• When people say they're mad at all the banks for not lending to businesses and getting the economy going again, you can tell them they're crazy, because commercial and industrial lending rose by a whopping 0.2 percent in the fourth quarter. [WSJ]
• Aggressive cost-cutting by the airline industry worked out okay until a blizzard hit and carriers were reduced to helpless bleating over Twitter. [Bloomberg]
• The observation that Europe is facing a huge debt crisis has done little to make European policymakers reevaluate their decisions. [NYT]
• Allstate, the insurer, is suing credit-crisis posterchild Countrywide Financial (now part of Bank of America) and former Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo over some allegedly destruct-o-matic mortgage-backed securities. [AP]
• Private equity titan BlackRock plans to make a "world-class trading platform" that will be the envy of all other trading platforms throughout the land, according to a leaked memo. [FT]

mtaylor [at] observer.com | @mbrookstaylor