We’ve seen several retrospectives of the Administration’s actions to deal with the economic crisis in 2009-2010, and Ryan Lizza has a new one in the New Yorker. His recounting of the memos and exchanges between Larry Summers and Obama add to the view of Summers inducing Obama to pull his punches for political reasons, ensuring the stimulus would be too small.

You just can’t get rid of zombie Larry Summers. He can get drummed out of Harvard. He can see the deregulation policies he pushed in the Clinton Administration lead to a financial meltdown. He can preside over a sluggish economy for two years during the Obama Administration, after which Congress flips to the opposition. Now he reportedly wants to head the World Bank.

The trade deficit between the United States and the rest of the world was the major imbalance in the global economy in the last decade. It created the gap in demand that was filled by the stock bubble in the 90s and the housing bubble in the last decade. It is striking that the Post’s opinion pages are only open to people who try to conceal this fact rather than economists who try to explain this history to readers.

An article in Forbes reveals those at the top 0.1 percent in personal income in the country captured about half of the capital gains, which are currently taxed at just 15 percent. That makes this a prime mechanism for creating and increasing income inequality.

An introduction to the theory of oligarchy in practice today.

Ron Suskind’s new book is getting some attention for the gossipy tidbits it uncovers, like this one.

To the extent that there’s any fallout from the political gridlock in Washington, it’s that the country cannot execute the simple, fundamental steps to improve economic performance. Contractionary fiscal policy gets combined with an anti-expansionary debt limit deal to magnify the effects of the end of the stimulus.

By now, many of you have probably read Frank Rich’s inaugural piece for New York Magazine. Freed from the bean counters and word counters of the New York Times, Rich pours forth pages (and pages) on what he calls “Obama’s Original Sin.”

I am not going to say that Rich is not being tough, per se, just that he isn’t as tough as he thinks.

So where was all this “fiscally responsible” fighting spirit when it came to paying out $32.6 billion in taxpayer funded banker bonuses?

Well, as Larry Summers said, “we are a country of law.”

The President is not a pragmatist. Pragmatists think being right is a test of intelligence. No pragmatist let Larry Summers near anything that required getting it right.