On April 13, 2012, the US Department of the Treasury released new cost estimates for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Looking principally at actual and projected contractual cash flows, the document concludes that: "Overall, the government is now expected to at least break even on its financial stability programs and may realize a positive return." 

The main problem with the recent IMF programmes to countries such as Greece and Portugal has not been one of size or duration but rather one of policy misdiagnosis. 

Portugal could avoid Greece's horrible fate if it were to draw the right lessons from the Greek experience.

After five years of wrenching economic recession, one has to wonder what it will take for Greece to cut itself loose from the failed IMF and EU policies that have reduced the country to its present terrible economic pass.

The world is becoming increasingly scary at the very time that the military will be facing 20% reductions. With each passing day, the world closes in; with each passing day, our ability to manage that world degrades.

Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget is a big story in Congress, even though it barely made it through the House Budget Committee, will take a battle to pass on the House floor and has zero chance of being embraced as is, or in any facsimile, in the Senate. So why is it so big?

Imagine if Montgomery and Helderman's editor had demanded that they deliberately slant a story to benefit an advertiser, and they and the rest of the reporting staff responded by walking out and shutting down the paper in protest. Would it be accurate to say that Washington Post reporters picked a fight?

On the disaster relief front, Cantor's office released a study by the majority staff of the House Appropriations Committee saying that offsets on disaster relief are actually commonplace, if not routine. I dug into their examples a bit, albeit with my limited expertise on what really goes down on the process for supplemental appropriations, and found the examples they used shaky at best.