The bailout strategy now being pursued by Treasury under the recently authorized Troubled Asset Relief Plan, if "strategy" it can be called, remains obscure and erratic at best. All the while markets remain jittery and credit remains tight, as the underlying source of our present financial...

<i>Robert Hockett reviews Robert Frank's book</i> Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good <i>(Princeton University Press, 2011).</i>

In the view of many analysts, the best way to assist “underwater” homeowners—those who owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth—is to reduce the principal on their home loans. Yet in the case of privately securitized mortgages, such write-downs are almost impossible to...