Over the weekend, I read The Big Short by Michael Lewis. Lewis is a great storyteller, and really knows how to find the characters to make a catastrophe like the financial crisis comprehensible. This is the best book I have read yet on the origins of the financial crisis. 

To start off with Lewis' conclusion, Wall Street should have been allowed to disappear in the fall of 2008.  It had no redeeming qualities, so driven by the need for profit and outrageous salaries, whatever value Wall Street...
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New NYC Comptroller wants to control the Community Development Agreements that developers use to convince local politicians to support big projects in the City. This is probably too little too late, but these unregulate agreements over promise and under-deliver, often due to the fecklessness of NYC officials as well as developers. Full story here.
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I have written several times at Newjerseynewsroom.com about health care reform, which unfortunately is more about health insurance reform than a full reform of our health care system.  The plan that is emerging is not good, but better than the status quo.  

One aspect of the reform that is quite troubling is the excise tax on "cadillac plans."  Unions strongly oppose this concept because they have traded salary for generous benefits for years and now will be taxed on those plans at 40% (assumi...
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