But if you do not, his column today is a superb analysis of the current financial situation.

Krugman describes:

a new kind of voodoo: the belief that by performing elaborate financial rituals we can keep dead banks walking.

Which would be the creation of a government owned bad bank that would buy up all of the junk assets now held by good banks that are in need of rescue from their past bad decisions.

Now the reason that the good banks are in trouble is that the value of these bad assets has plunged with the bursting of the housing bubble. If we buy the bad assets at the going market price, the good banks will still be in trouble.

If, on the other hand, we buy the bad assets at a price that rescues the good banks from their distress then we simply transfer their trouble to the taxpayers.

Meanwhile the financiers continue with their previous lifestyles and, see yesterday's post for more on this, do not appear to be particularly inclined to extend their good fortune to the rest of us.

So for a mere trillion or so dollars the taxpayers get their own, do it yourself, zombie kit suitable for the construction of the largest ever undead bank. This is a deal that only Lio could love.