With the announcement that it intends to build the world’s largest solar power plant, China is rapidly evolving into the world’s largest market for solar energy. And with heavy government backing, Chinese solar companies are quickly becoming global leaders.

This week marks the one-year anniversary of the Lehman bankruptcy. The media struggles to say something meaningful about it. Here at the Daily Reckoning we will not even attempt meaningfulness. We’ll be satisfied with a few snide remarks.

The Economist magazine, in a column wryly titled “Pangloss Revisited”, notes that “The average deficit over the next decade in now expect to be 5.1% of GDP, compared with an average of 4% in the original budget”, and that even in the last year of the forecast, 2019, the budget deficit is supposed to be 5% of GDP! Wow!

Pretend, just for a moment, that you’re President Obama. You have big spending plans – national health insurance, two wars, and a trillion dollar bailout for your friends on Wall Street. Not to mention paying for the soaring costs of Social Security and Medicare.

Hey, the economy is not only recovering…it’s becoming better than ever before!

Is the U.S. housing market truly at a turning point, as investors seem to increasingly believe? Or is this actually a false dawn, meaning that there are problems and pain ahead for those who turned bullish too soon?

Actually, we haven’t gotten to Bedford Springs yet. We’re still sitting in the airport lounge in Paris. Summer is over. It’s back to work…12 hours a day…just like we’ve worked for the past 39 years.

Our story continues…According to the popular version, Ben Bernanke, our flawed hero, has averted a Second Great Depression. When the crisis came in ’07-’08, he calmly took out the text he had written himself: “Dummies’ Guide to Avoiding a Japan-style Deflation”… or something like that.

“They were hunters. They stayed here during the Ice Age, probably hunting reindeer,” said the archaeologist in charge of the site. “But who were they?”

For U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, the biggest challenges are still to come.