Charles Ferguson has made a documentary that must be seen if you want to understand why the same people who let the housing bubble and the 2008 financial meltdown happen are still in charge. But if you can’t go out and see Inside Job right away (it opened in New York and Los Angeles Friday), read Ferguson’s article, “Larry Summers and the Subversion of Economics,” summarizing his case in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

WaPo op eds are getting increasingly irritating with the passage of time. Yesterday, this formerly great American newspaper in free fall ran an article by Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie called “What’s Next Mr. President – Cardigans?” Welch and Gillespie think that Obama’s less than stellar results thus far suggest that he may be reviewing the history of past Democratic administrations to find a “road map” out of his difficulties, and also that “he seems to be skipping the chapter on Bill Clinton and his generally free-market economic policies and instead flipping back to the themes and comportment of Jimmy Carter.” In this way, they begin a transparent framing exercise suggesting that Obama is at a turning point, and that he must stop “running government as a perpetual crisis machine,” and “. . . stop doing harm. Throwing money all over the economy (and especially to sectors that match up with Democratic interests) . . . “ And also that: “. . . there’s no question that Obama’s massively ambitious domestic agenda is at a fork in the road: One route leads to Plains, Ga., and early retirement, the other to Hope, Ark., a second term and the revitalization of the American economy.”