Just a friendly reminder that on January 1, the clock began on the second Recovery Act recipient reporting cycle. Prime and sub recipients have from January 1 to January 15 to submit their reports to FederalReporting.gov, recipients will edit these reports from then until January 22, and agencies will then have until January 29 to review the reports. Everything will be published on Recovery.gov on Saturday, January 30.

When discussing the federal budget deficit, I should be clear that reducing it right now is absolutely the wrong policy to pursue. It will likely strangle the meager recovery that's underway, and attention should primarily be focused on reducing the growing cost of health care. Having said all that, if deficit reduction must be addressed right now, it's important to first understand its composition.

In a report on the $168 million bonus pay out to employees of federally subsidized insurance giant AIG, Special Inspector General for TARP (SIGTARP) Neil Barofsky writes that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's

Yesterday, Gary wrote about the latest federal budget deficit numbers and noted that, well, there's no need to freak out. Aside from freaking out, understanding how the federal budget got to this level is essential to evaluating budgetary policy options going forward.