On Sunday (July 26) Federal Reserve Bank chief Ben Bernanke sat down with Jim Lehrer of PBS's News Hour to defend recent bold actions of the central bank to shore the nation's financial system. Specifically, Congress and many Americans question the wisdom of engineering a $29 billion bailout of Bear Stearns (as competitor Lehman Brothers lay dying in a pool of its own red ink); the extension of over $2 trillion in loans and loan guarantees using who-knows-what as collateral; and a doubling of the monetary base.

These and other seemingly commonsensical budget cuts can be found in an Office of Management and Budget (OMB) report released yesterday.

Here's a shock: state budgets are not doing so good. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) released a report today cataloging the gory details.

Under current law, corporations maintain two sets of books: one to show shareholders (per Securities and Exchange Commission) and one to show Uncle Sam (per tax code). The two books are often conflicting and allow corporations to simultaneously declare both large and small profits, large and small losses, or profit and loss. One set of books is advantageous for the share price while the other is a means to avoid paying taxes, sticking non-shareholding Americans with larger tax bills.