Asked by Bloomberg News about voluntarily matching a Republican Congressman's decision to donate 15% of his salary back to the federal government, Warren Buffett said he'd donate 15% of his income to the Treasury, over and above his taxes, if 50 congressmen also did so. "If 50 of 'em do it, I'd do it," Mr. Buffett said.

Goldman Sachs employee Greg Smith quits and publicly criticizes Goldman for putting its own profit interest ahead of its clients. Yet by publicly quitting like that (setting himself up for a book deal and who knows what other opportunities), isn't Smith himself in a sense putting his own interest ahead of that of his former colleagues and Goldman shareholders, to whom he also had some responsibilities?

Michael Barone writes in the Washington Examiner:

the economic news has not been all that striking. We had a quarter in which economic growth reached 2.8 percent. We've had two months with job growth of better than 200,000.

Peachy. But in 1983, the year before Ronald Reagan's re-election, the gross domestic product rose 8.9 percent not just for one quarter but over the whole year. There were two months when job growth was 729,000 and 660,000.

That's the kind of economic recovery that enables an incumbent president's campaign to run a credible "Morning in America" ad. If the Obama campaign ran one now, it would be fodder for "Saturday Night Live" and Jon Stewart.

That 8.9% GDP number seemed high to me, so I went on the Bureau of Economic Analysis Web site, which reports annual real GDP growth of 4.5% for 1983 and 7.2% for 1984. The point stands nonetheless. I've emailed Mr. Barone about the number and will update this post if I get a response.

The Daily News published a version of the Bloomberg for Vice President piece in today's editions; you can check it out here. And over the weekend the Wall Street Journal picked up that piece from last week about Rush Limbaugh and ObamaCare's "free" birth-control pill mandate; you can check that out here.

From a Bloomberg News article:

The share of employed 18-to 24-year-olds was 54 percent, the lowest since the government began collecting data in 1948, according to a separate report from Pew released last month.

Hey, if ObamaCare means you can stay on your parents' health insurance until you turn 26, why get a job?

Likewise, so long as you don't have to start paying back your federally subsidized student loan so long as you stay in school, why not take as long as possible to finish college or graduate school?

The public resignation letter in the New York Times by Greg Smith of Goldman Sachs accusing the firm of putting its own profits ahead of its clients' interests is generating a lot of buzz today, for a variety of reasons.

To me one of the most interesting lines was this: "It astounds me how little senior management gets a basic truth: If clients don't trust you they will eventually stop doing business with you."

If this is true, it suggests the power of customers, rather than government officials, as the ultimate regulators.

I'm not necessarily sure this is as "basic" a truth as Mr. Smith suggests. If it is a basic truth, the most important truth in the sentence may be "eventually," which can be a period of time during which Goldman Sachs makes a lot of money.

Here are a few scenarios in which clients would do business with a firm they don't trust:

1. The firm offers other valuable things other than trustworthiness.

My former colleague Josh Gerstein has a classic piece up at Politico on the double standard applied to President Obama and George W. Bush. The headline is "What If George W. Bush Had Done That?"

Libertarian law professor Richard Epstein's new column at the Hoover Institution web site is about a proposal by Luxembourg's Viviane Reding, the Vice President of the European Commission and EU Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship, to impose mandatory quotas for the representation of women on corporate boards of directors.

Chairman Ben Bernanke's zero interest rate policy ("zirp") and the decline of the form Form 1099-INT is the subject of my column this week. Please check it out at Reason (here), the New York Sun (here), and Newsmax (here).

The report that Mayor Bloomberg recently had "a long private lunch at the White House" with President Obama has some speculating about Mr. Obama turning to Mr. Bloomberg as Treasury secretary or as president of the World Bank. But if Mr. Obama really wants to get Mr. Bloomberg involved, the way to do it would be to go all the way and put Mr. Bloomberg on the 2012 ticket as his running mate.

The Treasury job gets mentioned because of Mr. Bloomberg's background in the financial industry. Before Mr. Bloomberg started the Bloomberg L.P. financial data and news business, he worked at Salomon Brothers. And the current Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, said publicly as recently as January that he doesn't expect to serve a second term. But the Times report of the Obama-Bloomberg meeting says Mr. Bloomberg "stressed that he had little interest in joining the Obama cabinet."

Seeking Alpha has an article by a Berkshire Hathaway shareholder about the Warren Buffett-run company's tax situation:

One idea that struck me recently is that ever since the Bush capital gains tax cuts were passed, Berkshire immediately became a less attractive investment opportunity for one reason: it's extremely tax-inefficient. Despite its tremendous move towards buying operating businesses instead of shares in publicly traded companies over the past decade, a significant percentage of Berkshire's book value still rests with its equity portfolio. After the Bush tax cuts, even investors in the highest income bracket pay only 15% capital gains tax. Meanwhile, Berkshire still has to pay the standard 35% corporate tax on any realized gains. Talk about a drag on performance! Buffett has always criticized hedge funds for being unable to outperform their benchmarks after charging their clients exorbitant fees, but Berkshire investments carry the biggest fee of all: corporate taxes.

The Economist is running an online debate on "How should governments tax capital." Scott Sumner, an economics professor at Bentley University, has a piece that says the proper tax rate on capital income is zero, and that, in addition, there should be no corporate income tax. Along the way, however, he suggests a few other taxes: "Even with every possible safeguard, there might be some wealthy people who are clever enough to avoid taxation. If this were a serious problem, we could have a wealth tax on luxury consumption (mansions, yachts, private jets and other luxury goods)....If the current distribution of wealth is deemed unjust, then there should be a one-time wealth tax at the point of transition to the new tax regime, to be paid over a period of several years."

The Boston Globe's Glen Johnson reports on a dinner that President Obama and his wife had on Thursday night in Washington with a six campaign donors:

Mrs. Obama joined her husband in having steak but refused his request to share her french fries. Instead, he got an order and split them with the Glassmans.

The group was surprised when the president asked if they wanted dessert afterward. They had been told not to expect that, because typically he wants to get back to the White House.

An array of confections came out, including homemade doughnuts for the first lady.

In ordinary circumstances what the First Lady decides to eat would be entirely her business, but in this case she's leading a government anti-obesity campaign that she's chosen to make her signature issue as first lady.

Publishing industry consultant Mike Shatzkin writes about the Justice Department's potential antitrust action against publishers and Apple on ebook pricing:

Some of the best books won't get written and the biggest casualties will be in the area of highly-researched non-fiction, like major biographies, in my opinion. Twenty years ago they used to say that a conservative was a liberal who's been mugged. I'm not about to become a conservative, but I sure see how easy it is for the government not to understand how their decisions might affect the dynamics of a business. Or, in this case, a culture.

More on this situation in the earlier post from this site here.

"The first thing to remember is that journalists are like children, and you must treat them as such...they are often lazy. If you do the thinking for them, they'll be secretly grateful." That, from Jon Friedman's imaginary lecture by "the master of media manipulation," Warren Buffett.

"NetJets Inc., the private-plane company owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., was countersued by the U.S. over $366 million in taxes and penalties," — Bloomberg News article. Earlier coverage from this site of the NetJets "ticket tax" issue is here and here. See also this comment on the second piece.