President George W. Bush's memoir Decision Points is out in bookstores today, and while most of the early reviews have focused on elements such as his decision to quit drinking alcohol and his handling of the September 11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina, the chapter I was most interested in was the one on the financial crisis.

It begins by recounting a Roosevelt Room meeting on September 18, 2008. "Mr. President, we are witnessing a financial panic," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told President Bush. The book recounts that "Over the previous two weeks, the government had seized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two giant housing entities." It goes on, "With so much turbulence in financial institutions, credit markets had seized up."

Mr. Bush doesn't pause to consider that the "turbulence," rather that being something natural like the weather, was something that had been worsened by the government's action.

USA Today has a humdinger of an editorial on the San Francisco Happy Meal ban:

More broadly, the toy bill is exactly the kind of invasive, nanny-state government intervention sure to infuriate many citizens. What's the next target? Sugary cereals that include a toy or stickers in the package? Sodas that offer discounts on amusement parks? Unless San Francisco plans to prohibit these, too, restaurants are being unfairly singled out....

The key is making menu items' nutritional content transparent to consumers. What they decide to do with that information should be their choice, not the government's. As with other issues, San Francisco might think it's ahead of the times. But its heavy-handed approach is more likely to make kids unhappy than it is to make them skinny.

Warren Buffett and the Securities and Exchange Commission are in a skirmish over whether Berkshire Hathaway should disclose the $344,490 a year it spends on Mr. Buffett's security as compensation, The Wall Street Journal reports:

Nor is it clear why Berkshire was arguing over including security expenses from the formal disclosure of Mr. Buffett's pay, something that is fairly standard for other companies. Perhaps one factor is the mystique surrounding the relatively low pay for Mr. Buffett. Adding in the security expenses would significantly pad Mr. Buffett's reported compensation.

Mr. Buffett and Berkshire Vice Chairman Charlie Munger each have been paid an annual salary of $100,000 for more than a quarter-century, Berkshire has said. And they don't take the standard corporate bigwig perks, like using company jets or joining country clubs on the company's dime. Mr. Buffett's compensation from Berkshire, including director fees, is about $175,000.

Wouldn't want to mess with that mystique.

The New York Times has a news article, based on a Department of Justice Inspector General report, on Chris Christie's travel expenses as U.S. Attorney, before he became governor of New Jersey:

The report also noted the reimbursements Mr. Christie received for airport transportation costs. Rather than taking a taxi for the four-mile trip between his hotel and the Boston airport, he took a car service costing $236. A similar arrangement for a London trip cost $562.

To me what's as telling here as Mr. Christie's car service is the Times-DOJ inspector general comparison. The assumption seems to be that the baseline cheapest possible option is a taxi. When I travel from the London or Boston airport to a hotel, I usually take the subway. Not only is it a lot cheaper, you don't have to worry about getting caught in traffic. And it's my taxes paying for Mr. Christie. It's infuriating.

From a New York Times "political memo" headlined "Tax Cut Timing Proves Elusive for Democrats":

The economy's continued slow growth largely explains why ending those tax cuts, which apply to about 2 percent of Americans, proved easier said than done for Democrats. But other factors also explain their vacillation this year, including a crowded legislative agenda, the worsening political headwinds and, perhaps most of all, Democrats' chronic insecurity about dealing with tax issues.

That "chronic insecurity" explains it.

From a Sarah Palin Facebook post:

Ever since 2008, people seem inordinately interested in my reading habits. Among various newspapers, magazines, and local Alaskan papers, I read the Wall Street Journal.

So, imagine my dismay when I read an article by Sudeep Reddy in today's Wall Street Journal criticizing the fact that I mentioned inflation in my comments about QE2 in a speech this morning before a trade-association. Here's what I said: "everyone who ever goes out shopping for groceries knows that prices have risen significantly over the past year or so. Pump priming would push them even higher."

The Republican Study Committee, a group of conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives, is circulating a three-page document warning of what it says are "Impending Tax Increases If Congress Takes No Action."

A press release from the committee, chaired by Congressman Tom Price, quotes Mr. Price as saying, "Allowing taxes to rise next January would compound the job-killing mistakes the majority party has already made. "

So what are some of these taxes set to increase?

U.S. military fatalities in Afghanistan are up to 424 this year, which is more than the 314 U.S. military deaths in Iraq in 2008, according to this casualty count Web site. Somehow it seems like the Bush-era war deaths got a lot more press attention than the Obama-era ones are getting. It'll be interesting to see how the new Republican House handles this one.

Libertarian law professor Richard Epstein has a new Forbes column up headlined "The Bizarre Trade Economics of Barack Obama." He criticizes the president for "another pointless world tour" and writes:

At this point, Obama seems both intellectually incapable and politically unwilling to grasp the case for free trade. But his souped-up 21st century mercantilism is a recipe for disaster.

Those noises by large investment firms including Pimco about trying to force Bank of America to buy back mortgage-backed securities, which we covered here earlier in a post on CNBC's Non-Lawsuit Lawsuit, are meeting some stiff resistance from Bank of America.

A letter from Bank of America accuses the letter written by a lawyer agitating against B of A, Kathy Patrick, of being "written for an improper purpose, or in furtherance of an ulterior agenda," reports the New York Times.

The Wall Street Journal has an editorial about additional proposed subsidies for wind and solar:

Massachusetts Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs Ian Bowles, hardly a Milton Friedman apostle, describes cost-sharing as "a radical Soviet-style approach to transmission planning."...

This is all the more maddening given that renewable energy projects already receive tens of billions of dollars of loans, grants, tax credits, earmarks, renewable energy mandates, stimulus money, and on and on. According to a 2007 U.S. Department of Energy study, wind and solar already receive subsidies that are more than 20 times greater per kilowatt of electricity than conventional power sources. But as with ethanol, even these subsidies are never enough.

Philip Gourevitch, writing in the New Yorker:

The finance minister of Germany, Wolfgang Schauble, has an interview with Spiegel:

SPIEGEL: Last week, the US Federal Reserve Bank decided to flood the economy with $600 billion in new money. Will this stimulate the economy as hoped?

Schäuble: I seriously doubt that it makes sense to pump unlimited amounts of money into the markets. There is no lack of liquidity in the US economy, which is why I don't recognize the economic argument behind this measure.

SPIEGEL: The US wants to depress the value of the dollar in this way, so that it can sell its products abroad more easily. In light of the ailing US economy, isn't that a completely reasonable strategy?

From a piece in the new issue of the New Yorker: "Another part of the problem, it must be said, is public ignorance."

As predicted here.

From yesterday's Meet the Press, Governor Christie of New Jersey: "smaller government, less spending, less regulation, lower taxes. That's what the public is saying that they want....In New Jersey what we did was we cut spending in every department, a 9 percent cut in real spending, not projected spending, real spending year over year. Find another state that did that and, and we'll go and talk about it. I mean, we made real hard decisions, and I cut some programs that we would've liked to have kept."

More: "the core that drives the tea party, in my view, are those four principles I talked about before--less spending, smaller government and less intrusive government, lower regulation, and lower taxes. And when Republicans are at their best, those are our core principles. And so I think that, at bottom, it's a positive influence."

More:

MR. GREGORY: Tax cuts. You've got a millionaires tax in New Jersey, which I know that you're opposed to.

GOV. CHRISTIE: Not anymore, we don't.

MR. GREGORY: Not anymore because...

GOV. CHRISTIE: No.