Let the Fratricide Begin (WashPost, Dana Milbank)

"As Michael Moore threatens moderates, Democrats begin tearing each other apart over health care." (WashPost's straight news story here.)

'08 rise in NYC rich club (NY Post)

"The jump was part of a rapidly growing income gap across the country that saw middle- and low-income families get pinched more by the recession."

Mixed Data Reflect Fragility of Economic Recovery (WSJ)

Are We Poised for Another Great Bull Market? (Seeking Alpha, Babak)

Probably not. "At best, we are going through a cyclical bull market — otherwise known as a bear market rally."

Moral decay? Or deregulation? (NYT, Paul Krugman)

A big dose of fluoride squirted on David Brooks's "moral decay."

Cyber Gangs Hit Healthcare Providers (WashPost)

Yet another threat to health care that's even bigger than the Democrats' infighting: Thieves, believed to be based in Eastern Europe, defrauding U.S. nonprofits that serve the disabled, uninsured, and kids. Another health threat from overseas, but this one affecting people from overseas: "The 'keister bomb' is the newest terror threat."

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Congress is more loathsome than at any time in the recent past. Positive opinions about Congress have dropped 13 percentage points since April and are at their lowest level in more than 20 years of Pew Research Center polls.

The moderate folks at Pew are moved enough to say that Americans are "extremely displeased" with Congress.

If the Pew survey is an indicator, than the Democrats would seem to be in grave danger this far ahead of next year's midterm elections. Yes, but it's not as if the Republicans are suddenly wildly popular. Pew says "the Democrats' dimmer electoral prospects are more a matter of disillusionment with the party that controls Congress than a revival of the image of the Republican Party."

Not that Pew gets into this, but this is just a reflection that the Great Recession is still quite great and getting greater for most Americans, despite the general optimism on Wall Street. Joblessness doesn't necessarily translate into contentment with the party in power.

Any party in power right now would be in deep shit with the electorate. But if the shit is still deep this time next year, the Dems are cooked.

Along the same lines, another Pew poll notes Americans' opinions of state governments have also fallen. That's no surprise, considering the desperate straits of most state governments (See "New Fiscal Year Brings No Relief From Unprecedented State Budget Problems," from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, for frightening state-by-state details.)

The Blue Dog Democrats have supposedly reached a deal with Henry Waxman and have climbed aboard a health care reform bill.

Waxman's Energy and Commerce Committee is of course only one hurdle that the legislation has to hurdle, but it is the last one, so it's even possible that the House will push through some version of a bill before the August recess.

Then the members of Congress will have plenty of time to peruse the bill during their junkets and vacations.

Not that they really will, but if they are that committed they should also take along a copy of James Kwak's "One Big Problem with Private Health Insurance," from the Baseline Scenario.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's grilling by a House panel today left him unsinged, especially because of the dumb-ass statements spouting from various House members. A Dow Jones story headlined with "Lawmakers Attack Fed For Being 'Shrouded In Secrecy'" sums it up well. (Live blog by the NYT here.)

The Fed is secretive? Well, yeah. I'm pretty unhappy that the sun rises in the east, too. But that's what it does, that's how it functions, that's reality, and in the Fed's case, some of that secrecy is essential when setting monetary policy -- and that's why the Fed should never be given any more regulatory authority than it has. At least Dennis Kucinich gets it.

It was New York's own Edolphus Towns, the new chair of House Oversight and Government Reform, who kept complaining, according to reports, that the Fed is "shrouded in secrecy." What a waste of time this hearing is.

Ed Towns is a very poor replacement for Henry Waxman, who kicked himself upstairs to chair House Energy and Commerce. Waxman was a tiger as the Gov't Reform chair. Towns is toothless and clueless. He's not even very good at being a ringmaster for these show-and-tell trials of administration officials.

Waiter, there's a bomb in my soup!: Atomic scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer (left) and Senator Warren Magnuson chew the fat at the U.S. Senate restaurant in December 1945. (photo by George Skadding, courtesy of Life magazine)

A new GAO audit shows that the amount of unpaid restaurant tabs at the Senate's private eatery increased by nearly 50 percent in 2008 from the previous year.

Do the results of the audit of the restaurant's revolving fund mean it was a bad year for the senators or for exclusive Capitol Hill restaurant's waiters and waitresses? Part of the perks of being a senator is that you, your colleagues, ex-senators, and "certain Senate officials" can set up "customer accounts."

The accounts receivable numbers are small — $74,701 in 2008, compared with $50,914 in 2007 — but what the hell. Just because the nation's taking on a record deficit is no reason for the senators to put off paying their tabs.

Now that GMAC is all lined up at the trough to snarf down another bailout, you might be whining — especially if you live in dead-ass broke California — what's it going to take to get a bailout in my state, an act of Congress?

According to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, that's exactly what it'll take. McClatchy's Rob Hotakainen reports:

Geithner has cut all kinds of deals with all kinds of banks without having to jump through too many hoops on Capitol Hill. And it's not as if California could even hope to have hoops to jump through for a payoff at the end of such an exercise. California's own Jerry Lewis (not the comedian but the member of House Appropriations) is quoted as saying:

So as it now stands, California, whose economy is bigger than those of most countries, can't get a bailout of even a fraction of the size of the bailout money that's been given to, for instance, AIG.

There's more to life and death than the AIG bonuses. They're a stark symbol of our increasingly desperate situation, but the media overkill is ludicrous.

Just look at the above chart from the Pew people about last week's financial-news coverage. (See the Pew story: "One Story Dominates: AIG in the Crosshairs").

OK, so the topic of bonuses has legs as high entertainment value, compared with other, grimmer, and more difficult parts of the news to handle.

