Brad DeLong on long-term deficit.

75-Year Cost of Bush Tax Cut Extension: 2.2% of GDP

75-Year Cost of Medicare Part D: 0.8% of GDP

...

A further $100 billion stimulus would raise our 75-year primary fiscal deficit by 0.005% of GDP.

It would take a $2 trillion stimulus to raise our 75-year primary fiscal deficit by 0.1% of GDP

The health care reform act--the PPACA--reduced our 75-year primary fiscal deficit by 0.4% of GDP if repeat if the long-run effects on Medicare spending growth are what the CBO projected them to be last fall.

Dean Baker observes that the IMF completely missed the housing bubble, the bursting of which has added a lot to governments' debt. He suggests that their constant errors probably are a result of political motivation.

Felix Salmon reviews books on Bear Stearns and Goldman Sachs.

All this material is then marshaled in support of two big ideas.

The first is that Wall Street is, or should be, a public utility, operating the "money grid" in much the same way that Con Edison operates the electricity grid. McGee talks of the money grid throughout the book while never really bothering to define it, but at the heart of the idea is the notion that banks exist to take money from investors looking to put their cash to work, and to funnel it productively to companies that need to raise capital.

McGee’s other idea is that once all the big banks went public, their shareholders demanded that they maximize their return on equity and try to become as successful, on that front, as the insanely profitable Goldman Sachs. When Goldman’s competitors took on ever-increasing amounts of risk and leverage in an attempt to replicate Goldman, they sowed the seeds not only of their own destruction, but of the entire global financial system as well.