Link madness

So it's a busy day. I'm a little miffed because the weather forcast for the weekend has completely scuttled my family's plans to go camping on the coast. Oh well. Onto today's topic.

Tim Geitner has laid out his plans for financial regulation. As The Atlantic notes, he does it in an op-ed in the Financial Times in an attempt to get the European banks on board before the G20 summit later this month. The Atlantic also helpfully notes various responses to Geitner's plans. My take: This is very encouraging and somewhat unexpected, as I thought that we had passed the point where reform would happen. Reform hasn't happened yet, but the fact that it is now being pushed on hard is really good. My opinion of Geitner has just gone up. (Maybe something similar will happen with health care, where it looks to late and then stuff happens that is great. Still too early to tell on both.)

Paul Krugman has an excellent story in the NYT magazine this week that examines how economists were so wrong about the economy.

And finally, David Brooks has some pointers for Obama's speech to Congress next week. He cites this Atlantic story about healthcare and this Brookings Institute study.