How to put out the fire

By the way the Atlantic Monthly article "The Quiet Coup" is enormously enlightening (according to Business Week). The author is Simon Johnson, professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management and former chief economist at the IMF. Briefly, he argues that the U.S. financial crisis is similar to the crises experienced by emerging markets. In every case, the problem is "private-public partnership", i.e. crony capitalism. According to Johnson, there is a solution...read about it here.