Two links

For the policy wonks, here is a Brookings institution guide on fixing the financial quagmire that talks about longer term fix's to the economy and ideas for a better regulatory framework. Both of which are absent from the current bailout plan that the Senate hope to vote on this evening...

The report gives examples of how the following high level recommendations that actually could create a better regulatory system to prevent such a quagmire from occurring in the future.

First, financial instruments and institutions should be more transparent. Second, financial institutions should be less leveraged and more liquid. Third, financial institutions should be supervised more effectively, with greater regard for systemic risks.

Wow, this is the second time I seen the word quagmire being used to describe a set of catastrophic global events that have happened over the last six years. The first being Iraq...

Crude, How Wall Street is screwing America: A cogent explanation of how we came to $4/gallon oil and the eminent contributions of Mr. Clinton and the current POTUS. Of how actual regulation was whittled away slowly but surely to create a feeding orgy for commodities traders on Wall Street and of how the word ‘stay-cation’ became suddenly popular.

In stark opposition to the oil crisis of the 1970s that left Washington in a state of panic and Americans lined up at the gas pumps, the seeds of the current condition may well have been planted not in the Middle East by the OPEC nations, but right here at home, by the very lawmakers now scrambling to undo what they set in motion.

oil is going down. Has India and China dramatically cut back? Nothing has changed and, in fact, the supply-demand factor has probably gotten worse because of Russia's aggression [and] the severe weather, but oil is sinking, sinking, sinking. How can that possibly be?"