Business As Usual - or - a Monday morning scream fest

Excuse me for a moment, I need to scream and throw something at the wall. Why? Because the paychecks collected by the scoundrels of Wall Street are once again bobbing up into the stratosphere. Paul Krugman writes:

There’s a palpable sense in the financial press that the storm has passed: stocks are up, the economy’s nose-dive may be leveling off, and the Obama administration will probably let the bankers off with nothing more than a few stern speeches. Rightly or wrongly, the bankers seem to believe that a return to business as usual is just around the corner.

Oh dear God, don't let us return to business as usual. We're barely surviving this round of "business as usual." I'm afraid to imagine what will happen to families, jobs and businesses (including my own) if the scoundrels are allowed to run free again.

Today's Must Read: The fairy tales Wall Street tells itself

New York magazine does a terrific job of examining the Wall Street mindset -- a wonky, disconnected way of thinking that includes the incredible ability for investment bankers to forget that their banks had to be bailed out by the federal government. Writer Gabriel Sherman notes that Wall Street had to create an entire system of mythical beliefs about itself in order to do what it did. The problem now for financial insiders is that rest of the country doesn't buy the fairy tale anymore.

The incredible, vanishing job

Slate gets today's award for the most important, and frightening, online animation. Yes friends, you too can watch your job and your neighbor's job disappear before your very eyes. Presto chango! Blue job growth turns into scarlet unemployment despair.

Ugh.

Must Read: How the U.S. became a banana republic, & how we're all gonna pay & pay

Simon Johnson, the former chief economist of the IMF, calmly and clearly explains how the so-called greatest nation in the world (i.e. us) turned into a banana republic, and how all of us a paying the price for the misdeeds and misthoughts of those at the top. The villain? A culture and political philosophy that worshiped Wall Street. Mental Health Warning: His prognosis for the future of our economy is chilling.

New Column: The sad truth about gays & the economy

My new Political IQ column is out.

I'm not feeling particularly rich these days. Every time the Dow Jones average plunges and new unemployment figures are released, my stomach churns. I go into terror mode as I contemplate my economic future. Read more.

Today's Unsettling Read: Dr. Doom predicts more pain

Dr. Doom -- AKA Nouriel Roubini, a New York University business professor -- now says we probably won't see the end of the recession until 2010, and that's if we keep our fingers crossed and do all the right things. The good news, and this is good news, is that it could have been much worse.

... the risk of a total meltdown has been reversed for now but that the economy is going through "a death by a thousand cuts." He also said that "most of the U.S. financial institutions are entirely insolvent."

Today's Must Listen: Paul Krugman explains how incompetence & ideology sunk the economy

One of the things I love about economist and columnist Paul Krugman is that he can explain the economic crisis in ways that actually make sense. On Monday he talked about how the "crazy influence of ideology" and the complete and utter incompetence of business executives and the Bush Administration have torpedoed the world economy.

Krugman was interviewed by Newsweek senior editor and Moneybox columnist Daniel Gross. By the way, Krugman thinks unemployment may go to 10 percent. The current unemployment rate is 6.5 percent. Yikes!

The Economy: I'm so glad they cleared that up

The National Bureau of Economic Research has made it official: We're in a recession. I suspect this may matter in some important, technical sense; maybe it even matters practically to put a label on the state of the economy. But am I the only person on the planet who wants to shout: Tell me something I don't know!