Citywire's Best of the Web

Some stores that caught our attention today:

• How far will stocks fall if this is another Great Depression, asks Clusterstock? 78% is the answer you probably didn't want to hear. Cue scary graphs and the inevitable picture of black and white 30s Wall Street trader selling his black and white 30s car.
• Robert Peston offers his thoughts on the latest RBS bailout, but as usual the resulting public discussion is just as illuminating as the blog itself. People are angry, and rightly so.
• Willem Buiter, meanwhile, is as blunt as ever on his Maverecon blog: this [the Treasury Asset Protection Scheme] is a taxpayer rip-off of surprising boldness, he declares. He's dead right, of course - why people aren't more angry is a mystery.
• And amid all the Sir Fred-baiting, there is at last some intelligent comment on the RBS CEO-£650k a year 'scandal'. Little surprise that it should come from Paul Murphy at FT Alphaville.
• According to William Black writing in the Huffington Post, there are two documents you must read to understand the financial crisis. Both of them are by ratings agencies, and you can read about them here. Interesting insight from a 'white-collar criminologist'.
• And finally...US First Lady Michelle Obama wants to give her daughters Sasha And Malia a 'rescued Portuguese water dog' as a pet, Newsday and others report. One imagines....S&M: ‘Mum and Mr President Dad, now we have to live in this big scary house with loads of big scary men wearing earphones and carrying guns can we have a really rare super-shaggy dog to make it more fun?’ Mr President and Mrs O: ‘Yes, we can!’ Why a plain old poodle can't suffice i don't know, but it is interesting to discover that these beasts once existed all along Portugal's coast, where they were taught to herd fish into fishermen's nets, to retrieve lost tackle or broken nets, and to act as couriers from ship to ship, or ship to shore. (Who doesn't secretly love Wikipedia?)