Market design that you can't refuse: Treasury switches to equity

The NY Times reports that the latest change of direction in the financial bailout was presented as an ultimatum by the Treasury to big banks: Drama Behind a $250 Billion Banking Deal

Peer to peer lending in the credit crunch

Alan Krueger, writing in the NY Times blog, notes that even borrowers with good credit are being moved by circumstance to some of the peer to peer lenders: In Credit Crisis, Some Turn to Online Peers for Cash

The credit crisis: anatomy of a market failure

The NY Times reports on 36 Hours of Alarm and Action as Crisis Spiraled.

"...But contagion was already spreading. The problem posed by the Lehman bankruptcy was not the losses suffered by hedge funds and other investors who traded stocks or bonds with the firms. As federal officials had predicted, that turned out to be manageable. (That was one reason the government did not step in to save the firm.)
The real problem was that a handful of hedge funds that used the firm’s London office to handle their trades had billions of dollars in balances frozen in the bankruptcy. "

Market for certificates of deposit

Do I Hear 4%? On This Site, Banks Bid for Your Cash

The NY Times article talks about Money Aisle, a site on which banks bid for your deposit.

In passing, the article also talks about competition for bank advertisements; at Moneyaisle, banks only pay for customers who open accounts, rather than a pay per click model.