Tonight at 9 p.m. CNBC will air a special called “The Nuclear Option,” which promises “to go inside the energy crisis.”

The energy crisis? Holy crap, the financial crisis is on the back burner! CNBC is returning to our previously scheduled programming—this is great news. We don’t have to wait up all night waiting to see who bails out …

On Monday Barack Obama unveiled a less-than-compelling list of new economic proposals to combat these economic hard times. Now John McCain has his own new list, dubbed the Pension and Family Security Plan. And guess what! His proposals may be even less compelling than Obama’s! The three McCain ideas I hadn’t heard before are:

1. …

At least it kind of seems that way. On October 6, the bond king wrote in his much-read investment outlook that the Federal Reserve should start buying commercial paper—short-term notes companies use to fund working capital. The next day, with the commercial paper market in full lock-down, the Fed said it would start a program do just …

Back in September, I wrote a story about how government-mandated restrictions on executive compensation don’t always work the way they’re meant to. Looking at the new rules for companies that sell equity to Treasury, I’m finding, for the most part, more of the same. Let’s go one by one:

Any financial institution participating in the

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I mentioned in my post on Paul Krugman Monday that Greg Mankiw had told me years ago that he thought Krugman was a lock to win the Nobel one of these days. Greg said on his blog that he didn’t remember that, but it that sounded like something he would have said.

Well, it turns out my friend and former colleague Peronet Despeignes had a …

So now the plan is out. Treasury will spend $250 billion of the $700 billion Congress gave it a couple weeks ago recapitalizing the nation’s banks and thrifts, starting with nine of the biggest. That is, it will buy senior preferred shares that will pay a divided of 5% a share for the next five years and 9% a share after that, and also …

The WSJ is reporting that the bank-rescue plan to be unveiled by Treasury Tuesday will call for the government to spend the first $250 billion of its TARP stash buying equity stakes in banks–“potentially thousands of banks”–and for the FDIC to temporarily insure all non-interest-bearing deposits and new senior debt issued by banks and …

I have been busy writing what we like to call “market wrap” stories. Here’s the one I wrote today. And here’s the one from Friday. I’m doing my best to come up with new ways to say that people shouldn’t read too much into what the Dow does on any particular day while, at the same time, writing a story about what the Dow did on that …

I’ve been reading the speech Barack Obama made on the economy this afternoon, plus his new Rescue Plan for the Middle Class. The speech ends with an eloquent farewell to the age of easy money:

We’ve lived through an era of easy money, in which we were allowed and even encouraged to spend without limits; to borrow instead of save.

Now,

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When last I checked, the Dow was up 6.9% and the S&P 7.5% in reaction to Paul Krugman getting the economics Nobel before trading began this morning. In London the FTSE ended the trading day up 8.26% and in Frankfurt the DAX was up 11.4%.

What? You say there are other possible reasons for global markets’ surge? Something about a …