- The government bailout of financial institutions is wildly unpopular and perceived to be highly wasteful. Which is funny, the Treasury Department reckons, because so far it has yielded a profit of $35 billion. [AP]
- Americans want drastic action taken against the deficit; they just don’t want to pay more taxes or reduce spending on the military, entitlements or farm subsidies, according to a poll. They’d rather soak the rich. [Bloomberg]
- Self-employment has been on the decline since the recession ended. Where is America’s can-do spirit? [NYT]
- Since Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke took the widely questioned step to embark on a $600 billion round of quantitative easing, long-term interest rates have gone up. That’s bad, because the point of quantitative easing was to lower interest rates. [WSJ]
- Senator Carl Levin says that in 2007 Goldman Sachs was manipulating the prices of credit default swaps. He is also in possession of some emails that make one Goldman senior trader look like kind of a jerk. [FT]
mtaylor [at] observer.com | @mbrookstaylor
