AFP - London shares slipped into the red Tuesday as investors fretted over the eurozone debt crisis and geopolitical tensions between North and South Korea.

Landon Thomas, NY Times
DUBLIN — Ireland has finally taken its medicine, accepting the financial rescue package European officials have been pushing for several weeks.But even as Europe moved to avert this latest debt crisis, economists and policy experts are increasingly debating whether it would be better, and fairer, for the Continent’s weakest economies to default on payments to lenders.

AP - The White House is welcoming Ireland's decision to apply for a massive loan to address its debt crisis.

Politico - Co-chair of deficit commission eyes political turmoil before spring deadline.

Daily Caller - Perhaps foreseeing a showdown between new Republican members of Congress and party leadership, Speaker-elect John Boehner said Thursday that despite commitments from many freshman lawmakers not to raise the national debt limit, the House will have to take action early next year.

Paul Krugman, New York Times
What do the government of China, the government of Germany and the Republican Party have in common? They’re all trying to bully the Federal Reserve into calling off its efforts to create jobs. And the motives of all three are highly suspect.It’s not as if the Fed is doing anything radical. It’s true that the Fed normally conducts monetary policy by buying short-term U.S. government debt, whereas now, under the unhelpful name of “quantitative easing,” it’s buying longer-term debt. (Buying more short-term debt is pointless because the...

AFP - US President Barack Obama vowed here Friday to work with Portugal and all of Europe as Lisbon tries to cut public debt and soothe financial market fears.

The Christian Science Monitor - Even though a vote to raise the national debt limit – now just under $14.3 trillion – is months away, House Republican leaders are already preparing their caucus for what could be the toughest vote for a bumper freshman class.

The Lookout - It looks like Ireland is slowly moving toward accepting a European Union bailout worth tens of billions of Euros, in an effort to end its debt crisis. So it's worth asking, how did things get to this point, and what's the upshot likely to be? The root causes of Ireland's financial problems aren't so different [...]

Daily Caller - America has its downsides: Massive debt, poor math scores, Michael Moore. There’s also the TSA ogling and fondling passengers with its revealing backscatter technology and invasive pat-downs.

Joshua Green, Boston Globe
In the two weeks since the election, the deficit has taken center stage in Washington, propelled by a high-profile report on how to cut it from the chairmen of the president’s deficit commission, and by a push to ban congressional earmarks from conservative activists. This is welcome news for Democratic Representative Jim Cooper of Tennessee, a renowned budgetary Cassandra who is so alarmed by the deficit that the first thing visitors to his Capitol Hill office encounter is a billboard displaying the steadily mounting US debt. Yesterday, it stood at $13,050,588,009,652, and...

Here’s a roundup of this morning’s must-read budget and economic stories:

The Wall Street Journal reports the European Union is likely to approve a multi-billion dollar loan to help Ireland dig its way out its debt crisis.

Time’s Fareed Zakaria calls fixing the debt the U.S.’s “biggest test.” Zakaria writes, “The federal budget deficit, if unattended, will reach 24% of GDP in 2040 —well beyond Greek and Irish territory. At that point, the measures it would take to close the gap are so punitive — we’re talking tax hikes of 70% or spending cuts of 50% — that it is inconceivable that we will make them. If by some chance we were to make them, they would put the economy in a death spiral.”

According to Politico, Sens. Scott Brown (R-MA) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) will introduce a bill in the Senate today to allow states to opt out of the individual mandate portion of the health care law signed earlier this year.

Two members of President Obama’s “Fiscal Commission,” Democrat Alice Rivlin and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), released a plan yesterday to reform Medicare and Medicaid. The plan would cap the rate of growth for the two programs at the rate of economic growth plus one percent.

South Dakota's Kristi Noem, who narrowly defeated four-term incumbent Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, has said her top priority in Washington will be the debt and the deficit.

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Pete Domenici & Alice Rivlin, Washington Post
This morning, a bipartisan task force that we co-chair unveils a bold, comprehensive plan to dramatically reduce America's deficits and debt and strengthen our economy, enabling the nation to reclaim its future. We urge the nation's leaders to seriously consider it.The strong economy that has made the United States the world's leading power is gravely threatened. Federal debt will soar in the coming years under current policies, endangering our prosperity and our leadership.

Below is an excerpt; please click here to read the entire article.

European officials, increasingly concerned that the Continent’s debt crisis will spread, are warning that any new rescue plans may need to cover Portugal as well as Ireland to contain the problem they tried to resolve six months ago.

Any such plan would have to be preceded by a formal request for assistance from each country before it would be put in place. And for months now, Ireland has insisted that it has enough funds to keep it going until spring. Portugal says it, too, needs no help and emphasizes that it is in a stronger position than Ireland.

While some important details are different, the current situation feels eerily similar to what happened months ago in Greece, where the cost of borrowing rose precipitously.

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While Ireland has largely impressed European officials with its commitment to austerity, Portugal has been lagging in this regard, according to European officials. One official in Europe…said that the budget recently presented by the government in Lisbon did not contain the type of far-reaching changes proposed by other countries, like Spain.

“If Ireland were to ask for aid, then you’d have to look at what’s going on in Portugal as well,” the official said, putting forward a view rescuing Ireland alone would not keep speculators from other vulnerable countries.

Anne Applebaum, Washington Post
Throw your Euro stereotypes out the window: Last weekend, a Greek government that has cut public-sector pay and lowered pensions won a clear victory in local elections. Despite strikes and violence, despite the fact that Greece's debt is still growing and more cuts are coming, there will be a Socialist mayor of Athens for the first time in 24 years. (And, yes, in Greece, the Socialists favor budget cuts, and the conservatives oppose them.)

AP - Ireland's debt crisis and the question of if and how it would receive a bailout will be the main issue finance ministers will tackle at a meeting Tuesday.

AP - The co-chairman of President Barack Obama's deficit reduction commission says Congress has to "face up" to a red-ink problem that threatens America's future.

Debra Saunders, San Francisco Chronicle

David Broder, Wash Post

The Truth-o-Meter says: Mostly True | Former President George W. Bush defends his fiscal record

During the tour to promote his presidential memoir, Decision Points, George W. Bush defended his fiscal record in an interview with Matt Lauer on NBC's Today Show. In the interview, Bush said that the ratio of the deficit to gross domestic product during his time in office "was lower than Ronald Reagan's by half. Lower than my dad's. And only [worse than] Bill Clinton among modern presidents. ... My debt to GDP was the lowest or one of the lowest of modern presidents. My taxes to GDP was the lowest and my spending to GDP" was ...

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associatedcontent - In the wake of the 2010 elections, America has focused its eyes on the trillions in national debt. One of the recommendations of the bipartisan deficit reduction panel appointed by President Obama was to freeze federal salaries for three years and cut back on the size of the federal workforce by 10 percent. The recommendation of cutbacks to federal staffing levels is an encouraging sign, but a recommended three-year pay freeze is the sort of vagary that social engineers are famous for.

AFP - EU heavyweights Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain issued a joint declaration Friday insisting that bond market jitters over a future bailout fund were misplaced, as Ireland suffers a debt crisis.

David Harsanyi, Denver Post
Not long ago, I finagled my way into a conference featuring a number of top economists discussing the future of government. These experts helpfully synthesized a bunch of intricate numbers and created PowerPoint presentations sprinkled with graphs that illustrated a pending stratospheric explosion of debt and spending -- for which the technical term, I believe, was "we're screwed." Receive news alertsAmericans might have a similar reaction to the much-heralded suggestions of the co-chairmen of the deficit commission convened by President Barack Obama. Reality is that even this...