So says the Wall Street Journal's Damian Paletta, Carrick Mollenkamp and John D. McKinnon about the plan to guarantee billions in bank debt and insure all bank deposits. This new moves to stave off the ever-growing Wall Street fallout would likely be coordinated with ...

Remember when the economy was really, really bad and the Federal Reserve decided they absolutely had to give AIG an $85 billion lifeline or else there would be a financial apocalypse? Well, its three weeks later and the economy is now really, really, really bad and the Fed has decided ...

The passing of the $700 bailout bill into law hasn’t exactly turned things around on Wall Street. So with the Dow Jones industrial average plummeting, Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, announced today that interest rates will be cut by half a percentage point. The New York ...

The Washington Post's Robert O'Harrow gives us a cut-and-dried tale of corruption -- highly ironic corruption -- at the Food and Drug Administration.

As Understanding Government has detailed, lawmakers have held hearings and newspapers have run stories screaming that the FDA wasn't doing ...

...And now it goes back to the House. The Washington Post's Lori Mongtomery and Shailagh Murray report that the Senate approved Wednesday night, 74-25, a plan to have the Treasury Dept. buy up to $700 billion in now almost worthless mortgage-related assets. The taxpayers would ...

The New York Times' David Johnston reports that Kyle D. Foggo, executive director of the CIA from 2004-06, pleaded guilty yesterday to arranging government contracts for his friend Brent R. Wilkes. This is not the first time that Wilkes, a San Diego contractor, has made ...

Yesterday's gigantic news of the bailout bill's failure was more about the House of Representatives than federal agencies-- many lawmakers are more ideological than their party leaders and still others are in vulnerable seats and closely listening to constituents pan the bailout. Nonetheless, Treasury Sec. Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve ...

Understanding Government has released an in-depth report on the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is at a crossroads following congressional reauthorization last summer.  CPSC is scheduled to receive an additional $60 million in budget funds in the next eight years and increase its staff to 500.  But as the ...

The Bush administration has been full of federal agency heads who uncritically accept the scientifically dubious beliefs of the White House (see Johnson, Stephen). But National Institutes of Health Director Elias Zerhouni, who resigned yesterday, was never one of them.

The New York Times' Gardiner ...

That's right -- keep it simple, stupid.  The government's plan to reboot the economy will work only if it is simple and delivers clear benefits to citizens.  The minute that this proposed bailout is perceived as a "get out of debt free" card for banks and their shareholders is the minute that it begins to fail.  Foreign investors and American voters are not going to trust it, and the money in their hands will stay out of the markets. 

The reason?  Restoring real confidence means making a moral argument about government's purpose in saving the economy.