Unemployment has risen to 9.8 percent, a 26-year high.

That’s much higher than the Obama administration predicted unemployment would rise, if Congress had refused to pass his $800 billion stimulus package.  The administration claimed unemployment would rise to 8 percent without a stimulus.

Small businesses are finding it more difficult than ever to borrow badly needed money to meet their payrolls.  New financial regulations backed by the administration are contributing to a terrible credit crunch.  Meanwhile, the wealthy Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs, perhaps the…

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Bailouts. Global interest rate cuts. More bailouts. Global government liquidity injections into banks. Direct government buying of commercial paper. And even more types of bailouts.

But nothing seems to stop the downward spiral of equity and credit markets throughout the world that have been accelerating this week. But there is one intervention the governments of the world haven’t tried yet: Standing up to the high priests of the accounting profession and suspending requirements of mark-to-market accounting for illiquid assets.

Markets are more…

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