New Developments

• The big news for the weekend is the government takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which guarantee most of the new mortgages in the nation. It's a major admission that the subprime (and beyond) meltdown keeps going from bad to worse. Of course, I've got no more insight into economics than John McCain does, so I'll instead defer to Paul Krugman's Monday NY Times column. Krugman thinks that this was something that needed to be done, but he's not sure it will do much to stop our deflationary cycle. I'm not sure enough about the details to know who's losing money and who's protected, but I'm sure it'll become clear soon enough.

• Speaking of deferring, the McCain camp found someone they deemed acceptable to interview Sarah Palin. Just this morning, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said that she would submit to interviews when she would be "treated with respect and deference." Later today, the campaign announced that Charlie Gibson would be the one. Oddly, the AP reported that the interview was confirmed with ABC on Friday. So was Davis's charade just intended to make sure that Gibson was going to be a good little reporter and not make waves in the interview? Josh Marshall doesn't address that, but he does have some observations about why the interview won't be worth the time to watch it.