Blankfein backs fair value accounting

Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, says: 'If more institutions had properly valued their positions and commitments at the outset, they would have been in a much better position to reduce their exposures."

Blankfein lays out 7 errors made by financial institutions leading to the crisis in this FT column. Last, and perhaps most important: They didn't properly value their assets.

GAO: Don't blame commodity speculators

I missed this. The GAO says speculators didn't cause the commodity run-up last year. In a January 2009 report, the GAO said "the fact that the studies generally did not find statistical evidence of such a relationship appears to suggest that such trading is not significantly affecting
commodity prices."