The populist uproar is deafening regarding the excessive salaries and bonuses on Wall Street. Over $18 billion in bonuses paid to Wall Street barons in 2008–big rewards for total and utter failure, according to most Americans. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, was the first politician to come.

By Micah Berul. Just as our nation’s crumbling infrastructure is in need of repair and modernization, so too is the nearly 75 year-old National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the statute that governs private sector labor relations in the United States. Union membership has rapidly declined.

There was never any doubt that the House would pass whatever stimulus package President Obama and the Dems put forth. Republicans simply did not have enough votes to block it. And so it finally happened–yesterday the House stamped a $819 billion, 647-page opus of stimulus joy.

United States foreign policy is taking a major step towards softening its stance in the middle east as Obama gives his first Presidential interview to an Arab network. Acting upon a philosophical break with the Bush administration Obama has dispatched former senator George Mitchell to the region today.

As one of his first actions as President, Barack Obama issued ethics rules applicable to White House officials. The Executive Order on Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel requires that lobbyists who become members of Obama administration will not be able to work on matters they lobbied on.

Rarely in history has there been a presidential inauguration as symbolic and transformative as Barack Obama’s. The significance goes far beyond the fact that Obama is the first (half) African-American president. The country is at a turning point culturally, ideologically and, of course, economically.

How are we going to fix big finance? The current thinking is that regulatory measures can do it. But we have regulatory measures in place already. Wall Street is prohibited from defrauding investors, as are mortgage brokers, and other banks. Most conduct that harms the public is already illegal.

If a person can’t understand something, the person usually blames it on himself. It’s gotta be my fault. Funny how those things that have desired effects, but that are difficult or impossible to understand, wield such significant control in our lives. We end up deifying them.

Virginia Postrel writes about the psychology of financial bubbles in this month’s Atlantic Magazine. Why is it that economic bubbles are created? Over and over again? What’s the psychological component?

There is so much that all of us can do to make sure another financial crisis of the magnitude we are currrently experiencing (and will continue to experience), does not happen again. The culture of excess, greed, the tyranny of self-interest, and social irresponsibility, are some of the core causes.