Politics. In Dismal Economic Times, Libraries in the New York Region Are Flourishing. Nouriel Roubini: Time to nationalise insolvent banks. Of all the options before western economies, ‘government receivership’ of insolvent banks is the best, says Nouriel Roubini.
A year ago, I predicted that the losses of US financial institutions would reach at least $1 trillion and possibly go as high as $2 trillion. At that time, the consensus among economists and policymakers was that these estimates were exaggerated, because it was believed that sub-prime mortgage losses totalled only about $200 billion. RGE - Nouriel Roubini's Global EconoMonitor. Arianna Huffington: The Era of Not Getting It: The Marie Antoinettes of the Meltdown. There is plenty of debate about what President Obama's stimulus bill should look like -- as well there should be, given all that is at stake.
But there is a growing consensus that the guiding principle in that debate should be Obama's call for a "new era of responsibility. " Helping fuel that consensus is the saga of the rise and fall of former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain, the poster child for the era of irresponsibility. The condemnation of his behavior is completely bipartisan (although we haven't heard yet what John McCain thinks of one of his biggest fundrasing bundlers).
On this week's Left, Right, and Center, my conservative pal Tony Blankley made the perfect comparison: "Thain and these CEOs have been studying at the Marie Antoinette School of Public Presentation," he said. "The crassness and the stupidity are stunning...