The ping-pong match between the ECB and Fed to see who can make the worst policy decisions the fastest, switched back in favor of the Fed today with Bernanke’s pledge to pour on the monetary stimulus if needed.

Wall Street is giving us too much rope to hang ourselves because they don’t really understand the barriers to achieving fiscal sanity–and Washington is taking it, because they don’t really understand how Wall Street thinks, and what the bond traders will do when they finally decide that we’re likely to default.

One way to state the case for free trade is to note that government has no business protecting politically influential producers from consumers who spend their money in ways that naturally enhance their (the consumers) satisfactions rather than in ways that artificially enhance others’ (the privileged-producers’) profits.

Here’s a thought for consideration at the next meeting: If QE1 hasn’t worked, and if QE2 hasn’t worked, why would you do QE3?

I am inclined to think that with non-profits, you get what you pay for. With donors caring about expressing themselves, the non-profit industry is bound to evolve toward satisfying donors’ desire for self-expression. That does not mean that it will produce no good results. However, it will not produce results as well as it might if donors were single-mindedly focused results.

The political fate of Europe is uncertain. But we are likely to see major political shifts as governments get blamed for eroding living standards, high taxes, and pressure to cut spending. By 2020, the average EU country would need to raise its tax rate to 55 percent of national income to pay promised benefits. Imagine that. One thing is clear, the virtuous cycle of the past many years is ending and a vicious one is about to begin.

Another day, another chart from the “non-partisan” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities on what “accounts” for the public debt. At some level, these exercises are silly: all prior legislation could be equally said to “account” for public debt, including, of course, Social Security and Medicare. These charts are usually just a dog-whistle where we pick out the programs we don’t like and show that without them, things wouldn’t be so bad!