Brad DeLong spent an uncharacteristically long amount of time discussing noneconomical, Washington insider-y political gossip today in the wake of Gov. Mark Sanford's infidelity admission. DeLong took aim at Sanford for rejecting stimulus money and asked, "Would anyone but a Republican politician quote 1 Corinthians in an email to his Argentinian mistress?" DeLong also took issue with the Washington press corps for its seeming "helplessness" and poor reporting during the "Where in the Hell Did Sanford Go?" morass.

Paul Krugman revives his case for a bigger stimulus package. He implored the GOP to be less predictable and quit claiming the first round was a failure. It makes no sense to blame Obama's plan for the still-faltering economy, he suggests, because most of the stimulus package hasn't even been put to work yet. And even when it has, it won't be enough, says he. (Paul, enough with your wonkish infatuation with facts and logic. Don't you know this is politics?)

Barry Ritholtz posted an interesting chart on unemployment exhaustion rates and credit card charge-offs. As Ritholtz explained Monday, there's more than what meets the eye to those rising unemployment figures. Large numbers of those claiming unemployment have actually just run out of benefits, he argued, and their out-of-work credit has simply dried up. Ritholtz jumped into action after hearing about the record high rates hit by the credit card chargeoff index (which measures the number of credit card loans banks give out, without expecting to be repaid) and decided to mash up the two figures—in true Ritholtz chart-lovin' fashion.

Felix Salmon takes a look at the Community Reinvestment Act by inveighing what he calls Clusterstock's John Carney "bizarre crusade against" the law. Carney blames the CRA for fostering bad mortgages that fueled the subprime mortgage crisis and the wider recession, supporting his arguments with government issued pamphlets from 1996 and 2000. Salmon counters that the documents aren't incriminating at all; he points out that those pamphlets predated the housing bubble and slams Carney for omitting key details. What's the upshot? The CRA had nothing to do with encouraging lenders to give low-income borrowers mortgages they couldn't afford, Salmon insists.