No quibble in one sense: The bonuses are a topic that we should return to, again and again (I know I will). And just because they're symbols doesn't make them unimportant. Outrage over them may eventually force the government to really do something in the long run about them and the various other dangers — even to capitalism itself — that lurk in corporate boardrooms inhabited by the masters of the universe. (See "Wall Street fell through rotten boards — a reminder from Nell Minow.")

Meanwhile, though, much of the Wall Street shit is flowing like a coastal California mudslide. So, lost among all the hubbub about the bonuses are these recent items about the damage already done or about to happen. Warning: These stories (with excerpts attached in some cases) are not about the AIG bonuses:

• "$410,000 in 2006, $112,000 now: When will prices hit bottom?"
That's the question real estate professionals in South Florida are asking as they see a surge in sales amid the lowest prices in years. Said one agent, "I am standing on the bottom."

• "Chinese find opportunity in slumping U.S. real estate prices"
Wealthy Chinese are signing up for house-buying tours to the United States, and Chinese media tout the trend as another sign of the strength of the world's third-largest economy. "The real estate prices in America have gone down drastically," said a lawyer who recently returned from an 11-day U.S. tour. "It's a good option for Chinese people who want to buy for investment."

• "Stimulus? U.S. to buy Chinese condoms, ending Alabama jobs"

• "Budget Woes Hit Mass Transit as Tax Revenue Falls"
Just as mass-transit ridership has reached a historic high, tax revenues that fund rail and bus service have dropped, leaving transit agencies nationwide with huge budget deficits and the prospect of boosting fares.

• "The RV's last roundup"
Big-name brands are dying and even Winnebago is under the weather. Can the recreational vehicle survive the recession?

• "New York Transit Agency Approves 25% Bus, Subway Fare Increase"

• "One more earmark story: This one's about HUD funds for pig dung"

• "Web searches for 'luxury' drop, rise for 'coupons'"

• "E.U. President Calls U.S. Stimulus the 'Way to Hell'"

• "Call for Help: Postal Chief Says Agency Crashing"

• "Debating a Ceiling On Credit Card Fees: Bankruptcy Bill Would Shield People From Firms' Punitive Interest Rates"

• "Foreign Firms May Cash In on Stimulus Dollars: Some Have Expertise U.S. Companies Lack"

There are many more stories than just the bonuses — although you might not know that given Congress's quick action on clawing back the bonus bucks, compared with its slow reaction to bigger problems directly affecting more people.

Oh, I almost forgot this story:

• "Report: Alzheimer's costs could be more damaging than recession"

California congressman Brad Sherman sounds like one of the smarter people on the AIG case.

Sherman has previously pushed for putting ailing bank conglomerates into receivership, which makes more sense than letting them fail.

Receivership for AIG — instead of continued bailout money, most of which ends up in the coffers of banks and its own execs — makes even more sense, because AIG consists of almost a dozen insurance companies and a bank.

Federal officials who testified at this morning's House hearing — before AIG CEO Edward Liddy took his star-chamber turn — testified that those AIG subsidiaries could survive just fine if they were spun off.

Sherman's idea is shrewd: Put only the parent company in receivership, and the freed subsidiaries could thrive.

But that would call for a revival of antitrust sentiment and new laws.

Too bad that antitrust is a dirty word these days. It certainly wasn't when Teddy Roosevelt was a trust-buster a century ago.

Anyway, for more on the hearing, see the Washington Post's Ticker for a live blog of today's hearing. Also, the Wall Street Journal's "AIG's Liddy Asks Employees to Give Back Bonuses."

Meanwhile, as the hearing continues with Liddy, somebody on the House Financial Services panel should be at least pointing out Liddy's exorbitant bonuses he received while Allstate's CEO and his being on Goldman's board of directors when Hank Paulson, the ex-CEO of Goldman, summoned him last year to take over AIG.

Documents? See AIG press release about Liddy's "revised" statement to the House panel. Here's the entire statement.

Also, AIG's sleazy "2008 Employee Retention Plan," one of the key documents that is at issue.

Oh, and New York Attorney General Andy Cuomo jumps in with good timing again to feast on the AIG scandal with a letter dated yesterday to Barney Frank about the "retention payments."

I was wrong Monday when I said Gordon Brown was coming to the U.S. with hat in hand.

Like that other Brown (James), the British prime minister's getting down on his knees and begging, "Please! Please! Puhleeeze!" Ignoring the economic fracturing of Europe that's setting east against west and even endangering the euro, the P.M. told a joint session of Congress today:

Love that last line.

The Wall Street Journal's quick-breaking story explains a little of the urgency — the Democrats are beginning to sound a little too protectionist:

Like that sea of red ink.

See the Times story of Brown's speech; read the WSJ's transcript of the speech itself.

For such a reasonable-sounding guy, MIT economist Simon Johnson is intent on busting some heads.

Earlier this month, he called for busting up what he called "the American oligarchs" by going all Teddy Roosevelt on the banking industry: Instead of bailing out banks, bring back antitrust laws.

At the New Republic, the headline on Johnson's post about President Barack Obama's speech last night was "Bust the Slump First."

Johnson recalled Obama's powerful warning earlier this month at his first prime-time conference (video above) of a "lost decade" and a "profound economic emergency."

That emergency hasn't lessened, and Johnson reminds Obama of that, taking him to task in a reasonable, gentle way:

Much harsher on Obama, I tried to make the same point last night:

Referring to Obama's platitudinous vow to "rebuild," I noted:

Over at Baseline Scenario (Johnson's excellent blog), his associate James Kwak notes this morning: