Some recently noticed Essays I found insightful:

• Daniel Kaufmann, Capture and the Financial Crisis: An Elephant forcing a rethink of Corruption?, Governance Matters (a World Bank blog), 03 November 2008.
  
  Discusses the regulatory and policy capture by vested interests in recent years & decades, identified as one of the fundamental causes of recent economic problems. Indeed, it is a hallmark of the U.S. Republican Party's approach towards government (and obviously is not exclusive to the Republicans). See, for example: Binyamin Appelbaum & Ellen Nakashima, Banking Regulator Played Advocate Over Enforcer, The Washington Post, 23 November 2008. See also Thomas Franks' The Wrecking Crew. I find the Governance Matters blog has many useful essays for understanding recent economic events.


• Brian Butler, The "savings glut" that may be to blame ..., RGE - Global Macro EconoMonitor, 11 February 2009.
  
  Brian Butler, Top macro-trends for 2009, GloboTrends blog, 14 December 2008.


• Ann H., Are the Republicans Intellectually Bankrupt, or what?, Talking Points Memo, 11 February 2009.


• ** Alan Wolfe, Why Conservatives Can't Govern, Washington Monthly, July/August 2006.


• Richard Seymour, The Imperialist Propaganda of Hitchens and Friends, AlterNet.org, 09 February 2009.


• Ian Urbina & Sean D. Hamill, Judges Plead Guilty in Payoffs for Jailing Youths, The New York Times, 12 February 2009.
  
  This seems to me an obvious consequence of the misguided policy of creating a privatized (for-profit) prison industry: the industry can only profit by incarcerating an increasing number of people for longer periods of time. Privatizing government functions and services is so obviously contrary to the public interest that it boggles the mind how any such policy could ever be implemented. There's only one word for it: corruption.


• Yves Smith, New York Times: US Going Down the Japan Path By Not Taking Out Dud Banks, naked capitalism, 13 February 2009.


• Simon Johnson, High Noon: Geithner v. The American Oligarchs, The Baseline Scenario, 08 February 2009.
  
  See also Johnson's interview on Bill Moyers' Journal, 13 Feb 2009: link.