Bits and peices kept get through the mists of 80k hookers, and missing blondes. The campaign insult of the day ties up all the pundits as they repeat charges and concerns. Meanwhile the financial meltdown continues. Krugman again weighs in and this is an area he understands. Well as anyone can understand faith based economics.
More below the fold.
Betting the Bank by Paul Krugman
....Still, that's not what has me worried. I'm more concerned that despite the extraordinary scale of Mr. Bernanke's action — to my knowledge, no advanced-country's central bank has ever exposed itself to this much market risk — the Fed still won't manage to get a grip on the economy. You see, $400 billion sounds like a lot, but it's still small compared with the problem.
...What if this initiative fails? I'm sure that Mr. Bernanke and his colleagues are frantically considering other actions that they can take, but there's only so much the Fed — whose resources are limited, and whose mandate doesn't extend to rescuing the whole financial system — can do when faced with what looks increasingly like one of history's great financial crises.
...I used to think that the major issues facing the next president would be how to get out of Iraq and what to do about health care. At this point, however, I suspect that the biggest problem for the next administration will be figuring out which parts of the financial system to bail out, how to pay the cleanup bills and how to explain what it's doing to an angry public.
Got a peice of land you can garden? Because the "one of history's great financial crises" has me shaking in my boots.