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REGULATION OVERSEAS….Megan McArdle:

Europe’s ongoing disaster is starting to match ours. This not only seriously challenge the idea that the main problem is American bank regulation — everyone is having the same problem, despite different regulatory regimes — but also puts us in much deeper jeopardy.

Be careful here. Weak regulation, especially of the shadow banking system, may not be the only culprit in the credit crisis, but it is a culprit. And it’s a culprit in Europe as well as the U.S., as Henry Farrell points out:

European business leaders are now complaining that the EU isn’t regulating enough – that is, it isn’t engaging in coordinated action to stop its own financial markets from tanking. The reasons for EU inaction lie in the lack of any structures that would militate towards concerted action to address problems of market confidence, in large part because European financial markets are even less regulated than their US equivalents (as I’ve noted before the EU is typically more interested in liberalizing markets than restraining them, contrary to the general impression in the US).

The problems in the European banking system are pretty similar to the problems in the U.S.: too much leverage, too much credulity about the housing market, and too much manic buying and selling of opaque and complex financial derivatives. Like the U.S., the EU could have saved itself at least part of its current pain if it had adopted a more sensible regulatory scheme. But like the U.S., they didn’t.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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