try everything, absolutely everything, else first, so that he can convince Congress that he really has to nationalize banks. So the idea is to buy a few votes […]