News You Can Use

Here's a great story by MSN's Jim Jubak ...

Where's the bailout for Main Street?

When it comes to the real economy, where people are struggling to make ends meet, where the work week keeps shrinking and where grocery bills keep expanding, all I see is a single $600 check -- $1,200 per family. What exactly is that supposed to fix? Hey, doesn't anybody know there's a recession going on?

And the always excellent Barry Ritholtz adds some sharp commentary to Businessweek's Michael Mandel's insightful piece on the Paulson Plan.

Barry's take:

Less financial supervision? More self-regulation? What hallucinogenics were taken prior to making those recommendations?

Bankers are not the folks who should be garnering less transparency, and less onerous regulatory requirements. Only a clueless ideologue would even dare suggest as much. Unfortunately, we have a clueless idealogue running the Treasury department. When confronted with what can only be described as insurmountable evidence that self-regulation has failed miserably, our man at Treasury proposes more self-regulation.

My take: The problem is our government has been taken over by well-heeled crooks. That's the only explanation for how Washington works.

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