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.”

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.

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:

I Think Paul Krugman Is Wrong  —  I find that a scary sentence to write.  If the past decade has taught me anything, it has taught me that mistakes are avoided if you follow two rules:  — Remember that Paul Krugman is right.  — If your analysis leads you to conclude that Paul Krugman is wrong, refer to rule #1.

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.

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 …

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 …

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 …

UK population must fall to 30m, says Porritt  —  JONATHON PORRITT, one of Gordon Brown's leading green advisers, is to warn that Britain must drastically reduce its population if it is to build a sustainable society.  —  Porritt's call will come at this week's annual conference …

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.

Nicholas Hughes, Sylvia Plath's son commits suicide  —  The son of the poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath has taken his own life, 46 years after his mother gassed herself while he slept.  —  Nicholas Hughes hanged himself at his home in Alaska after battling against depression for some time, his sister Frieda said yesterday.