You can get a pretty good view from off-Wall Street. Fools do. Each week they cut through the haze to help readers see what's really going on and how it might affect their portfolios. Three of this week's best follow.

Toyota's Train Wreck Continues

Toyota (NYSE: TM) seems to have fallen into the if-it-bleeds-it-leads school of journalism. Fool contributor John Rosevear explains why shareholders must look beyond the flash and into the boardroom. "[T]he issue for shareholders is that there's a battle going on in the company's executive suite at a moment when the company urgently needs to refocus and move forward," John writes. 

Click to the article for John's full look at the Toyota train wreck.

Why I Love This Google Buyout

Longtime Fool.com readers know that contributor Anders Bylund delights in National Poetry Month. A few words from Walt Whitman set up Anders' bullish thoughts on Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) recent buyout of visual search outfit Plink. 

"Google just hired a couple of engineers with the proven ability to tackle a tough information-finding problem. … And Google has a tradition of putting its new hires to useful work," Anders writes.

Anders has his opinion on which publicly traded "Googly soulmate" the company would be smart to acquire. (All I can say is that it rhymes with "wet sticks.") Click to the story for one Fool's take. And keep watching to see the fun Anders has during this splendid month.

Banks Blowing Up the Economy

Fool columnist Morgan Housel dug into his crayon box to rebut the arguments of those who act "like even the slightest smidge of financial reform will send us into a Socialist Stone Age." A chart showing total assets of the four big banks -- Citigroup (NYSE: C), Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC), and JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) -- relative to gross domestic product over the past 17 years makes a pretty (enlightening) picture. 

Big companies raised capital and "thrived like never before" in years past, when the big banks made up a much smaller portion of GDP, Morgan writes. "To suggest that reducing the size of big banks relative to GDP to where they were in, say, 1998, would somehow asphyxiate big businesses is comically refutable."

Click to the story to see Morgan's full argument, then peruse the comments section to find out who's buying it, and don't forget to add your own thoughts.