Links: Matthew Lynn, Denninger, Elizabeth Warren, more

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Priceless: How the Fed Bought the Economics Profession – (Huffington Post) Must-Read if you haven’t already.

Goldman, Deutsche Bank Pay Curbs Would Rig Market – (Bloomberg) Matthew Lynn thinks Goldman and others actually want pay restrictions, as a way to curb competition. Interesting stuff… “If Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs are now in favor of curbing pay, maybe it’s not such a good idea after all.”

Credit Card Defaults Climb in August – (Bloomberg) “The industry’s data may signal that the second quarter’s improvement will be short-lived as tax refunds and federal efforts to stimulate the economy run out. Defaults tend to track the jobless rate, which dipped in July for the first time since the start of the recession before resuming its climb to 9.7 percent in August.”

Bernanke: “Recession Is Over” (Depression Has Just Begun) – (Karl Denninger) Another good one from Mr. Denninger: ‘The entire premise of both government and our central bank is that “credit is too tight.’  In point of fact what we continue to see proof of month after month is that credit has been and still is too loose as borrowers are unable to pay back the money lent, which in turn leads to more and more onerous terms for those who still have money out.”

Marketing TARP – (Mother Jones) GW Bush speechwriters’ struggle with how to make TARP palatable, “Then one of the writers got serious and came up with the Temporary Emergency Market Protection Program, or TEMP. Not bad as gimmicks go, and Ed liked it. But he decided that instead of dropping it into a speech, we’d leak it to the press that this was the phrase we were using internally.”

O-Team Cranks Up the HELLBOT to 6th gear pinned (Zero Hedge) RobotTrader of ZH muses on how the worst-of-the-worst stocks are performing the best.

Elizabeth Warren: “Until we have a credible liquidation threat, we don’t have capitalism”