That Web video posted here yesterday, Insider Trading Explained, is now available in YouTube format here and embedded below.

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The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, which claims to represent 1.5 million Reform Jews, is asking its people to call or email Congress to "oppose extension of tax cuts for the wealthy." It uses President Obama's definition of wealthy as anyone with income above $200,000 a year (single) or $250,000 (family).

The Religious Action Center justifies this on a passage from Deuteronomy that we shall "open our hands to the poor and needy among us" (Deuteronomy 15:7), and on the basis that "Extending tax cuts for the wealthy undermines the ability of the federal government to fund such programs." I love how on some things (not about homosexuality or eating kosher, but about taxes) Reform Jews are biblical literalists. They don't seem to get the idea that the more the government takes in taxes, the less the "rich" have left to give away to the "poor and needy among us." Nor do they seem to buy the idea that the economic harm of tax increases would hurt the poor and needy among us.

This Web service called xtranormal makes it possible — amazingly easy, actually — to create an animated video from a text. I was playing around with it this afternoon and did one on the "insider trading" investigation. I found that the video format, for better or worse, tends to force the simplification of points, perhaps to the level of caricature. But I'd be interested to know what other people think of the result. The video is here and embedded below.

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The Wall Street Journal has an article reporting that the FBI is looking at doctors and drug trials as part of a probe into "insider trading."

The article is illuminating in several respects. It reports, "The health-care sector is particularly ripe for expert-network activity. Biotechnology companies often live or die based on the effectiveness of a single drug. Investors who can glean insights during the many phases of clinical trials leading to regulatory approval or rejection can profit handsomely from that information."

In other words, it's the "regulatory approval or rejection" that spawns the investment opportunity. By creating a powerful national Food and Drug Administration that has the power to bless or essentially to outlaw drugs nationwide, Congress has created the market opportunity that investors are seeking to take advantage of. If there were 50 independent state FDAs, or if judgment on whether a drug worked were something that was established over time by various nongovernmental health care organizations, prices of medicine-makers would swing less dramatically. In the meantime, to defend the powerful-national-FDA system it created, the government is running around trying to keep it a secret whether certain drugs work or not. Never mind whether this information should be kept confidential from hedge funds — what's the point of keeping it confidential from the patients the drugs might heal?

The most interesting thing on the Harvard Crimson Web site this morning is not the paper's coverage of the university's decision to double the size of its governing board, the Harvard Corporation, to 13 (a step apparently so urgent that the university expects to complete it "within two to three years") but rather an interview with the president of American for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist:

I want to drop the government in half over the next 25 years, and then drop it in half again. The government's about 33 percent of GDP, 33 percent of the economy. We want to take it down to 16 and a half percent, then take it down to eight percent, all of which would take us to where we were at the turn of the century.

More:

Gordon Crovitz sides with Charles Krauthammer and David Brooks against the New York Sun and Lee Smith in the divide within the pro-freedom camp over Wikileaks.

I know and like Mr. Crovitz, but I don't find his criticisms of Wikileaks here particularly persuasive.

The New York Times has an editorial calling on the federal government to impose all kinds of conditions before approving the proposed merger between Comcast and NBC Universal. Says the Times: "The issue is that the merged company would own both a major producer of TV and movies and the dominant distributor of TV and movies in big media markets. It would have about a quarter of the multichannel market and about a fifth of broadband subscribers." A fifth of broadband subscribers! Back in 2001, AOL had 33% of Internet subscribers, and Earthlink had 7%, and we know how that turned out. It's quite possible that 4G mobile broadband delivered by cellular or satellite providers will be to Comcast's cable network what cable was to AOL and Earthlink's dial-up networks.

The Times frets: "What if the combined company limited access to its shows online to subscribers of its broadband service or cable packages? Or if it refused to provide NBC Universal content to rival online services?"

"Wall Street Bonuses Shift Forward" — FutureOfCapitalism.com, October 29, 2010

"Tax Fear May Move Bonuses Earlier" — New York Times front page news article, December 6, 2010.

Harvard economics professor and former Bush administration official Greg Mankiw has a post up about whether to extend unemployment insurance:

when I hear economists advocate the extension of UI to 99 weeks, I am tempted to ask, would you also favor a further extension to 199 weeks, or 299 weeks, or 1099 weeks? If 99 weeks is better than 26 weeks, but 199 is too much, how do you know?....

I should note, by the way, that economists who strongly favor the extension of UI benefits, such as those who signed this letter, also tend to favor more income redistribution in general. I suspect, therefore, that the foundation of their support comes not from having weighed the specific pros and cons of UI per se, but rather from a more general desire to "spread the wealth around." That issue is, as I tell my students, more a matter of political philosophy than it is of economics.

From an invitation to a campaign fundraiser next week, "Cocktails in support of Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer.":

"Suggested Contribution $150
All donations are matched by the city 6:1"

Shouldn't that read, "matched by the taxpayers"?

The wonders of campaign finance "reform," New York City-style.

The Wall Street Journal takes a look at how the IRS is treating the "tax assets," including operating loss carryforwards, of GM, Citigroup, and AIG. The upshot seems to be that if the government owns you, you can get it to give you a decent deal on taxes.

The Wall Street Journal has a follow-up, complete with slide show, on that professor at NYU who had a camera surgically implanted in the back of his head. This time the paper says the procedure was "performed not at a hospital, but at a piercing studio that specializes in body modification," and under "local anaesthesia." Still no identification of the individual who performed the procedure, whether the individual is a licensed physician, and if so how the individual sees the medical ethics of the operation.

The Wall Street Journal has an article reporting that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is circulating a bill to legalize Internet poker.

The Journal reports that three Republican lawmakers sent a letter opposing the idea: "Congress should not take advantage of the young, the weak and the vulnerable in the name of new revenues to cover more government spending," the letter says. The stereotype is that it's the Democrats in Washington pressing for more federal intervention in the free market on the grounds that the young, weak, and vulnerable can't protect themselves from the predations of those ruthless capitalists. Yet here is a case in which it's the Republicans who want protecting children and the "vulnerable" to be a job for the federal government rather than, say, the states, or, even — perish the thought! — parents.