1 Clive Crook is drawn into dialogue with Paul Krugman and Robert Barro, having earlier accused them both of allowing political bias to shape their economics writing.

2 Ezra Klein has a handy round-up of expert responses to yesterday's Geithner plan. In brief: it's an outline, not a plan, and too vague to inspire confidence. Here's Paul Krugman:

So what is the plan? I really don’t know, at least based on what we’ve seen today. But maybe, maybe, it’s a Trojan horse that smuggles the right policy into place.  

The most damning take comes from Yves Smith: 

At least Paulson announced his plans. Not that he ever did anything he announced, but that's a small technicality. These guys can't even make an announcement.

(Strictly, that's a reader's comment, not a quote from Yves, but it's all of a piece with his argument.) 

3 The Wall Street Journal's MarketBeat blog has a brilliantly funny history of TARP, which inspires Tyler Cowen to ten hypotheses of his own.  

4 Foreign Policy's Elizabeth Dickinson connects Daewoo's huge land deal in Madagascar with the anti-government revolt there.      

1 The case for bonuses: "The answer is the one given by the Tory leader David Cameron today, which is that if taxpayers hadn't rescued those banks then those employees wouldn't have jobs, let alone bonuses."

2 CNBC vs. Barrons: The Complete Cramer Pissing Match: Another one of those battles you wish both sides could lose. In this case, it seems as though CNBC comes off slightly less badly, although it's close.

3 Time to Hang Up the Pajamas: Dan Lyons on why blogs don't make money. "Last year the total spent on blog advertising in the United States was a mere $411 million, according to researcher eMarketer. That represents only a sliver of the $23.7 billion spent on U.S. Internet ads last year... More money was spent on e-mail advertising last year than was spent on blog advertising—yet you don't see anyone touting e-mail as the next big billion-dollar media business."

4 Subcomittee on Financial Services Accepts Surprise Testimony by Bernie Madoff: Hell, if he's going to plead guilty, why not?

from Market Movers

1 Tim Harford's The Logic of Life, out in paperback Tuesday. Our MR book forum on it was here

2 The $10 microscope, via Chug.

3 Will failed British banks come back as mutuals?

4 "Gallons per mile" is better than "miles per gallon."

5. Recovery and sectoral shifts

from Marginal Revolution

Arnold Kling, for Cato, writes about steering between black swans. Ugly metaphor, but an interesting challenge to stimulus conventional wisdom

Quelle horreur! Is the US turning into France? Newsweek seems to think so.

Or is France, under Sarko l'Américain,- turning into the US? In Le Monde Diplomatique Christopher Bickerton argues that far from being a neo-liberal demagogue as some of his enemies contend, the French president is in fact pragmatic, short-termist, and opportunistic. And that's the real problem.

Patrice de Beer takes an even bleaker view suggesting that Sarkozy may be heading for the political guillotine: France's politics of regicide

Some say the Pope is becoming a timid recluse, buried in his reading and writing, vulnerable to manipulation. That's the charitable interpretation of how Benedict XVI got into another fine mess as Guy Dinmore makes clear in his profile

A different perspective on our political leaders—and the Pope—is provided in this photo gallery at Spiegel Online. Here you can find Barbie's latest incarnation as Angela Merkel and a curious collection of Catalonian defecating figurines known as "caganers".

I've received sharply divided email over my National Journal article, arguing that former Gov. Blagojevich's impeachment was far from unimpeachable.

From Dr Sally Satel, a dose of life-saving common sense: Ending the Organ Shortage

1. China prodigy of the day.

2. Johnny Cash and Louis Armstrong (YouTube).

3. Models of correlations among risks, by Robert Engel, and here.

4. What really caused the crisis? A good short piece.

5. Brad Delong lists the cuts in the stimulus plan.

6. Should the IMF create more SDRs?

from Marginal Revolution

Poynter Online relays fascinating New York Times rules on how to use Facebook, including the probity of writing about one's Facebook "friends":

The answer depends on whether a "friend" is really a friend. In general, being a "friend" of someone on Facebook is almost meaningless and does not signify the kind of relationship that could pose a conflict of interest for a reporter or editor writing about that person. But if a "friend" is really a personal friend, it would.

God uses Twitter

Robert Skidelsky, in the Daily Times of Pakistan, wonders what Alan Greenspan meant when he said his "intellectual structure" had been shattered by the current crisis. Would Schumpeter have been as easily daunted?

