What you need to know to navigate today’s most critical debates.

Capturing the ECB (Project Syndicate)
Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Joseph Stiglitz writes that since the ECB is free from the burden of accountability, it’s no surprise it puts special interests above the public interest.

The Downward Mobility of the American Middle Class, and Why Mitt Romney Doesn’t Know (Robert Reich)
Reich notes that the GOP front-runner’s ideological blinders cause him to overlook how many middle class Americans are slipping through the safety net into poverty, where he can safely ignore them and let the Democrats deal with their problems.

The End of Wall Street As They Knew It (New York)
As Wall Street begins to feel the impact of Dodd-Frank, Gabriel Sherman talks to the usual suspects who mourn a time when men were men and bankers were bankers and bonuses for achieving nothing in particular weren’t capped in the low six figures.

Time for QE3 (Slate)
Matthew Yglesias writes that one big threat to recovery is the “good enough” approach to policy, in which the Fed decides painfully slow growth is fine as long as it doesn’t have to do anything that makes it uncomfortable to push things forward.

Company Faces Forgery Charges in Mo. Foreclosures (NYT)
Missouri’s AG has brought an action against foreclosure mill DocX for robo-signing, which he rudely refers to as criminal forgery rather than a clerical error or a mortgage oopsie or whatever neutral language settlement negotiators have worked out.

Click here to buy Senior Fellow Richard Kirsch’s new book on the epic health care reform battle, Fighting for Our Health.

Unemployment Insurance Maximum Duration Dropping To 79 Weeks (HuffPo)
When Congress reauthorized federal unemployment benefits in December, it cut the duration of extended benefits so the long-term unemployed start suffering sooner. This strategy is known as “meeting in the middle” or “screwing our constituents.”

Marriage Is for Rich People (NYT)
Catherine Rampell highlights a new study that finds marriage rates have declined sharply among the poor over the last 50 years, while those at the top of the economic ladder continue to believe that being rich is better with company.

Pass the Romney Rule! (Slate)
Eliot Spitzer explores the philosophic, economic and political cases for taxing capital gains like regular income, noting that all the available evidence in favor of the idea stacks up well against the conservative counterpoint, “But we don’t wanna.”

6 Things You Should Know About Arizona’s Worse-Than-Wisconsin’s Attack on Public Workers (