National debt

By Scott Burns and Laurence J. Kotlikoff

In case you hadn’t noticed, the foxes are still guarding the banking henhouse. The only change: President Obama is reducing how many hens the foxes can kill while on guard duty.

The foxes, of course, are the financial wizards whose leadership almost entirely wiped out the capital of the banking system.

The old system relied on trusting people who lied and cheated. They are still running the show. They will lie and cheat again. We will be called upon to pay the bill, again.

IT'S ONE thing for the US Treasury Department to overpay banks for their toxic assets on the prayer that bank shareholders will do something besides pocket it - something that will help the economy. It's another thing to set up a complex leveraged auction scheme to surreptitiously make the transfer. And it's yet a third thing to set up a scheme that will lead the banks to overbid for their own toxics to garner even larger windfalls and end up with the toxics still in their hands.

by James S. Henry and Laurence J. Kotlikoff

Today begins Paul Wolfowitz's tenure as president of the World Bank. And if he doesn't have first-day jitters, he should.

Mr. Wolfowitz faces a huge challenge -- delivering massive amounts of development aid in a way that can't be expropriated or exploited by corrupt Third World bureaucrats or the avaricious development industry. This "aid delivery tax," evidenced most recently in the

U.N. food-for-oil scandal, rips off intended recipients by limiting not only what they get, but also what donors are willing to give.