U.S. Sovereign CDS Rockets to 82 bp: And it's still very unclear who's buying this protection. Deutsche Bank Fallen Trader Left Behind $1.8 Billion Hole: As suspected, it was on the CDS basis trad>e. : That's about 50 jobs. A new hedge fund business model: Ideas for fixing the present flawed incentives. ‘Infrastructure more helpful than tax cuts’: The IMF says that government spending boosts and tax cuts are the only thing keeping the global economy from an outright contraction. Somali Pirates Get Ransom and Leave Arms Freighter: And the NYT gets some great quotes from one of the pirates, Isse Mohammed. from Market Movers

Phelps Made a Mistake, But His Handlers Made It Worse. Nice to see sports agents living up to a stereotype; makes you go all Jerry McGuire

For those who insist on Russia as a "normal country", I recommend the Moscow Times's account of an entertainment for Vladimir Putin.

1. Paul Romer on creating good banks

2. Another application of Modigliani-Miller?

3. How fiscal stimulus fared in Japan

4. More economic advisers for Obama, including Tyson and Feldstein on a council.

5. What is conservatism?

6. Abandoned cars in Dubai: bad sign

from Marginal Revolution

A Far From Unimpeachable Impeachment. Blagojevich's ouster was not a railroading, but it looked like one. National Journal, 7 February 2009.

Geoffrey Wheatcroft on Prospect's "Red Tory" thesis in the FT:

But will a Tory victory signal something deeper than just throwing the rascals out, one more failed government disposed of by the electorate? Previous cases of “Callaghan’s law” were not just shifts in public mood, they were the outcome of deeper intellectual currents. In the new issue of Prospect magazine, under the slightly irritating headline “The Red Tory Moment”, Philip Blond suggests that another is now flowing and that the Tories should return to “the tradition of communitarian civic conservatism”.

Chris Hayes is superb (as usual) on Biden versus Summers in the Nation:

Summers has already come to dominate the White House economic policy shop. One person close to Obama's economic team told me that on economic policy, "it's looking like it's Larry's show." This leaves a disconcerting vacuum in the White House for a labor-liberal voice equal in stature and clout. Enter, perhaps, Joe Biden.

Stephanie Coontz in the NYT:

More than 25 separate studies have established that marital quality drops, often quite steeply, after the transition to parenthood. And forget the “empty nest” syndrome: when the children leave home, couples report an increase in marital happiness.

Eric Kuhn: The 2008 Google Docs Campaign

While the presidential contenders had enlisted technologies such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn, which all received a great deal of attention, it was Google Docs which had the most amount of influence, in spite of receiving the least amount of attention.

Keep calm and carry on. A simple five-word message is the very model of British restraint and stiff upper lip. BBC.

1 Wells Fargo’s Equity Pumped Up by Squishy Asset: "Exclude the servicing rights and Wells’s price-to-tangible-book ratio soars to about 4.3 times", compared to 1.2 for JPMorgan.

2 AP alleges copyright infringement of Obama image: Talk about tone-deafness. First the silly blogfight, and now this? AP is in desperate need of some new lawyers who understand what century they're in.

3 Joint faculty letter to President Reinharz: Brandeis's faculty isn't happy about the decision to shutter the Rose.

4 Economic Know-Nothingism: Dan Gross examines the Republican side of the stimulus debate.

5 Duh diligence: "Their due diligence process was, essentially, 'are you a decent chap? If not, do you at least write with the letters all sort of wiggly?'"

6 Look out! Marketwatch says equities are the new bird flu: This headline sat atop the Marketwatch homepage for over an hour today.

from Market Movers

From ProPublica:

Lumped together, the House and Senate versions of the economic stimulus plan number some 1,400 pages, roughly the equivalent of the complete works of Shakespeare.

Remarks by the President on Executive Compensation: Note that he uses the term "top executives" twice. This quite clearly does not apply to most bankers.

SEC Replies: Madoff Hearings Part II Liveblogged: The death throes of the SEC begin.

Risk Without Reward: An entire blog devoted to operational risk in hedge funds. I love the internet.

A shallow strategy: "Game theory has made the financial world in its image, and we are now trying to rescue ourselves from it."

Ben Stein responds to UVM flap:And shows all the graciousness of a rotting fish. "As for the commencement speech, he said, 'I didn’t really want to do it in the first place.'"

Alas, Yes. But a Definite "Yes.": Tom Peters thinks the CEO salary cap is a good idea.

Google Demands Time Warner Buy Back AOL Stake: For 25% of what they paid for it initially.

The collection catalogue is dead, long live the catalogue: An exciting initiative from the Getty.

With less than a week until Israel's general election, opinion polls are pointing towards a strong showing by the far-right leader and former nightclub bouncer, Avigdor Lieberman. The FT explains his appeal to voters.

Arabs account for almost 20 per cent of Israel's population but why don't more of them vote in elections? The Jerusalem Post offers some answers

Iran is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the revolution against the Shah. Some of the key figures recalled their involvement, in this report for the BBC's Newsnight programme.