Morning Reading

Good morning. Here are a few items to stuff in the stocking. Or, you know, read:

For community banks, survival trumps lending (PBS NewsHour) More on one of yesterday’s topics:

Financial regs: Some common sense please (Chris Farrell/Businessweek)

Can the US escape a fiscal death spiral? (Washington Times)

How Obama became the jobs fall guy (The New Republic)

Everyone’s defaulting. Why don’t you? (Slate)

FAA looks to technology to train air controllers (NPR)

If Wall Street ran the airlines (Baseline Scenario) A spoof. Love the last paragraph especially:

One Goldman Sachs derivatives trader, who asked to remain anonymous because he is not authorized to speak about company strategy, said that the firm is planning to create a market for derivatives that airlines can use to hedge against the risk of having to return planes to the terminal or having to pay fines to the FAA. Goldman is thinking of creating “collateralized delay obligations,” or CDOs, which will diversify wait-time risk by including flights from across the entire country.