Tyler Cowen took all of the emotion out of the current economic situation in a brilliant piece in yesterday's New York Times and in so doing set up the discussion in a way that few others have done.

For me, this was the money quote:

The fundamental problem in the American economy is that, for years, people treated rising asset prices as a substitute for personal savings. The thinking went something like this: As long as your home’s value rose every year, you didn’t have to set aside so much from your paycheck. If your stocks went up, too, so much the better; don’t forget that the Dow Jones industrial average stood in the 800 range in 1982 and seemed to rise almost nonstop for many years.

My Beautiful and Talented Wife (The BTW) has declared that this is the weekend we will start to transition from winter to spring in our home. Cleaning is on the agenda starting Saturday morning, ao I thought I start with a few small items here.

I have only one thing to add to what Andrew and Pete, my two bloggers in crime here at Capital Gains and Games, have both posted on the Medicare trustees report: it was facinating to watch the Bush administration talk about the immediate need to deal with Medicare after having adamantly refused to deal with the problem since Inauguration Day 2001.