Questioning the Dogma of Tax Rates
Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary and the 19 other people who work in his office. He pays a much lower rate than I do, and, I suspect, lower than nearly everyone reading this...
View ArticleLots of Vitriol for Fed Chief, Despite Facts
Attacks on the chairman of the Federal Reserve aren’t new. For years I’ve received a well-organized volley of vitriolic e-mails every time I mention Ben Bernanke. I dismissed them as missives from the...
View ArticleA Spotlight Now Shines on Italy
It finally dawned on me this week that the value of my retirement account might depend on Silvio Berlusconi.You know Mr. Berlusconi. He is the billionaire prime minister of Italy who not only owns much...
View Article"Occupy" Is An Uprising With Potential
In the wake of this week’s eviction of protesters from Zuccotti Park in New York and other urban campgrounds around the country, it’s tempting to dismiss the Occupy Wall Street movement as little more...
View ArticleThe New Era of Lower Pay on Wall Street
The day of reckoning may be at hand.This week, the venerable investment bank Morgan Stanley stunned a generation of Wall Street bankers and traders by announcing that it was capping cash bonuses for...
View ArticleBroccoli Mandates and the Commerce Clause
“If the government can do this, what, what else can it not do?” asked Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia this week in arguments on the constitutionality of the requirement that nearly all Americans...
View ArticleHow Broccoli Became a Symbol in Health Debate
Broccoli, of all things, came up in the Supreme Court during arguments over the constitutionality of the Obama administration’s health care legislation. If Congress can require Americans to buy health...
View ArticleBehind eBay's Comeback
Remember Myspace, Friendster, eToys, Webvan, Urban Fetch, Pets.com? Like meteors, they burned with dazzling brilliance before turning shareholder dollars to ash. EBay, Yahoo and AOL, the dominant...
View ArticleNetflix Looks Back on Near Death Spiral
For Reed Hastings, the chief executive of Netflix, the worst part of the company’s 2011 self-inflicted Qwikster debacle, in which Netflix tried to both raise prices and spin off its DVD-by-mail...
View ArticleIt's Time to End "Carried Interest" Loophole
Now that Republicans control both houses of Congress, they need to show they can accomplish something, and President Obama has just two years to burnish his legacy. So the search is on for bipartisan...
View ArticleWhy China's Market Bailout Just Might Work
Outside of China, the consensus among economists is overwhelming: The country’s efforts to prop up its plunging stock markets are doomed, the financial equivalent of King Canute trying to halt the...
View ArticleHow Les Moonves Tried to Silence an Accuser
A trove of text messages details a plan by Mr. Moonves and a faded Hollywood manager to bury a sexual assault allegation. Instead, the scheme helped sink the CBS chief, and may cost him $120 million.
View ArticleThe Day Epstein Told Me He Had Dirt on Powerful People
Almost exactly a year ago, on Aug. 16, 2018, I visited Jeffrey Epstein at his cavernous Manhattan mansion.''.ord('Ã').';'''.ord('').';'
View ArticleFor American Racism, Slavery Was Only the Beginning
Ending our fixation on slavery and focusing on what happened next could help us move on from the argument that racism in America has long been solved.
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