Brad DeLong trounces ABC and Fortune on their coverage of the health care reform debate in a game of "he said, she said." The news outlets parroted squawks of opposition from Rep. John Boehner and Sen. Lindsey Graham, respectively, about burgeoning cost estimates for a public-option plan, DeLong suggests. The problem is, Delong points out, that the GOP legislators are wrong; the Congressional Budget Office estimates in question didn't include a public-option plan, according to Obama's Director of Budget and Management Peter Orszag, via health care blogger Maggie Mahar.

Paul Krugman offers a history lesson comparing the present recession to the Great Depression, with a nauseatingly grim upshot. First he notes the similar tenors of "green-shoots" optimism in the press now and on June 23, 1930, some three years before the American economy began to recover. Second, he squashes the now-is-so-different-from-then arguments with a chart that tracks the nearly identical declines in world industrial output during the first year of the Great Depression and since April 2008.

Barry Ritholtz is not jumping for joy at a "marginal improvement" on the home sales front. There are a few reasons not take potentially optimistic stats on existing sales as such, he says, including the dubious projections of the National Association of Realtors. And the NAR's "idiocy," he adds. And "the fetid stank of corruption" that accompanies their press releases. But he makes his point most clearly with this easy-on-the-eyes (and on the brain) chart, courtesy of Calculated Risk. It juxtaposes seasonal patterns in the numbers over three previous years with the data from 2009; the contours are much alike, peaking in June, then leveling off through the summer, and falling in autumn and winter.

Felix Salmon argues for the creation of a "Consumer Financial Protection Agency" pointing to a graph comparing introductory, purchasing, and penalty interest rates on commercial credit cards with those offered by credit unions. He applies the numbers to make the familiar claim that low introductory rates beguile consumers into making poor decisions. That ultimately leaves them susceptible to being gouged by profit-hungry banks down the line. Felix, such a pessimist. Like that would ever happen.