My Plan for Bad Bank Assets  —  The private sector will set prices.  Taxpayers will share in any upside.  —  The American economy and much of the world now face extraordinary challenges, and confronting these challenges will continue to require extraordinary actions.

Kroft to Obama: Are you punch-drunk?  —  President Barack Obama said he believes the global financial system remains at risk of implosion with the failure of Citigroup or AIG, which could touch off “an even more destructive recession and potentially depression.”

Obama Upsets Sarkozy With Letter to Jacques Chirac  —  In his latest faux pas Obama managed to pi$$ off France...  President Obama wrote Jacques Chirac saying he was looking forward to working with the former French president in the coming four years(?)  —  Monsters and Critics reported:

500 miles later, I'm back in Madison.  —  Did you understand the previous post?  If not, the answer — along with much congratulations and debate — appears in the comments, notably here.  Let there be no doubt about it: A blogger — Althouse — is engaged to be married to a man who began …

Various matters  —  (updated below)  —  (1) The New York Times Public Editor, Clark Hoyt, has a column today on a topic I've written about more times than I can count: that the NYT routinely grants anonymity without any justification whatsoever and, more notably, does so in flagrant violation of its own policy on anonymous sources.

WOW, I NEEDED THAT  —  As part of their efforts to make the scale and scope of Bernie Madoff's crimes clear to Judge Denny Chin in deciding the terms of his plea, confinement and eventual sentencing, the folks at the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York submitted emails …

Econ board has yet to meet publicly  —  Six weeks after President Barack Obama appointed a blue-ribbon panel to help him dig America out of its economic crisis, the board has yet to hold an official public meeting.  —  The White House initially said that the 16-member Presidential Economic …

Man of the Hour  —  With Steve Kroft as Lead Correspondent, ‘60 Minutes’ Is Ticking Right Along  —  On the night of the Emmys last fall, when one of his stories was up for an award and his tuxedo-clad colleagues were leaving for the ceremony, Steve Kroft stayed at the office until 1 a.m. …

Tea Parties, Going Galt, Iraq, and Delicious Irony  —  I've been following the growing “Tea Party” and “Going Galt” movements with no small amount of amusement, in part because there is really just too much sweet, delicious irony surrounding both of these groups of people (who, I might add, are largely the same people).

Obama Says a Way Out of Afghanistan Is Needed  —  WASHINGTON — The United States must look for a way out of the war in Afghanistan, President Obama said, in a signal that the military build-up in Afghanistan will not be open-ended and will lead to the eventual withdrawal of American and NATO troops from the country.

From Tehran to Tel Aviv  —  With his bold message to Iran's leaders, President Obama achieved four things essential to any rapprochement.  —  He abandoned regime change as an American goal.  He shelved the so-called military option.  He buried a carrot-and-sticks approach viewed with contempt by Iranians as fit only for donkeys.

US will appoint ‘Afghan PM’ to bypass Hamid Karzai  —  White House plans new executive role to challenge corrupt government in Kabul  —  The US and its European allies are ­preparing to plant a high-profile figure in the heart of the Kabul government in a direct challenge to the Afghan president …