Read the whole piece, even if you don’t care much about Brazil. The important take away is a reminder that while Americans carp about Chinese currency intransigence, we’re not alone in our woes. What Mallaby doesn’t propose, but does provide evidence for, is that sending Tim Geithner to Beijing every six months to plead uselessly for a higher yuan isn’t the only option out there. What if Washington and Brazilia — not to mention Mexico City, Brussels, and countless other capitals — teamed up against China in a round of multilateral trade diplomacy?

So what to make of the fact that Warren’s panel has just given TARP a stellar grade? For all its flaws, Warren’s panel wrote, “there is broad consensus that the TARP was an important part of a broader government strategy that stabilized the U.S. financial system by renewing the flow of credit and averting a more acute crisis.”

Attitudes about TARP fall into two categories: Those who say it was better than nothing, and those who say it was a sop to the rich. The first group never denied that TARP, arranged hastily in the face of a plummeting banking sector, was full of holes, many of which institutions like Goldman Sachs would go on to exploit to great profit. But, as we have heard again and again, these banks were too big to fail — the economy simply couldn’t take it.

This enrages the latter group, and not without reason. But they have never articulated an alternative that didn’t involve letting the banking sector collapse, then picking up the pieces. Their only recourse has been to posit that such an alternative wasn’t all that bad — that a panic wouldn’t have ensued, that the economy was already in recession and so what did it matter?

What, then, will they make of the Warren report, coming from an intellectual compatriot but making clear that the basic case for TARP was sound, and that a panic really was around the corner, sans TARP?

The idea, obviously, is to keep Goldman employees–who did quite well this year, thanks to Uncle Sam–from appearing too happy in these still-dour times. I appreciate the gesture. But wouldn’t it be better to require them to party together, preferably in the privacy of their own homes? That way, Blankfein would limit outside exposure to the nutty cash-fest that is Goldman these days. And because I’m guessing that many Goldmanites have friends outside their own office, under Blankfein’s rule they’ll have all the more reason–and opportunity–to show up their impoverished BofA friends. You want to quarantine the problem, Lloyd, not publicize it!

The best part of the story? The original developers were so deep into unfamiliar territory — drawn by the promise of real-estate-bubble riches — that they didn’t understand the need to own not just the buildings, but the streets and sidewalks around them. As a result,when brokers Rob Jordan and David Walmsley, whom the FDIC hired to sell the homes, “pulled the county records on Alpha’s construction loan,”

They stopped cold at the surveyor’s description of the property put up as collateral. “Said tract of land contains 6,776 square feet,” the documents said of the first parcel. The other two parcels were similarly small.

Messrs. Jordan and Walmsley realized that Alpha Bank and now the federal government owned the three buildings and the land immediately beneath them — but not an inch more. “What about the sidewalks? The stairs? The stoops?” asks Mr. Jordan. “They’re all on someone else’s property.” The brokers checked with the county and confirmed that even the two small streets running through the subdivision belonged to someone else.

That someone else was BB&T Corp., a Winston-Salem, N.C., bank. BB&T had bought Main Street Bank, which made the original loan to Quantum that allowed the developer to buy the Dresden Heights land. When Quantum went bust, BB&T foreclosed on that land and put it up for sale for $1 million.

Rifling through court records, Messrs. Jordan and Walmsley discovered that Quantum had signed an easement allowing passage between the two properties. But it wasn’t clear if the agreement would be legally binding on future owners.

The murky right-of-way made the sales job far more difficult. The FDIC would have to inform potential buyers there was no guarantee they could gain access to their property without trespassing.

Oops! “Lovely house, Ed.” “Thanks, Tom. But the commute home sucks — in that I can’t actually get home.”

But after reading this piece in the Wall Street Journal, I need to draw a box around certain folks. Like this guy:

Paul Joegriner hasn’t worked since March 2008, when he was laid off from his $200,000-a-year job as chief executive officer of a small bank. But you wouldn’t know it by appearances.

His wife, Marzena, shuttles their two young children to private school every morning. The family recently vacationed in Virginia Beach, Va., and likes to dine on Porterhouse steaks. Since losing his job, Mr. Joegriner, 44 years old, has had several offers. He’s turned each down in hopes of landing a position comparable to what he held before.

The family’s lifestyle over the past year and a half has been propped up by a $200,000 severance package and another $100,000 in savings — funds the family has burned through rapidly. By Mr. Joegriner’s own calculations, the family will be out of money in six months if he doesn’t find work.

Because really, you’ve got a ton of money, a will to blow it, and your destination of choice in Virginia Beach?

Also: This guy is in retail banking. He spends cash like a sailor on shore leave. How is participating in this piece a good advertisement for his professional skills?

The original:

“I don’t like to see trade associations refer to global warming as “an issue” because it supports the idea something needs to be done about it.” He said he has pressed Mr. Donohue to take an even tougher stand against proposals in Congress to require companies to pay for their emissions. He said high emissions “mean you’ve got a better, more productive economy.”

You can’t make up stuff like this.

Now, Mr. Greenberg may have received some unintended assistance from the United States Treasury. Just last week, the Treasury severely limited pay at A.I.G. and other companies that were bailed out by taxpayers. That may hasten the exodus of A.I.G.’s talent, sending more refugees into Mr. Greenberg’s arms, since C. V. Starr is free to pay whatever it wants.

“Basically, he’s just starting ‘A.I.G. Two’ and raiding people out of ‘A.I.G. One,’ ” said Douglas A. Love, an insurance executive who has also hired A.I.G. talent for his company, Investors Guaranty Fund of Pembroke, Bermuda.

Greenberg’s a smart guy, and maybe this time things will all go smoothly. Or they won’t, and we’ll be back at Square One. Feinberg certainly isn’t helping us avoid the latter. Expect to see stories like this everywhere in the coming months.

The bigger, stickier question is, what is the point of going after such an incomplete list? Is it to make an example of the lowest-hanging fruit? And who thinks this will actually set an example? Unless the feds show they can, in fact, go after the rest, the rest will profit from Feinberg’s limits–with salaries at AIG limited, in some cases, to $200,000, it’s only a matter of time before J.P. Morgan, Goldman, and others go poaching for talent. And at an average of $500,000, that talent is now available at rock-bottom prices. Heads you win, tails Washington loses, once again.