Conor Clarke

The Congressional Oversight Panel, led by Elizabeth Warren, released its six-month TARP report Tuesday evening (PDF). If documents could wield pitchforks, this one wouldn't. But it does contain one little sliver of populist outrage. The report judges TARP by four criteria -- transparency, assertiveness, accountability and clarity. The current administration gets "mixed" results. (And, based on Warren's video introduction, Hank Paulson gets points only for… More »

Riding the coattails of Rick Santelli's February 19 CNBC rant, a group of conservative organizations has organized a series of rallies set for April 15 -- tax day. The organization's website says Santelli "set out on a rant to expose the bankrupt liberal agenda of the White House Administration and Congress," and "called for a 'Chicago tea Party' where advocates of the free-market system could join in a protest against out of control government spending."That's not… More »

Conservative blogs are freaking out about a new Rasmussen poll that shows only 53% of the country prefers "capitalism" over "socialism." I don't love the poll result ether, but I also don't really know what else to expect: we're in the middle of a financial crisis, and there is a widespread sense that over-exuberance in the marketplace had something to do with it. That's how the pendulum swings. More »

The Pentagon is running a new war-game scenario:But instead of military brass plotting America's defense, it was hedge-fund managers, professors and executives from at least one investment bank, UBS - all invited by the Pentagon to play out global scenarios that could shift the balance of power between the world's leading economies.The article suggests that the United States is defeated by China in at least one such scenario. More »

The Congressional Oversight Panel, led by Elizabeth Warren, released its six-month TARP report Tuesday evening (PDF). If documents could wield a pitchforks, this one wouldn't. But it does contain one little sliver of populist outrage. The report judges TARP by four criteria -- transparency, assertiveness, accountability and clarity. The current administration gets "mixed" results. (And, based on Warren's video introduction, Hank Paulson gets points only for… More »

I'm not especially eager to dive back into the briar patch over Larry Summers' income. But Greg Sargent's piece about big liberal blogs being furious over not getting advertising revenue from liberal interest groups casts the notion of a conflict of interest in an odd light. Several bloggers complained to Sargent that they are often asked to push a group's message but get no advertising revenue in return. In response to the criticism, one of those groups, Americans… More »

Isn't there a Bond movie about this?Cyberspies have penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system, according to current and former national-security officials. [...] Intelligence officials worry about cyber attackers taking control of electrical facilities, a nuclear power plant or financial networks via the Internet.If there's a policy implication here, it should be to recast the debate over the… More »

Felix Salmon says Nassim Nicholas Taleb's FT listicle is "necessary and impossible." I'd say it's impossible and ... odd. Some of the items seem perfectly reasonable, if also perfectly idealistic: as Salmon says, observing that "nothing should ever become too big to fail," in a world in which just about every modern economy is too big to fail, is a bit quixotic. And many of the items have a strange aphoristic feel to them: What is fragile should break early while… More »

Almost in time for the debate over the Senate's vote to increase the estate tax exemption to $5 million, the Tax Policy Center has updated its tables on who the tax hits and for how much. What I like about the tables is that its easy to compare the effects of current law (in which the exemption returns to $1 million) to the Obama plan (in which the exemption is an inflation-indexed $3.5 million) and the Lincoln-Kyl plan ($5 million exemption) that the Senate passed… More »

The full results of the new CBS/NYT poll contain all sorts of weird nuggets about public opinion and the economy that aren't reflected in the write-ups. Here's one that I find representative and strange:Are you currently employed, or are you temporarily out of work, or are you not in the.market for work at all? Currently employed: 52%Temporarily out of work: 17%Not in the market for work: 15%Retired: 16%This can't possibly be right, can it? More »

Andrew Ross Sorkin's column in this morning's New York Times comes tantalizingly close to the conclusion that the Geithner bank plan -- which uses FDIC-backed loans -- violates the FDIC charter:The F.D.I.C. is insuring the program, called the Public-Private Investment Program, by using a special provision in its charter that allows it to take extraordinary steps when an "emergency determination by secretary of the Treasury" is made to mitigate "systemic… More »

The bankrupt Star Tribune, Minnesota's largest newspaper, is testing the proposition that its journalistic output is a community service worth endowing. It has launched a community website to court a new owner and explore alternative business models. More »

The real concern is that there are provisions for what I would call reeducation camps for young people. More »

Former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D) appeared on NBC's Today show Monday morning and told host Matt Lauer that there are "no excuses" for his prostitution scandal. "I have tried to address these gremlins and confront them," he said. More »

It's hard to know what to make of the fact that the Treasury Department is extending the application deadline and "refining" the guidelines for the Legacy Securities Public-Private Investment Program. On the one hand, expanding the pool of eligible applicants might temper some of the fairness-based criticisms that the plan has received. (I.E. -- why can only the big players get non-recourse loans?) On the other hand, extending the application deadline is something… More »

Writing in the Huffington Post, Jeffrey Sachs says he has a new criticism of the Geithner bank plan:Insiders can easily game the system. [...] Consider a toxic asset held by Citibank with a face value of $1 million, but with zero probability of any payout and therefore with a zero market value. An outside bidder would not pay anything for such an asset. All of the previous articles consider the case of true outside bidders.Suppose, however, that Citibank itself… More »

I see that the Congressional Budget Office has updated its sexiest data set: The Distribution of Federal Taxes and Household Income. The CBO data is always three years behind -- the 2009 update brings it up through 2006 -- and the current crisis will no doubt shift the landscape of American income. But the data set is still the best look at equality and redistribution in the country. Inequality and progressivity are in the eye of the beholder, but here are a few… More »

Maybe Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann was on to something when she worried about the dollar being replaced by a new currency. But it turns out the threat isn't China or the G-20 but local communities that decide they need to increase the money supply by printing scrip.My head starts to hurt when I think about the macroeconomic implications of something like this, so I'm going to post a link to Paul Krugman's classic article on the imploding, scrip-issuing,… More »

What to do about the rapidly disintegrating newspaper industry? Michael Kinsley answers:How about nothing? Capitalism is a "perennial gale of creative destruction" (Joseph Schumpeter). Industries come and go. A newspaper industry that was a ward of the state or of high-minded foundations would be sadly compromised.Would it be "sadly compromised"? Not really. More »

There has been some question about whether Tim Geithner and the Obama administration have been applying a different restructuring standard to the auto industry than they have to the banks. Geithner has now basically acknowledged that this is true: "When in the future -- or I would say, if in the future -- banks need exceptional assistance in order to get through this, then we'll make sure that assistance comes with conditions, not just to protect the taxpayer, but… More »