Oh please. This Washington Post article is to be recommended only because it exposes the authors' ignorance of the subject. The Fed did not fail in their own eyes. You must understand that the Fed and the parent of the Fed, the Bank of International Settlements, or BIS, are in control of the governments. They just have to threaten economic meltdown and governments will bail the banks out. They most likely knew that the crisis wasn't contained. The Fed wants you to think they are not understanding anything. They understand. Authors, they understand all of it. Go look at the charts at the St Louis Fed website and you will see that they understand. Of course the banks didn't have enough money. They were fueling a bubble. Taxpayers ... More »

A lot of this story is old news in the financial community. But it is an easy read as the writer is capable. He should look into the concept of plunge protection where he would see that banks are driving up the stock market with loans they are getting from the Federal Reserve. That is market manipulation and just makes investing in the stock market a crap shoot. I don't see the banks being that great an investment unless they can overcome the BIS higher capital requirements that could be imposed as early as 2012.

This is a very accurate article regarding the bank shackles that keep them from lending. It leaves out the eventual mark to market accounting that will be imposed sometime between now and 2019, but you get the idea. There are many reasons why the banks are squirreling away money and not lending. Too bad Obama didn't anticipate this, and he had Japan to look at as an example. Then perhaps he would have saved more out for Main Street and created alternative banks, letting these useless, too-big-to-fail banks go under. But now it is too late and Obama doesn't have the money, and the banks don't want to part with theirs.

The problem with people at Newstrust is that they don't realize that the American people are opposed to another big government program. In a fantasy world, the competition from government would be great, and policy costs would come down. But that isn't what likely would happen. The government, if they are interested in fighting big pharma, should let people keep their own insurance if they want and not scare them with the threat of losing insurance. It is bad politics for a president already in trouble for bailing out Goldman Sachs to be creating more debt with a big government program. Having said that, enforce anti competitive laws regarding the behavior of big insurance. And don't let them buy crap investments from Wall ... More »

Again, I am for getting out of Afghanistan, but this is just terrible journalism. The author states what our goal in Afghanistan should be. She has no clue what is going on in Afghanistan. The Taliban went to Texas in 1997 as guests of Unocal. Unocal was not permitted to build a pipeline through Afghanistan. This aroused a motive in the oil men and neocons for a new Pearl Harbor as an excuse to go into Afghanistan. This desire found its way to the PNAC website in 2000, a full YEAR before 911. I would suggest that you cannot find the truth in mainstream news about our involvement in illegal oil wars. They will never tell us the truth, but we know the truth. This author is just totally full of both herself and of misinformation.

This is typical opinion that does not take into account that Afghanistan is an illegal war. Quality has to be judged by what you leave out. If you leave out that the Taliban went to Texas in 1997 and you leave out that they refused to build a pipeline through Afghanistan you realize that the motive for 911 and the invasion of Afghanistan is being continued by this newest presidential neocon. Shame on you Mr Obama!

Up to Washington Post standards.