Brad DeLong eased back after the holiday by linking to this article about coffee-drinking mice and excerpting a few stories on Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, who supported McCain and co. during the troupe's failed presidential bid. While DeLong doesn't provide any analysis of the excerpts, the grouping has a kind of cosmic meaning: Conservative pundits and media analysts can't seem to decide whether Kristol is good or dire for Republicans. While Kristol is a ringleader to the highbrow conservatives, he's also somewhat responsible for the failed Bill Ayers attack, one excerpt suggests. What this has to do with the economy is beyond me.

Paul Krugman defended government-run health care, making the case that public insurance can be more cost-effective to manage than private options. Percentages of total spending dedicated to administrative costs are lower for public insurance, Krugman concluded, despite the common refrain that private-sector insurance has a lower administrative overhead.

Barry Ritholtz psychoanalyzed Wall Street journalists, noting their preference for good stories and undue optimism over "cold hard facts," as Ritholtz calls them. So much for your green shoots, he shouted yet again at predictors of quick recovery. "Beware Economists [sic] who rely on stock markets to forecast economic activity. ..." Oh, and by the way, the FDIC reported eight bank failures on July 2, the highest number in the past year, according to a chart posted by Ritholtz, via Ron Griess of the Chart Store.

In a rare moment of reticence, Felix Salmon didn't post anything today. We'd say he took an extra day for the holiday—except that this weekend, Salmon shared a long entry on why credit-default-swaps should not be regulated by insurers. Just because the complex financial derivatives are sort of like insurance doesn't mean they are insurance, Salmon argued. He thinks they should be overseen by a federal agency with a shot at reining in the complex assets—like the SEC.