Crisis Background
    * What really happened to AIG? (Washington Post)
            *  Summary
          *  Investigating AIG, Part I:  The Beautiful Machine
            *  Investigating AIG, Part II:  A Crack in the System
            *  Investigating AIG, Part III:  Downgrades & Downfall
     *Overview of the crisis by the Washington Post
      * Paradigm lost:  Economists missed the brewing crisis. Now many are asking: How can we do better? (Boston Globe, 12/21/08)

Bad Incentives
    * The Reckoning:  Pressured to Take More Risk, Fannie Reached Tipping Point (NYT, 10/4/08)
    * Veterans of ’90s Bailout Hope for Profit in New One  (NYT, 12/08)
   * Was bailing out Long-Term Capital Management a good idea?  (NYT, 12/08)
   * Tax Break May Have Helped Cause Housing Bubble (NYT, 12/19/08)
    * House Bias:  the economic consequences of subsidizing homeownership, Stephen Livinski (FRB-Richmond, Fall 2008)

  
Fiscal Stimulus Skeptics
    * Economists have Abandoned Principle by Oliver Hart & Luigi Zingales (WSJ, 12/3/08)
    * Fiscal policy and the Fetishization of Measured GDP, by Tyler Cowen (12/05/08)
    * Measuring the Effect of Infrastructure Spending on GDP by Susan Woodford & Robert Hall (12/11/08)
    * Spending and Tax Multipliers, by N. Gregory Mankiw (12/11/08)
    * What is the best kind of fiscal policy shock?  by Tyler Cowen (12/18/08)
    * What are the effects of fiscal policy shocks?  by Andrew Mountford & Harald Uhlig (NBER Working Paper #14551, 2008)
    * Fiscal policy and the burden of proof by Tyler Cowen (12/18/08)
    * Japanese fiscal policy in the 1990s by Tyler Cowen (12/21/08)
    * Help us Save our Homes by Megan McArdle (12/22/08)
    * NYU Econ Professor David Backus on the limits of a spending stimulus by N. Gregory Mankiw (12/26/08)
    * More niggling on fiscal stimulus by Tyler Cowen (12/28/08)
    * Against the Big Stimulus  by Arnold Kling (1/5/09)
    * The New Deal Worked”: Why Do So Many People Accept that as Fact?  by Jonathan Bean (1/5/09)
    * Boost Private Investment to Boost the Economy:  Excessive spending is what got us into this mess in the first place.  (WSJ, 1/7/09)
    * Is Government Spending Too Easy an Answer? Greg Mankiw in the NYT (1/10/09)
    * More spending stimulus skeptics by N. Gregory Mankiw (1/12/09)
    * Government Spending is No Free Lunch, by Robert Barro, WSJ (1/22/09).  Economists dump on Barro, by Tyler Cowen (1/23/09)
    * An $800 billion mistake by Martin Felstein, Washington Post (1/29/09)
    * What's missing in the stimulus plan? NYT (1/29/09)
    * Unorthodox monetary policy vs. fiscal policy by Tyler Cowen (1/28/09)
    
    

The New Role of the Fed
    * Divorcing Money from Monetary Policy, Todd Keister, Antoine Martin, & James McAndrews (FRBNY, 9/08)
    * Interpreting the Monetary Base Under the New Monetary Regime by Alex Tabarrok (12/01/08)
     * Fed Explored Starting Sales of Bonds as Balance Sheet Grows, Bloomberg (12/10/08)
    * Federal Reserve Balance Sheet by James Hamilton (12/21/08)
    * Interest on reserves (12/22/08)  Tyler comments here.
     * Fed has abandoned monetary policy, critic says (Reuters, Jan 4, 2009)


Papers on the crisis at the AEA Meetings--January 2009
    * The aftermath of financial crises, by Carmen M. Reinhart
    * Financial Instability, Reserves, and Central Bank Swap Lines in the Panic of 2008, by Maurice Obstfeld, Jay Shambaugh, and Alan Taylor
    * Implementing the New Fiscal Policy Activism by Alan Auerbach
    * The Lack of an Empirical Rationale for a Revival of Discretionary Fiscal Policy, by John Taylor
    * Paulson's Gift, by Pietro Veronesi and Luigi Zingales
    * Article in the Chronicle on Higher Education on the heated debate about the crisis at the meetings.
    * Information, Liquidity, and the (Ongoing) Panic of 2007 by Gary Gorton, described by Tyler Cowen here as an excellent paper on the REPO market


The Question of Bank Nationalization
    * Message to Regulators: Bank Fix Needed Quickly, by Tyler Cowen (NYT, 3/1/09)
     * Bank solvency and the "Geithner Plan" by John Hempton (2/16/09)
     * The Bailout Is Robbing the Banks (The difference between banks and bank holding companies) by John Coats and David Scharfstein (NYT, 2/17/09)
     * More on That Dirty Word "Nationalization" and Possible Approaches by Yves Smith (Naked Capitalism, 2/22/09)


New News
   * The Economic Outlook by Arnold Kling (12/11/08)
   * Signs of a Thaw by James Hamilton (1/11/09)
    * Comparing Recessions  and an important update,  Alex Tabarrok (1/12/09)
   * Poor Man's Burden by William Easterly, Foreign Policy (Jan./Feb. 2009)
    * Unfairly Rewarding Greedy Bankers, and Why It Works, Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post (1/14/08)
    * Leave the New Deal in the History Books: cut corporate taxes to zero and create real jobs, Mark Levey, WSJ (1/17/09)
    * Sports Mania Is a Poor Substitute for Economic Success, Jerry Bowyer, WSJ (1/17/09)
    * Is the Great Depression the right comparison?  Blog post by Kevin Grier; WSJ editorial by Alberto Alesina and Luigi Zingales  (1/21/09)
    * Everything You Wanted to Know about Credit Default Swaps--but Were Never Told, by Peter Wallison (1/25/09)
    * Obama's Dangerous Bank Bailout, by Holman Jenkins, WSJ (2/4/09)
    * The Difficulties of a Housing Stimulus, by Alex Tabarrok and a good follow-up piece by Tyler Cowen.
    * The Economic Need for Stable Policies, Not a Stimulus by Jeffrey Sachs (Scientific American, 2/09)
    * An open letter to Mr. Krugman by Scott Sumner (3/1/09) and Sumner's reply to Krugman
    * Did the Fed Cause the Housing Crisis?  various authors in the WSJ (3/26/09)


Note: There are many good websites that  follow the crisis.   I would highly recommend www.marginalrevolution.com, which is the source for most of the above links.
Also recommended are www.econbrowser.com and www.calculatedriskblog.com.


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