So Congress finally approved a bailout plan. Over the coming days, pundits and economists will debate the virtues and pitfalls of the $700 billion package.
 
George Soros (Reuters)

For comparison, I thought I’d serve up some of the alternative plans offered by a few concerned billionaires. The nation’s billionaires could have solved this far more quickly on [...]

Following Iceland’s banking meltdown, international financial markets have identified Hungary as another country potentially at risk of a crisis. Hungarian central bank governor András Simor spoke to Journal reporter Marcus Walker about why he thinks the market’s fears about Hungary are wrong.
WSJ: How vulnerable is Hungary to the global financial turmoil?
SIMOR: This crisis has led [...]

Bernanke

Congress just put a $700 billion hot potato back on Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s lap, and without the tool the Fed had sought to make its job easier: the ability to pay interest on bank reserves.
That could leave the Fed with little choice but to eventually lower interest rates again to keep the economy [...]

A roundup of economic news from around the Web.
Economist Debate: The Economist is hosting a debate on how best to re-regulate the system after the credit crisis. The participants are Myron Scholes advocating a light touch, and Joseph Stiglitz arguing for stronger regulation. Scholes writes: There is now a rising chorus among regulators, politicians and [...]

Senior citizens have been hit pretty hard in recent months, as those invested in stocks feel the sharpest pain in retirement accounts and those living on fixed incomes have dealt with spiraling inflation costs, but today it looks like they may have gotten a small break.
 
Social Security lovers will getting a bigger cost of living [...]

It is not all that long ago that the big credit crunch banks were being lambasted in some quarters for their plans to invest heavily in Chinese banks, and that at least one pundit was predicting “The Coming Collapse of China”. How things change! Now it is the titans of Wall Street and the City [...]

Last week, Damien Hirst sold more than $200 million of pickled animals and splatter paintings in London. A unnamed buyer recently paid $28.5 million for a vintage Ferrari 250 GTO in a private sale, according to knowledgeable chatter on FerrariChat. A single bottle of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Romanée Conti 1962 fetched $13,310 (against an [...]