Blog Entries

Dear Self-Described "Producer": I received your hate mail this morning. Thank you for emerging from your self-creating illusion long enough to write it.. I particularly enjoyed your oblique references to the John Galt character in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, who isn't acknowledged enough nowadays for his special role: Galt may be the most long-winded and incoherent crybaby in literary history.

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Funny how things change. When Herman Cain and Rick Perry imploded in one week last November, Jon Stewart called Mitt Romney "the luckiest motherfudger on Earth." That was before last night's "shellacking," when Rick Santorum trounced Romney in Minnessota, Missouri, and Colorado — three states that Romney won in 2008. Whupped by the same guy who snatched away his Iowa caucus victory, it safe to say Romney is no longer "the luckiest motherfudger on Earth." That title may pass to another 2012 presidential candidate.

To his credit, Romney isn't taking this latest humiliation lying down. He's hitting Santorum with the "Washington Insider" label — and it's likely to stick.

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It was just one month ago when conservatives were complaining that ABC's George Stephanopoulos was displaying his "bias" while moderating a Republican presidential debate by being "obsessed" with cont more »

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• MORNING MESSAGE: CSI Missouri -- Foreclosure Fraud Indictments
• Settlement Status Murky
• Santorum Punctures Romney Inevitability
• GOP Refusing Simple Deal On Payroll Tax Cut
• Fed To Keep Rates Low
• Outsourcing Firm Scandal In Mexico
• Breakfast Sides

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As Election Day nears, President Obama is regaining his populist mojo. more »

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Co-written with David Reeves.

Several GOP presidential candidates have made competing claims to the Reagan mantle this election season. So in order to determine once and for all which candidates truly honor the Gipper’s legacy, we are submitting the following questionnaire to the remaining Republican presidential nominee contenders. (Except for you, Mitt-- you were more »

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A Missouri grand jury handed down multiple felony indictments for foreclosure fraud on Monday. That's the same kind of crime being negotiated in nationwide settlement talks with America's big banks. If people can be indicted for doing it, why should bankers be allowed to write a check and walk away?

"Robo-signing" is the nickname that's been given to the practice of hiring large groups of inexperienced workers (they called them "Burger King Kids" at JPMorgan Chase) to file false statements with local courts in order to process foreclosures. In a typical "robo-signing," someone who sign a statement testifying that they had personally reviewed documents that prove the bank has title to a home that's being foreclosed - and might do that many times every hour. That's either perjury or forgery, depending on the way in which the robo-signing was done.

Forgery and perjury are serious crimes. It's an even more serious crime to ask others to do it for you.

Banks, and some friendly and lazy journalists, were quick to dismiss the whole issue as a "paperwork problem." If robo-signing is a "paperwork problem," then the St. Valentine's Day Massacre was a "misplaced bullet problem." more »

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Just in case you missed the news, "Insider trading" is back. It's even bipartisan. Well, the truth is that it never really went away after its heyday during the 1980s, when Gordon Gekko served as a stand-in for era villains like Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky. It launched more investigations in the 1990s than at any other time, except for the 1980s.

In the "aughts," the names and players changed, but the "inside game" remains the same. Now, Raj Rajaratnam and Martha Stewart serve as stand-ins for Milken and Boesky. Gekko even returned to the scene, getting out of prison little more than year before Rajaratnam began serving his own prison sentence. GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney could even be called a stand-in for Gordon Gekko, in the 2012 presidential election. (But Newt Gingrich could be a runner-up for that spot.)

Not only are insider trading and inside traders back, but they're not just on Wall Street anymore. They're all over Capitol Hill, and apparently have been for a while. Naturally, now that it's news, there's a bill to ban congressional insider trading —the Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge Act, a/k/a the STOCK Act.

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Economist Christina Romer had an op-ed in the NY Times this weekend, Do Manufacturers Need Special Treatment? The question that keep coming back to me is why did she feel the need to write an op-ed to diss manufacturing? Is it just an economist thing? more »

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Originally posted at Capital Gains and Games. more »

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