Brad DeLong's mind is on monetary policy. He's sure the Fed committed mistakes on an unholy triumvirate. Bailing out AIG (AIG); not bailing out Lehman Bros.; favoring easily evaded oversight that fostered the shadow banking system. The question of whether or not Alan Greenspan is to blame, however, for keeping interest rates on Treasury securities low remains something of a Gordian knot. The central bank governor cut off a worse recession after the dot-com crash but overestimated the ability of future policy to mitigate the resulting bubble, says the professor.

Paul Krugman started by clarifying his "Too big to fail FAIL" post from yesterday. Krugman has long been a proponent of a heavily regulated financial playing field, and this post served largely to reiterate this point. After breaking up the "too big to fail" banks, we can't expect them to "run safely on autopilot," Krugman explained. While his post failed to elaborate upon any of his previously well-documented beliefs, it could serve as a nice introduction for anyone not familiar with the man and his dogma. Forward this one to Krugman newbies.

Barry Ritholtz shared a couple of fascinating visual aids today. The first being a map depicting income changes state by state (bet you can't guess which four states have had the greatest average decrease in personal income). The second, a chart of U.S. expenditures in each major military involvement, not only adjusts cost to current inflation rates but also shows what percentage of the nation's GDP accounted for war costs in the war's peak years.

Barry took some time to blast account management service company PIMCO for its shoddy performance as a Fed predictor. Ritholtz elaborates:

Whatever insight PIMCO gleaned from being the world's biggest bond fund was consistently overridden by their talking their book, rather than making good forecasts.