Brian Gongol
Proposal to audit stock trades would cost $4 billion at the start
...and $2 billion a year thereafter to operate. What's too bad is that the "flash crash" and the overall market lunacy of the last two or three years has given a lot of people the impression that they need to behave like maniacal traders in order to make money as investors. The truth is that the good advice about investing (which is mainly "Be patient and do little") is crowded out by non-stop shouting about "fast money" and ads for gold.
GM posts its first quarterly profit in almost three years
On one hand, as the citizen-shareholders of the company, Americans should probably be happy about the turn of events. But it's difficult not to still be dismayed at everything that took place to get to this point: A colossal risk taken with taxpayers' money, and one of the most violent acts of destruction against private wealth ever undertaken by a free society. It's still an entirely fair and reasonable question to ask whether such extraordinary measures were called for -- but that kind of reasonable question is vaporized by the political value of a "Mission Accomplished"-style photo opportunity for the complicit politicians who can talk about "saving" a giant company.
