4/20 Roundup: Budget Cuts, Little Green Hats, The Handshake

Leader: Budget Cuts

- President Obama will gather his cabinet today, and order them to collectively cut $100 million from the budget over the next 90 days. This will be the first full meeting of the cabinet.  Already, certain cuts have been identified: DVA conferences, Agriculture locations, and DHS office supplies.

- Greg Mankiw reminds us that "$100 million represents .003% of $3.5 trillion." Still, the intent is to demonstrate the President's commitment to fight the budget deficit in the long run.

Politics

- President Obama has returned from a successful trip to Trinidad and Tobago, where he projected a new era of openness in US-Latin American relations.  Simon writes that this is a new day indeed in the Western Hemisphere.

- The NY Times reports word that the CIA used waterboarding 266 times on just two suspects.  Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the planner of the 9/11 terror attacks, suffered the treatment 183 times in just one month in 2003. 

- The Treasury will be moving to convert its TARP loans to banks into common stock.  This will allow the government to continue to loan ot banks without requesting more money through congress, and will turn the federal aid into available capital for the banks.  Some see this as a backdoor to nationalization.

- Frank Foer and Noam Scheiber continue the quest to unpack President Obama's theory of state.  It's long, but it's worth  your time.

Economy

- Paul Krugman is afraid we all might turn Irish. No shamrocks and little green hats, rather, a 10% drop in GDP combined with a disastrous governmental response that includes slashing government spending.

- The IMF is reimagining itself as a true global bank, more heavily involving rising powers like India and China, and acting more like a bank than an economic advisor.

- Bank of America's profitability is up, but it's holding ever more sour loans.

International

- Gunmen in Mexico attacked a prisoner transfer convoy, killing eight police officers in a failed attempt to spring a cartel leader from imprisonment. 

- Three aid workers with MSF-Belgium (Doctors Without Borders) were seized by Somali gunmen, who are demanding $1 million in ransom.

New From NDN

- Over the weekend, Jake looked at John Boehner's denial of global warming, and saw it as yet more evidence that the GOP is deeply out of touch and facing a long road back.

- On Friday, Rob Shapiro wrote about Americans' changing attitude toward saving (as opposed to, say, spending).  It may yet become the thing to do.

One More Thing

- Are you friends with any tween girls? Well, they'd rather be friends with the Obama girls than you.

- Last, everybody's jibber-jabbering about Obama's handshake with Hugo Chavez.  Here's the take from Meredith Viera and MSNBC: