A short post today since it’s big fundraiser day. Paul Krugman reports:

The scariest thing I’ve read recently is a speech given last week by Tim Geithner, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Mr. Geithner came as close as a Fed official can to saying that we’re in the midst of a financial meltdown.

    You can’t read the papers without seeing, almost daily, a new corner of the financial system that is collapsing.

Last month another market you’ve never heard of, the $300 billion market for auction-rate securities (don’t ask), suffered the equivalent of a bank run. Last week two big financial companies announced that they had been unable to raise the cash demanded by their lenders. Even Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant government-sponsored mortgage agencies long regarded as safe places to put your money, are now having trouble attracting funds.

   It will get worse. And we will be left cleaning up the mess–remember how the savings and loan debacle was cleaned up? By the taxpayers.