Top bank lawyer’s e-mails show Washington’s inside game at Bloomberg shares insights into how regulation is impacted when regulators and the industry regulated share too much. Pruning Hedge Fund Regulation Without Cultivating Better Rules By Jesse Eisenger, ProPublica at Dealbook, NYT also writes on the SEC and de-regulationscommercial water slides for sale.

I am just catching up with some of the news this week. Barkley Rosser at Econospeak had a timely post on 9/11 ceremonies and reminds us about what we accept as special or inevitably normal: Things More Worthy Of Remembrance Than 9/11 Yes, what happened 11 years ago today was awful and tragic, and there is much […]

Via  Taxprog blog: Bartlett: Mitt Romney, Carried Interest and Capital GainsNew York Times:  Mitt Romney, Carried Interest and Capital Gains, by Bruce Bartlett: A key reason for Mr. Romney’s low tax rate is that a very substantial amount of his income comes from capital gains – 51% in 2011 and 58% in 2010. Capital gains, […]

by Linda Beale Whistleblower gets millions: good for compliance improvement (and makes us ask again–did Romney get amnesty?) Bradley Birkenfeld, the UBS whistleblower who helped jumpstart the IRS’s enforcement of foreign bank account reporting and helped catch criminal tax evaders, ended up serving a relatively short prison term (for failure to be entirely forthcoming, in […]

John Quiggin writes at  Crooked Timber on a not new discussion on what constitutes “white working class” or “whiteworkingclass” used in media descriptions.  In comments there are several who tackle the question well….Bruce Wilder for one.  I am not sure there is a clear answer without considering geographical issues and histories, rural/city/suburb issues, and such, but […]

Public Policy Polling has a robo based poll making the rounds yesterday with this question (15) and responses: Q15 Who do you think deserves more credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden: Barack Obama or Mitt Romney? Barack Obama……..63% Mitt Romney……… 6% Not sure ………. 31% The breakdown looks like this: Choosing Mitt is […]

by Linda Beale Romer’s deficit reduction suggestions worth a read Christina Romer’s recent piece in the New York Times is worth reading.  See C.D. Romer, Cutting the Deficit, with Compassion, New York Times at BU5 (Sept. 9, 2012). Now, I generally have found Romer too willing to advocate austerity economics and too unwilling to support […]

From the NY Daily News comes a Tale of Two Cities (and does not include rural poverty): We have more poor people in Brooklyn than the entire population of Detroit; we have more people on food stamps than the entire population of Washington, D.C.,” Gelber said. “Yet there are more wealthy people than in Greenwich, […]

I overheard a conversation at a local restaurant on the impact of the US being dependent on China buying US bonds to finance federal debt.  Usullay missing from such conversations is the % of money involved, whether that is a lot, and what effect it has on federal debt and trade (and some kind of […]