CMS Trustees Report -- Two Views: The CMS Trustees annual report, issued yesterday, reported that Medicare's hospital insurance trust fund would be exhausted in 2019, while Social Security's reserves would be depleted in 2041, yielded two analytic perspectives (and see more, here and here) --

• The administration: "Without change, rising costs will drive government spending to unprecedented levels, consume nearly all projected federal revenues and threaten America's future prosperity." -- Treasury Secretary Paulson
• Center on Budget: "Policymakers must restore Social Security's long-term solvency. But they do not need to make radical changes in the program's structure to do so. If they act in the coming years, a balanced package of relatively modest changes in both the program's revenues and its benefits, phased in gradually, can meet this goal."

Fed Rescue: Is it Taxpayer Money?: Even as the Bush administration insists it won't risk public funds in a bailout, American taxpayers may already be liable for billions of dollars stemming from Federal Reserve and Treasury efforts to quell a financial crisis.

• Fed historian Allan Meltzer in Bloomberg today: "[Regulators] are playing with fire,'' said , a and economics professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. ``With good luck, none of these liabilities will come due. We can't expect that good luck, and we haven't had it."