The firms that pushed securitization the hardest decided to treat mortgage record keeping into a game of Three Card Monte. Now that even they can’t find the queen, they deserve to suffer the consequences.

Cross posted from Pruning Shears.

Unless we ask the right questions, we might end up spending state and federal dollars on the wrong priority — putting in faster broadband when we really ought to make sure more of us have access to high speed internet.

Weekly Audit: Will Obama Save Homeowners From Wall Street’s Latest Fraud Scheme?

The September jobs report is out: The private sector gained 64,000 jobs in September…  The public sector lost 159,000. And they weren’t all census jobs, either. Local governments fired 76,000 workers. In other words, this is the first jobs report in recent months that isn’t driven by census layoffs. If there were no census jobs [...]

Republicans have repeated the lie that tax cuts are always good for the economy so often that all of Washington seems absolutely convinced that it’s true. The conventional wisdom is so established on this that all a Republican has to say is, “Everyone knows you don’t raise taxes in the middle of a recession …” Or in good times or in mediocre times or ever. All tax cuts are always good.

This story originally appeared at TomDispatch.com.

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Weekly Audit: One Nation with No Jobs

To the surprise of no one who’s paying attention to the American economy’s stall, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz yesterday called for a second federal stimulus, saying Americans face a significant reduction in standard of living because they no longer have home equity on which to borrow, spend, and live.

We need some radical new thinking to achieve new jobs, start new businesses, and develop a strong economy. Let’s eliminate the Corporate Income Tax and Substitute a 100% Duty on all Imported Consumer Goods.

90 Second Summaries, a project of Main Street Insider. Today’s episode is H.R. 2521, National Infrastructure Development Bank Act.