Japan Initiates a Bold Bid to End Years of Falling Prices

In a statement detailing the new measures, the central bank said it would buy longer-term government bonds, lengthening the average maturity of its holdings to seven years from three years and expanding Japan’s monetary base to ¥270 trillion by March 2015. Under that plan, the bank will buy ¥7 trillion of bonds each month, equivalent to over 1 percent of its gross domestic product — almost twice the pace of the U.S. Federal Reserve.

BOJ's Kuroda Vows To Use "Every Means Available" To Fight Deflation by Yglesias

I'm starting to come around to Baker's way of thinking. Given our lost decade, in hindsight, we should have purged the system.

Robert Samuelson Calls Me Nobody by Dean Baker.

I disagreed with Krugman's calls for temporary nationalization of banks given the fragile state of the economy at the time, but turns out he was exactly right as usual. Turns out supposedly Obama wanted to nationalize Citigroup but Geithner slow-walked it into not happening. Big mistake.

My guess is that next time there won't be bailouts. The Democrats who voted for TARP were bait-and-switched over mortgage loan forgiveness. Geithner again, and Summers. Probably reacting to the original Teabagger Rick Santelli's rant.