Is it panic time at Obama headquarters in Chicago? You might get that impression from watching events -- and the polls -- over the past few weeks.

Polls show Republican primary voters somewhat more satisfied with the field than they were a few months ago. But they also show all of the current candidates, with the occasional exception of Mitt Romney, running worse against the president than a generic Republican candidate.

Most people know virtually no financial history, so when we have a financial crisis, it seems like it has never happened before. But it has, again and again. As Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, remarked: "About every ten years, we have the biggest crisis in 50 years." 

Are whites on the verge of becoming a minority of the American population? That's what some analysts of the 2010 census results say.

We simply have to face the fact that banking is fundamentally risky. As I decided long ago when working in banks, the reason we needed to wear dark suits and have classic buildings was to look conservative in order to offset the real riskiness of what we were doing. 

A little fear goes a long way in fighting a pandemic.

The accelerating adverse feedback loop must be broken before further wealth destruction and more intense economic contraction usher in a global depression as devastating as the one in the 1930s.

The GOP is back to square one.