What you need to know to navigate today's most critical debates.

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Bernanke sees weak recovery 'close to faltering' (Washington Monthly)
The Fed chairman keeps edging closer to openly begging Congress to reverse course and enact more stimulus, but he hasn't tried using finger puppets or interpretive dance to get his point across yet.

In Europe, Signs of 2nd Recession With Wide Reach (NYT)
With even Germany and France looking weak, the eurozone economy is collapsing into a black hole, and the rest of the world may not be able to escape its pull.

Rescuing America from Wall Street (WaPo)
Harold Meyerson writes that the Occupy Wall Street movement is more than just a typical protest -- it's an act of insubordination against banks that have long been under the impression that the rest of us work for them.

Andrew Ross Sorkin’s assignment editor (Salon)
Glenn Greenwald notes that the media coverage of OWS has swung from pointing and laughing at the silly hippies to reassuring bankers that it's still safe to go outside despite all the mean protesters trying to hurt their delicate little feelings.

Secret Docs Show Foreclosure Watchdog Doesn’t Bark or Bite (ProPublica)
HAMP's embarrassing failure suddenly makes more sense in light of new documents that suggest the Treasury Department's auditors come from the "Sure, whatever, we're working on it. When's lunch?" school of oversight.

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U.S. and New York Sue BNY Mellon (WSJ)
Eric Schneiderman is suing Bank of New York Mellon for ripping off its clients with foreign exchange fees, but the bank is appalled that he'd go after a local firm instead of fighting crime in Spokane or Wichita like New York's AG is supposed to do.

Misrepresentations, Regulations and Jobs (NYT)
Bruce Bartlett writes that since the GOP has failed to prove that its policies (tax cuts, more tax cuts, etc.) serve any purpose as a response to the jobs crisis, it has made up an explanation (uncertainty!) that also has nothing to do with anything.

Rick Perry’s attack on the New Deal (WaPo)
Hard as it may be to believe, Rick Perry doesn't have his facts straight when it comes to the resounding success of FDR's economic rescue efforts. But Perry is a simple, principled man, and there's no place for all those liberal acronyms in his America.

Dems Float Surtax On Millionaires To Pay For Jobs Bill (TPM)
Senate Democratic leaders hope to rally their caucus's support for President Obama's jobs plan by including a 5 percent surtax on millionaires, also known as the "This Bill Will Never, Ever, Ever Pass the House" Amendment.

How Unequal We Are: The Top 5 Facts You Should Know About The Wealthiest One Percent Of Americans (Think Progress)
Zaid Jilani highlights some statistics that illustrate why America's real-life elite make Richie Rich look like a working class kid from the wrong side of the tracks.

What you need to know to navigate today's most critical debates.

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Can the left stage a Tea Party? (WaPo)
EJ Dionne writes that a more active, organized left would have greater influence over the president and remind voters that the center doesn't lie between right and far right.

“Occupy Wall Street” and the History of Democratic Finance Protest (Hysteriography)
William Hogeland points out that Occupy Wall Street resembles the populist protests that were a thorn in the elite Founders' side. The difference is that those involved leaders and concrete goals and less sleeping in tents and hoping for the best.

Outsize Severance Continues for Executives, Even After Failed Tenures (NYT)
Taking the concept of failing upward to new extremes, many corporate execs continue to be paid far more for getting fired than most of their employees could hope to make through decades of competent service.

Koch Brothers Flout Law With Secret Iran Sales (Bloomberg)
With its busy agenda of bribing officials, defying trade sanctions, and otherwise violating every regulation it doesn't like, it's no wonder Koch Industries chose to fire the ethics manager who wanted to dismantle its well-oiled law-breaking machine.

Top Prosecutor Stands Out by Pushing Back (NYT)
Eric Schneiderman is turning out to be the rare politician who makes a name for himself not with showy speeches or tabloid drama, but by effectively doing the job he was elected to do. Apparently some people still appreciate the classics.

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Holding China to Account (NYT)
Paul Krugman argues that the path back to full employment runs through a weaker currency and a smaller trade deficit, a strategy so outrageous to Chinese leaders that they've been artificially maintaining it in their own country for years.

Rich people are being ‘demonized’ for flaunting their wealth. Poor dears! (WaPo)
Barbara Ehrenreich points out that millionaires who feel they're being victimized are free to go cry about it in one of their gated multi-acre mansions, where they won't bother the many, many Americans who are mired in record levels of poverty.

In Debt Talks, Divide on What Tax Breaks Are Worth Keeping (NYT)
Politicians talk a good game about simplifying the tax code, but when push comes to shove, they're suddenly not so eager to close loopholes that benefit some of America's most vital industries, like racehorse buying or arrow manufacturing.

Regulatory uncertainty: A phony explanation for our jobs problem (EPI)
Larry Mishel highlights the inconvenient fact that business investment has recovered faster under Obama than during the Bush recovery. Obvious conclusion: Bush was an even bigger lefty, and business leaders saw right through the communist cowboy.

Toil and Trouble Over the Cauldron That Is Greece (NYT)
In the "no news is bad news" category, Greece is still in big trouble, and there isn't much time left for Europe's leaders to decide how they're going to put out the fire before it burns the whole neighborhood down.

