The NYT had an excellent piece on how private equity funds (e.g. Peter Peterson's Blackstone Group) ripoff state and local governments by charging them large management fees. A standard arrangement will give the equity fund managers 2.0 percent of the funds under management and 20 percent of the profit. The article notes several cases where these investments have turned out poorly for pension funds and cites academic studies that show private equity funds, net of fees, provide on average no better return than broad stock indexes.

--Dean Baker

To those who pay attention to the economy, it's rather evident that the basic economic problems of the last two decades are the bubble driven growth of this era and the country's broken health care system. But NYT columnist David Brooks apparently never allows the actual state of the economy to affect his pronouncements about the economy and our moral state.

Therefore he describes the rise of personal debt from 55 percent of national income in 1960 to 133 percent in 2007 as being the result of the fact that: "life has become secure. This has eroded the fear of debt, private and public."