Ezra Klein

Benjamin Sarlin interviews Bo Lundgren, the Swedish Finance Minister who conceived and implemented the nationalization strategy in the 1990s. Lundgren is positive about the Swedish experience, but far from dismissive of concerns that it wouldn’t work in the United States.

Last weekend, my best friend, an aid worker in Sierra Leone, was in a motorcycle crash. Injuries were serious but not life threatening. The worst of it were three breaks in his leg: Two clean, one less so. After a couple days in a Sierra Leone emergency room, his evacuation insurance kicked in and he […]

Probably not that bad for you: The best available evidence on how salt consumption affects our health comes from observational studies, in which groups of subjects are investigated to identify any correlations between usual sodium intake and subsequent heart attacks and strokes. Nine such studies, looking at a total of more than 100,000 participants who […]

Already, various models have emerged for gaming the Treasury plan. Karl Denniger posts one scenario where an institution has $100 billion in toxic assets with a current value of 30 cents on the dollar. That institution — call them Screw Bank — bids on its own assets at 75 cents on the dollar. Screw Bank […]

Political Wire brings us some odd donor data: Jon Hunstman, Sr., a businessman who is the namesake father of the Republican governor of Utah, last month gave the maximum $30,400 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. His wife Karen also gave the maximum amount to both Senate campaign committees, […]

The Wall Street Journal has a long piece this morning detailing how the Obama administration learned to stop worrying and love Wall Street. After an apparent initial burst of apathy, the White House began trying to make friends in February. They held pizza parties with traders to talk about the mortgage plan! Obama began referring […]

Commenter Cynic reads the bios of the new Treasury appointments and notices a pattern: What’s interesting about the announcement is that the vetting process appears to be driving the selection of new personnel. Wolin is the only one plucked from a private-sector gig, and he was fully vetted and installed in the White House counsel’s […]

From the inbox: President Barack Obama today announced his intent to nominate Neal S. Wolin to be Deputy Secretary of the Treasury and Lael Brainard to be Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs. In addition, the President announced that Stuart A. Levey, the current Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, will remain […]

This morning, Secretary Geithner held a pen-and-pad briefing with reporters. The White House’s transcription elves just sent out the Q&A, and it’s a worthwhile read. I wouldn’t say it’s a particularly compelling defense of the plan: Geithner seems reluctant to engage the critiques directly, but because of that, he’s never quite able to layout the […]