What you need to know to navigate today's most critical debates.

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History's Missed Moment (TAP)
Robert Kuttner looks at how compromised principles and changing demographics have led to a global revival of right-wing economics just when progressives hoped to write its obituary.

Supreme Court Is Asked to Rule on Health Care (NYT)
Instead of slow-walking legal challenges to the Affordable Care Act, the Obama administration wants to take its case to the Supreme Court. It's not clear whether they're counting on an easy win or just want to make Mitt Romney's life miserable.

Fear and loathing in the eurozone (FT)
Martin Wolf writes that banding together to prevent a meltdown is the only sane option left for Europe's leaders, but it might be time to bring out the straitjackets.

Why the GOP defends the wealthy (Reuters)
David Callahan argues that because America is an aspirational country, talk of taxing the rich to "level the playing field" tends to drive voters away from policies that would benefit them. Robin Hood never had these kinds of messaging problems.

Why conservatives hate Warren Buffett (WaPo)
EJ Dionne writes that the biggest challenge to the GOP's anti-tax rhetoric and the biggest exception to its passionate love for rich white dudes is the guy who manages to have $50 billion and a conscience at the same time.

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Stop Obsessing Over Entitlement Reform (Slate)
Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Jeff Madrick explains why he's disputing the claim that "grandma's benefits imperil junior's future" at next week's Intelligence Squared debate, and why we should be worried about recession, war, and tax cuts instead.

In Trading Scandal, a Reason to Enforce the Volcker Rule (NYT)
Jesse Eisinger notes that UBS's rogue trader gives proponents of financial reform more justification for tightening proprietary trading rules and more reason to get depressed about the feeling that they're shouting into an empty room.

Amazon Workers Rediscover the Grapes of Wrath (Bloomberg)
Steinbeck's novel captured the horror of a time when employers had their pick of workers who were willing to debase and devalue themselves just to scrape by. Amazon's life-threatening warehouse conditions suggest that time is now.

Super Committee Dems Avoid Trap That Skewed Debt Limit Fight (TPM)
Democrats have apparently begun to wise up to the fact that giving Republicans everything they want in advance and then politely asking if they having anything they'd like to concede in return is not a strong negotiating strategy.

Tea Partiers Want A New Dollar Coin And Refuse To Listen To The Free Market In The Process (Capital Gains & Games)
The dollar coin has been tried and failed, but Tea Partiers want to give it one more shot. It would make it so much easier to jingle the money in their pockets every time they walk past the unemployment line.

What you need to know to navigate today's most critical debates.

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Senate Reaches Deal to Avert Government Shutdown (NYT)
Mark your calendars: The Senate passed a short-term funding agreement after learning FEMA could stretch its budget through Friday, so now we'll have a whole seven weeks before the next spending showdown.

Five reasons the next budget fight could be worse (WaPo)
With the entire budget up for grabs and the super committee scheduled to put forward its deficit reduction plan, the negotiations that begin on November 18th are shaping up to be a perfect storm of partisan clownery.

Why Don't the Deficit Hawks Want to Tax Wall Street? (Truthout)
Dean Baker notes the curious fact that the very serious people calling for shared sacrifice, many of whom hold very serious positions at Wall Street firms, usually don't think bankers should share too. That doesn't seem very serious of them at all.

Super Committee Members Raked In $41M From Wall Street (TPM)
To be fair, bankers are already sacrificing quite a bit of money in the deficit battle. They're just bypassing the Treasury and sending it directly to Congress.

Geithner Predicts Europe Will Move With More Force (Bloomberg)
Tim Geithner seems assured that hearing a stern "Come on, you guys!" from the rest of the world will push Europe's leaders toward bold action on the debt crisis. On the other hand, Geithner is best known for the opposite of predicting things.

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The Phony Solyndra Scandal (NYT)
Joe Nocera writes that the GOP has put on a dog and pony show over Solyndra's bankruptcy to embarrass the Obama administration for investing in a company that wasn't a sure thing, which for everyone else is known simply as investing.

Better Than Bernie (TAP)
Paul Waldman notes that conservatives' insistence that Social Security is broken makes sense if they think that having the government guarantee a basic standard of living to seniors is a major flaw in the system. Luckily, they know just how to fix it.

SEC Eyes Ratings From S&P (WSJ)
The SEC may bring charges against S&P for assigning its AAA credit rating to a CDO based on some hypothetical assets it made up rather than the low-quality assets the CDO wound up containing. Hey, they call them dummy assets for a reason.

Mortgage Relief Scams Proliferate After Recession (HuffPo)
Janell Ross reports that as desperate homeowners struggle to keep their heads above water, the sharks are circling. Oddly, she overlooks this one program called "HAMP" that seems to have suckered a lot of people.

Losing Faith in Government (NYT)
Catherine Rampell points out that Americans' growing belief that the government is totally useless, if not a direct and active threat to the well-being of its citizens, could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The bogus 'third party' dodge (WaPo)
Greg Sargent has good news for pundits who want to see an organized movement of centrists and moderates push for a middle ground in American politics: There's this plucky little group called the Democratic Party, and they're already on the ballot.