Here is a sneak peek at some links from my weekly Weekend Reading column from over at TheStreet.com:

• The next bubble: Business books about the subprime/credit bubble (Los Angeles Times)
• MIT solar startup aims to beat coal on price (EETimes)
• Great interview with ex- Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill (New York Times)
• Big production plans and June debut for Apple's next iPhone (Fortune)
• Fascinating, data-rich paper on the securitization of subprime credit (NY Fed)
• Spending on Alternative Media Jumps 22% (Advertising Age)

Everyone is painfully familiar with economist JM Keynes's rip on sanguine sorts who opine that in the long run we'll all be okay. After all, as he famously said, in the long run we're all dead. Most people, however, don't know what comes next in the quote, and it's arguably as good:

In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if, in tempestuous seasons, they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again.

[via NYT]

Given some of their nationals' fondness for financial scams, there is something blackly comedic -- and possibly even downright appropriate -- about a letter from someone in Nigeria to the New York Times purporting to explain the U.S.'s subprime/credit issues. Then again, there is no denying that some Nigerians have demonstrated a real competency in this general area.

To the editor:

This financial monster is not the fault of Wall Street, or of some shadowy conspiracy created in basements and back rooms. It should have been fully expected from the time the deficits-don’t-matter attitude took hold in Washington.

The only reason the monster didn’t arrive sooner is that the Federal Reserve was able to manage interest rates, thereby keeping American households spending and borrowing. This, however, only delayed it, as the dollar so diminished the relative size of the American economy that global corporations no longer needed to cater to the American consumer.

Why are we now standing by idly as the government spends billions upon billions of dollars it does not have, trying to further delay the inevitable crisis? Why pass the crisis onto our children and grandchildren? Daniel Mueller

Lagos, Nigeria, March 24

Or, at the very least, why not send a fraction of that subprime bailout money to a confidante of the widow of the late General Sanni Abacha of Nigeria, who died and now his $80-million is with her, but ... well, you know the rest.

And just because it reminded me of it, here is a great video of Ze Frank performing a Nigerian email at TED a few years ago. Yes, performing a scam email. It's good.