Bernanke seems to be slowly working his way to the conclusion that the economy and the finance crisis can't be fixed without helping homeowners. As usual, he's late to the party, but I suppose better late than never. His proposals, such as they are, are vague. Let's run through...

The government needs to stop giving money without getting either control or a reasonable chance of repayment of the money. If it doesn't do so, it won't be able to fix the economy.

When Citigroup got its bailout, the market capitalization of Citi was about 20 billion dollars. The...

I was brought up Christian--baptized Anglican and enrolled in Roman Catholic Sunday School. That was my mother's bargain: dad could chose the baptism, but mum got to choose the Sunday school. Smart woman.

I can't say I'm Christian anymore, though I still have a ton of respect for Jesus from...

Once upon a time there was a candidate who was 17 points ahead of his foe. The election, it seemed, was his.

His name was Dukakis, and he lost that election to George Bush, Sr.

Or, more accurately, he lost it to Lee Atwater, Rove's mentor. By the time Atwater...

Ok, based on Hilary's mention yesterdaythat RFK was still campaigning in June when he was assassinated, I'm hearing reasoning that Clinton is staying in because if Obama gets assassinated, then she'll get the job.

Enough. Does no one think these things through for two seconds before setting fingers...

As Dave Neiwart points out over at FDL, the results for Hillary in North Carolina and Indiana were less than she needed, and may have destroyed her chances with the superdelegates. Her speech sounded suspiciously like a concession speech. Now anyone counting Hillary out until she formally says she's...

So Paulson has come out with a plan. It's primarily a reorganization plan, pushing the Thrift regulator into the SEC, creating a federal mortgage regulator, giving the Fed the right to inspect the new firms that now have access to its liquidity. There's some talk about objectives based...

Unions in America have been in a decline for over 60 years. Union membership has dropped from almost 35% of all workers in 1945 to less than 15% today. In fact, union membership has declined to almost exactly the same percentage as it...

Perhaps all the folks who keep wanting to count Edwards out, should note this poll on Nevada (hat tip David Sirota):

Barack Obama: 32 percent

Hillary Clinton: 30 percent

John Edwards: 27 percent

It's still close, and Edwards' delegate count is just fine, thanks. He's in the...

So, Edwards fails to get the win in Iowa and Obama or Clinton are much more likely to be the nominee than if Edwards had won. Then they'll either be the president or lose to the Republican. (Don't think it can't happen.)

I'm reminded of the saying that you get...

Inquiring minds want to know why Jonathan Alter stated the following here on Huffington Post:

Most early head-to-head polls show John McCain and Barack Obama as the strongest candidates in a general election, a reflection of their slight edge over their primary opponents among independents, who make up at...

It's the day Iowans choose their presidential primary delegates and it's the last year of Bush. But the real question about Bush is not what he'll do this year, or what the Democrats will let him get away with (we know that will be darn near anything he wants)...

Edwards should be Democratic nominee because he is the most progressive and electable of the top three candidate and the only one who understands that entrenched interests like the telecoms, banks, credit card issuers, health insurers and oil companies aren't voluntarily going to make some sort of "bipartisan happy consensus"...

Ok, enough with the BS "let's not talk about electability" idea that seems so prominent in the left-wing blogosphere. This isn't 2004, Kerry isn't the "electable" candidate preparing to cruise himself into the ground. It's almost 2008, we've got a different crop of candidates, and the most electable of the...

When I was a child my favourite cartoon program was the Looney Tunes. Bugs was my favourite, but in constant play were the Roadrunner cartoons, in which the starving (and very clever) Wile. E. Coyote would set out to get himself supper by catching the roadrunner. Unlucky Wile never managed...

Oh my:

The seemingly unstoppable Canadian dollar surged to its highest level yet Wednesday, topping 106.17 cents (U.S.).

The record came just after 4 p.m., when official trading ended for the day. Officially, the dollar closed at 105.85 cents, up nearly a cent from Tuesday's close, but trading continues...

Here's what you need to know about the United Auto Workers (UAW) strike against General Motors. The strike was about two things: labor arbitrage and health care.

In 1990, GM's workforce was over 350,000 strong. Today it is 73,000. Much production has been off-shored or spun off. (

The US Senate voted 72 to 25 to condemn the Move-On ad which called General Petraeus "General Betray Us". It's hard to know where to start with this, because it's an episode that says so much about the US and the US Congress, so I'm just going to work...

I often say, to the point where regular readers of my home blog are probably banging their heads against the keyboard -- right now -- that the U.S. doesn't have a lot of complicated problems. We know how to fix most of them and people who keep saying, "well,...