This post provides links to a number of thought-provoking articles I have read over the past few days that you may also find interesting.

• Richard Bernstein (Financial Times): America is for now still blowing bubbles, July 20, 2009. By preserving capacity to avoid taking pain today, the US is following the approach that led Japan into a lost decade.

• Kenneth Scott and John Taylor (The Wall Street Journal): Why toxic assets are so hard to clean up, July 21, 2009. Despite trillions of dollars of new government programs, one of the original causes of the financial crisis — the toxic assets on bank balance sheets — still persists and remains a serious impediment to economic recovery. Why are these toxic assets so difficult to deal with? We believe their sheer complexity is the core problem and that only increased transparency will