Welcome to the Third World
“It’s not every day that a superpower makes a bid to transform itself into a Third World nation, and we here at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund want to be among the first to welcome you to the community of states in desperate need of international economic assistance…” Or, put another way, welcome to the United States of France…

Pray the debt away
The suits and ties packing the pews in lower Manhattan are a clear indicator that, when times get tough, you turn to God…

The Shock Doctrine rears its ugly head again
Buried in the fine print of the dubious $700-billion bailout plan is a clause that would make Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson a virtual economic dictator who is not accountable to anyone…

Why should the middle class pay for it?
“This proposal as presented is an unacceptable attempt to force middle-income families (and our children) to pick up the cost of fixing the horrendous economic mess that is the product of the Bush administration’s deregulatory fever and Wall Street’s insatiable greed…”

It’s a wonderful business
Ron Hermance’s real estate lending bank is doing well because, unlike the big lenders, he knew all his clients personally. The financial sector could learn a thing or two from this modern-day George Bailey…

Bye bye innovation
Banks can fail, and the world will move on. But the real problem with the debt crisis is it could close the door on innovation, the real driver of wealth…

What happens when banking becomes a popularity contest
“The impact of these mistakes was made worse by a seemingly harmless decision that these companies made many years ago: the decision to go public. Doing so put the firms at the mercy of the stock market, and last week that mercy evaporated…”

Nobody’s buying American
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is already thinking ahead to the next financial crisis: The day foreign investors stop buying US debt…

Bad times are good
What’s bad for your wallet could be good for the planet…

Sins don’t stop when the money does
Looking for a safe investment in bad times? Try alcohol, tobacco and gambling…

Russia stumbles
Russia may well have gotten the worst of the financial crisis so far; its stock market is down fifty percent off its summer peak, and fell so far last week that regulators had to close it for two days. Putin’s gamble that the Russian economy could weather a war in the Caucasus may have been wrong…

Told you so
Eddie Goodman didn’t live long enough to see whether his predictions about the financial system would come to pass. They did…

The myth of plummeting stock brokers
Skyscrapers are taller than ever these days, so why aren’t bankers jumping out of windows? Perhaps because they never really did…

Might as well be the Bronx Bugle…
The Wall Street Journal should change its name. After all, why would you want to be named after the bad part of town?