Allowing individuals to purchase health insurance policies sold in other states is a key feature of every Republican health care proposal It's also a horrible idea, as Jonathan Chait and Ezra Klein have both explained today. You should read both of their critiques.

This is the opening shot of The Picture--my new, biweekly column. I’m not planning to restrict myself to the visual arts here, although they will certainly be a central concern. I want to range more widely than I have in the past, writing about the interlocking worlds of books and pictures and culture that are my lifeblood, my passion. I may describe a forgotten novel that I picked up in a secondhand bookstore. Or salute the life and work of a friend who’s not around anymore. From time to time, I'll dedicate a column to a painting that's excited me in a museum in Milwaukee or San Francisco. But I may also want to say something about a movie or praise an actor's performance. I’m certainly going to discuss the perilous state of our print media world. And comment on any other aspect of the cultural universe that annoys the hell out of me. I hope that The Picture will become a chronicle of one critic’s works and days.

Has everybody forgotten that the arts are recession proof? Yes, of course, revenues shrink, contributions dry up, and expenses continue to rise. Those are the problems that numbers crunchers are put on earth to deal with. But the arts—the play of the imagination, the need for this parallel universe with its dream logic and its moral reverberations—are not affected by shifts in the housing market or the Dow. The value of a painting has never been established at auction. The power of a novel has never been determined by the advance the author happened to receive or by the number of copies that eventually sold. The greatness of a theatrical production has nothing to do with how many people attend. Dancers who can barely make their rent go on stage and give opulent performances. Poets, with nothing but a pencil and a piece of paper, erect imperishable kingdoms. And there are millionaires who chose to live with the barebones beauty of a Mondrian or a Morandi.

There are two broad views on our newly resurgent global bubbles--the increase in asset prices in emerging markets, fuelled by capital inflows, with all the associated bells and whistles (including dollar depreciation). These run-ups in stock market values and real estate prices are either benign or the beginnings of a major new malignancy.

The benign view, implicit in Secretary Geithner’s position at the G20 meeting last weekend, is most clearly articulated by Frederic (Ric) Mishkin, former member of the Fed’s Board of Governors and author of "The Next Great Globalization: How Disadvantaged Nations Can Harness Their Financial Systems To Get Rich," in the Financial Times this morning.

Being Treasury secretary is usually not a job that calls for great political skills. But with a banking crisis crippling the economy and threatening to turn a recession into a depression, Tim Geithner has been plunged into the center of politics--as both the person responsible for what the administration should do, and as the main exponent of that policy. But he has faltered in crafting an effective policy and failed miserably in putting it forward.

Over a thousand delegates gathered in early October at the Sheraton Chicago for the fifteenth annual Hispanic leadership conference. The gleaming hotel, towering over the Chicago River and Lake Michigan, seemed emblematic of Hispanics' growing political heft. Speakers at the conference included former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Henry G. Cisneros, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, and Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman. But no one attracted as much attention--or adulation--as Bill Richardson, former Congressman from New Mexico and America's new ambassador to the United Nations.