The Bush administration is working with Congress to fill in the details of its plan to stabilize the financial markets.

FDIC losses flow from a bank's entire balance sheet and not just from a few specific asset categories.  It is hard to square the FDIC's losses with the limited focus of the Financial Stability Plan, developed by the bank regulators and the U.S. Treasury. Their Plan focuses on only a few categories of troubled assets rather than on an institution's overall solvency.

Japanese are disappearing in slow motion and so far, there is no rescue plan.

This issue of Political Report covers president-elect Barack Obama, Republican ratings, taxes, the economic rescue plan, Guantanamo, universal health care, and more.

If Ryan ran, he would probably drive the other candidates further away from his own plan while forcing them to come up with serious alternatives of their own. If he got the nomination, many think he would clean Obama's clock in the debates.

The Huntsman plan for regulatory reform is a good effort, but it fails to come close to accomplishing the one major goal that it highlights in its summary description — “ending” too-big-to-fail (TBTF).

Political dysfunction. Partisanship at record levels. Attack politics run amok. And public approval of Congress scraping the single digits (Sen. John McCain is fond of saying it's down to blood rlatives and paid staff).

The Beltway media, in cases of lurid accusations, have displayed a curious and consistent habit of slamming one set of candidates while covering for the other. Questions should be raised about media reporting biases, rather than AEI’s ground rules.