The Great Recession - tracking the thinking of others

Here are a few blog posts that put both the Great Recession, and Occupy Wall Street in perspective:

1. Barry Rineholtz takes a facts driven look at the financial crisis, and concludes as so many others have that volitional decisions by a variety of private actors caused the crisis, not government regulations or Congressional cram-downs.
2. Rex Nutting, looking at how we might get out of the mess created in part by too little and way too late regulation of the financial sector, shows that, contrary to Republican talking points, regulations generally create jobs as well as add significant economic benefits to the economy - particularly in foregone medical expenses.
3. Dean Baker takes on another Republican canard - that corporations are "double taxed" and therefore need to have tax burdens lifted in order to spur economic development. His view - people create corporations knowing full well what the tax implications are, but do it anyway because they perceive the benefits as outweighing the taxation particulars. Again, we're back to that pesky volitional decision thing that Republicans seems to want to avoid when discussing corporate activity.
4. Finally, in another blow to the idea that renewable energy and sustainable building are too costly with too little benefit to the economy, Jorn van Doren reports on a study from the Netherlands that says, when it comes to sustainably built housing with minimal carbon impact, if you build it they will come.
5. Finally, the WaPo Fact Checked Grover Norquist this weekend - mostly because he managed to say things that were vague factual instead of just politically inflammatory. If he, and other Republicans really want to have a discussion about tax rates and their impacts, getting all this other stuff wrong doesn't help their case.