From Jacob Sullum at Reason:
The Treasury Department has agreed to buy a $5 billion stake in GMAC, General Motors’ former financial subsidiary, to help it become a bank holding company. The money will come from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), created by the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act. Yet GMAC wants to be a bank so [...]
From Matthew Lynn at Bloomberg:
One, Britain calls in the International Monetary Fund: In the last few months, the U.K. has been a lesson in how to turn a crisis into a catastrophe. Everyone knew its debt-fuelled, financial-services-dependent economy would need a painful overhaul to develop new industries. Instead, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has embarked on [...]
For all those who believe that government spending can get us out of this mess, Tad DeHaven has a very good question:
But isn’t spending tons of money exactly what government at all levels has been doing in recent years? According to U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis numbers, combined federal, state, and local expenditures in 2000 [...]
Robert Stewart gives a very coherent explanation of the financial crisis at Mises.org:
In summary, the essence of the subprime crisis is that money was lent (often through the agency of questionable mortgage brokers) at very low interest rates (courtesy of the Fed) to hundreds of thousands of people (all they needed was a credit score [...]
