I find this op-ed today on exports more than confusing. Essentially, the author, a business professor and former chief economist at the Dallas Fed named W. Michael Cox, says that President Obama's call for the U.S. to compete more effectively on that basis should not focus on boosting manufactured goods.

But it seems to me that our so-called comparative advantage in services that Cox says is a sufficient source of GDP growth has in fact put us at a disadvantage to countries such as China and Germany.

The increasing scrutiny of the swaps that Goldman Sachs arranged to help Greece hide its debt shows once again why investment banking should not be subsidized by taxpayers.

Yes, the separation of commercial and investment banking imposed by Glass-Steagall with that in mind may seem antiquated, and it may not have prevented the financial crisis. Surely it would have had no bearing on what happened in Greece. And neither would the Volcker Rule, which doesn't even go far enough in terms of the U.S.

Does anybody else have problems with the fact that the head of the energy trading unit that Citigroup sold to Occidental last year is setting up a hedge fund?

It would be an entirely different situation if Andrew Hall were leaving Occidental to do this, but he isn't. Instead, he will wear both hats simultaneously.

The back and forth over President Obama's "praise," or whatever you want to call it, for Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein via an out of context Bloomberg take is really overdone.

Worse, it misses the fact that Larry Summers seems to have (emphasis on "seems") a road to Damascus moment.

At long last, an economist takes head-on the anti-Keynesian nonsense we've been hearing from both the right and center (or at least from President Obama himself in his State of the Union address) that says the government should treat its budget the same way families do, by tightening its belt during hard times.

Randall Wray of the University of Missouri spells things out pretty clearly here, but let me hit the high points for you.

Lost in the hubbub over the financial condition of Greece and other weak E.U. members is the fact that the U.S.'s member states are in terrible shape as well, and those such as California and New York have bigger economies. Except that Barry Ritholtz has some data on this.

While Greece's economy is only the 34^th largest in the world, California's is the 8^th largest, equal to that of France.

We've obviously got Bank of America on the brain around here, but the case raises one more issue that I don't think we or anyone else has fully addressed.

Charles Gasparino hints at it when he points out that Ken Lewis is likely to call Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson to testify on his behalf.

My apologies to all the technocrats out there who want us to stick to corporate finance, narrowly defined. But the Republican counter-proposal to Obama's budget is just too ridiculous to pass up in at least one major respect.

As James Kwak points out today, the party recommends that we reform health care the same way we did Wall Street after the Crash of 1929, with an emphasis on more disclosure so consumers can make better informed choices.

The folks at CareerBuilder are desperately trying to put a positive spin on the dismal job market.

In a press release Wednesday the online employment firm celebrated the "resiliency" of Americans by pointing out the fact that 58 percent of those laid off in the last 12 months have found new positions. Nice try, guys.

A growing number of state and local governments are leasing highways, airports and other public property to private investor so they can devote dwindling tax revenues to maintenance and improvements of other infrastructure. Much of the investment in these so-called public-private partnerships is coming from  pension funds and private equity. But observers doubt the trend is sustainable.

This piece describes a burst of such activity recently seen in the U.K. and Canada. But Hawaii, Illinois and Pennsylvania also have plans to lease their housing authorities, toll roads and railroad terminals.