June 2009

My law enforcement sources have watched closely the coverage of Ruth Madoff ‘s statement today, which her legal team issued after her husband Bernard Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison for running a $65 bn Ponzi scheme. What strikes them as most telling now is not what she said, but what she didn’t say. And her actions as well.  Madoff has told authorities that he acted alone. ... read more

The Obama administration is now attempting the biggest overhaul of healthcare since Lyndon B. Johnson pushed through Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. But the health care reform debate is riddled with misleading myths taken as fact, myths that are torquing the debate beyond recognition, from the U.S.'s supposedly poor infant mortality rates, who really gets medical care, the level of uninsureds, ... read more

The economist who gained recognition for predicting the global credit crisis, Nouriel Roubini, also known as Doctor Doom, in a recent column mistakenly invoked an astrological sign when he called Argentina's capital city Buenos Aries, instead of Aires. Bringing to mind this quote from economist John Kenneth Gailbraith, that the "only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look ... read more

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told a Senate Appropriations committee that he wants to overhaul the nation's financial regulatory architecture, some parts of which date back to the '30s, in order to prevent any future economic collapse. The revamp includes a package of new, systemic risk regulations. However, Geithner's comments before a subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations ... read more

The White House and Congress now plan to spend tens of billions of dollars on a revamp of the nation's infrastructure, including bridges, roads and highways. That effort includes a bold, new national strategy to build a powerful broadband highway right into rural American homes, a countryside that has been kept largely in the dark when it comes to ramping up onto the Information super ... read more