Merry Christmas, Mr. President.

• Position: From The Founder

"The New Basel Accord proposes to use precisely those measures of risk and credit quality that caused such fiascos as Enron, WorldCom, and Parmalat."

--C. Whalen

"If a major corporation--with more retirees than current employees--were to go bankrupt, the PBGC would quickly face a tremendous financial crunch of its own. Unfunded liabilities of defined benefit plans are estimated at about $350 billion, or about 20 percent of their liabilities."

--R. Kubarych

"The situation in the world oil markets today bears a remarkable similarity to the ... late 1960s."

--P. Verleger

"The Chinese banking system looks rather like Japan's on the eve of the bursting bubble ... We could see a social upheaval that Dr. Masoch and Count De Sade would appreciate."

--M. Leden

"The Chinese banking system looks rather like Japan's on the eve of the bursting bubble ... We could see a social upheaval that Dr. Masoch and Count De Sade would appreciate."

--M. Ledeen

Was China's "boom of 2003 not a sustainable...