Sunday Notes and Marginalia

Housing near bottom? Fannie thinks so. Calculated Risk? Not so much. I agree. (Fred Barnes?) [Calculated Risk]

Should Madoffs victims be means tested before getting IRS refunds? Well, let’s put it this way, should Steven Spielberg get a real payout on fictitious profits? I didn’t think so. By all means, give back whatever tax was paid on the fake gains – but please – the compensation / victimization culture is sickening. Why 9/11 and Madoff and not, say, Oklahoma City and Lehman shareholders? It’s insanity. You put your money in the market and you put it at risk. You trust someone without due diligence, you put your money at risk. [Clusterstock]

Larry Summers on Meet the Press:

But cautions that we’ve got a long way to go, that there are still substantial risks, that there are downside contingencies that we’ve got to prepare for, that there are issues in the global economy, that there are issues in commercial real estate, that’s right.

On my mind today:

Will the market come back to reality this week? Will the next steep drop begin tmw? It is certainly coming soon.

Is this crisis the end of the American dominance? Trite question now, of course, but feeling very real to me today. That would make the Clinton 90s the apotheosis of American Empire. And Bush (9/11) the catalysis that broke our upward trajectory.