I would recommend reading the following things:

Marginal Revolution’s Tyler Cowen comments on the book When Brute Force Fails, a work about the economics of crime and punishment.

Economist Donald Marron on the economics and failure of guaranteed student loans.

American Enterprise Institute’s Reinhart, Makin, and Wallison on the policies that led to the financial meltdown.

Reason Magazine’s Matt Welch on the politics of memory (or memory loss, really) and the underlying causes of political mistakes. Here’s a paragraph to remember:

Living in Washington these days is like experiencing the 1970s all over again, just without the great music and bad clothes. Barack Obama is on the verge of unleashing the biggest wave of alternative energy boondoggles since Jimmy Carter. Commentators like Yglesias are proposing, as if it’s never been tried, “What if we had a 95 percent marginal tax rate on income over $10 million? What dire consequences would flow from this?” And everywhere you see evidence of presumed (though highly questionable) short-term gain being offered in place of the longer-term reforms needed to convincingly reverse the worst economic crisis in at least a quarter century.