The Web site Zerohedge.com takes note of a CNBC appearance by Pimco's Bill Gross:

A New York Times news article on the departure of Lawrence Summers from the White House calls Mr. Summers "the chief architect of President Obama's economic policy." And here we had been suffering under the delusion that the chief architect of Mr. Obama's economic policy was, well, President Obama. Maybe if the economy were doing better, the Times and the White House would be playing it differently.

Amity Shlaes has a new Bloomberg column up on taxes:

In the 1990s, scholars designed an experiment to see whether people understood the difference between progressive structures, under which rates go up as people earn more, and proportional ones, under which higher earners pay taxes at the same rate as lower earners.

Michael Roberts, Cassie Bradley and Peggy Hite asked college students abstract questions: "Are progressive tax rates more or less fair than flat tax rates?" By a margin of almost 4 to 1, students said they preferred a progressive rate system for society. Next the researchers gave the same students concrete examples of a paired set of two earners with different salaries and possible tax bills for those earners, asking which tax amount the earners should pay. By a margin of 4 to 1, the same students picked tax amounts for the higher earner that corresponded to a flat rate, or even a regressive, system. Remarkably, these subjects were accounting students who had already studied these various systems.

As I noted about my former colleague Josh Gerstein: "It's hard enough accurately to report the news after it happens; the skill of predicting the news before it happens is rare indeed, and it is one of the things that makes journalistic reputations." The big story of the night is that the chairman of the National Economic Council, Lawrence Summers, will leave after the November election. David Warsh called this one cold in a May 23, 2010 column headlined "Is Summers Headed Home?"

From a Tuesday Wall Street Journal editorial on Lisa Murkowski running as an independent for Senate in Alaska: "Joe Lieberman ran as an independent after losing the Connecticut primary in 2006, though he had every reason to believe he could win against antiwar Greenwich millionaire Ned Lamont."

Is it just me or is the Wall Street Journal editorial column now using "Greenwich millionaire" as a pejorative? No one was cheering Mr. Lieberman on against Mr. Lamont more than I was, but in fairness, Mr. Lieberman's personal financial disclosure forms for 2008 put his family assets at between $935,081 and $3,176,000, meaning that it is quite likely that he is a millionaire, too, if less rich than Mr. Lamont. But the Journal only uses the millionaire language to refer to the candidate it dislikes.

From the comments:

Dear Paul Krugman,

I am responding to your article "Anger is sweeping American rich". I have never written to any columnist before but I must be the "American rich" that you are talking about and reading your article has made me even angrier!!

The governor of Mississippi, Haley Barbour, who is chairman of the Republican Governors Association, says the number of Republican governors will grow from 24 today to "at least 30" after the 2010 election, a group that may include two Hispanics and two Indian-Americans.

Mr. Barbour was coy about his 2012 presidential ambitions — "we have governor's races in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina," he said, referring to states with early presidential caucuses or primaries. He said that the trend overall is strong for his party, but cautioned that things can change between now and Election Day.

"How good is the environment? It's better than '94. But remember, six weeks is an eternity," he said.

He said Republicans are "likely to win a majority in the House," and he predicted they would gain seats in the Senate without achieving a majority.

Bloomberg's Washington bureau is so left-wing it makes the New York Times look like National Review.

The latest example: The Times and Bloomberg both write the same article about political spending via non-profit groups organized under section 501(c) of the tax code.

The New York Times article at least says the organizations "have been growing in popularity as conduits for large, unrestricted donations among both Republicans and Democrats since the 2006 election." [Emphasis ours]. The Times article also includes a reference to "501(c)(5) labor unions, which have been supporting Democrats."

WBZ-TV in Boston has a priceless interview with President Obama's Boston-based aunt Zeituni Onyango, who for a while was attracting attention as an illegal immigrant living in public housing. Excerpts from the Web write-up:

For two years Onyango said she lived in a homeless shelter, before she was assigned public housing despite thousands of legal residents also awaiting assistance. "I didn't take any advantage of the system. The system took advantage of me."

"I didn't ask for it; they gave it to me. Ask your system. I didn't create it or vote for it. Go and ask your system," she said unapologetically.

In 2004 a judge ordered Zeituni Onyango out of the country, but she never left. She stayed, hiding in plain site. In 2005 she attended her nephew's swearing in as the junior Senator of Illinois. In 2008 she was invited to, and traveled to D.C. for President Obama's inauguration....

Onyango hired a top immigration lawyer from Cleveland to help fight her case. We asked how she afforded that lawyer, when she claimed poverty.

It's worth spending some time parsing President Obama's statement from earlier today, "If you are making $1 billion a year after a very bad financial crisis, then I think that you shouldn't be feeling put upon."

Think about the hedge fund managers of whom Mr. Obama is speaking. First of all, some of them may have lost $1 billion, or more, the year before. Some of them may lose $1 billion in the year ahead. Looking at one year in isolation doesn't capture the reality of the situation.

Second of all, most of these people make their livings by managing money, some of which is their own and some of which belongs to partners who invest it voluntarily. If a hedge fund manager made $1 billion, it generally means that the partners whose capital he is investing had a good year, too. Making lots of money is what the customers of a hedge fund want the hedge fund manger to do. It's a partnership.

The Weekly Standard talks to Mark Holden, senior vice president and general counsel of Koch Industries, about a briefing by a "senior Obama administration official" to reporters on corporate taxes, in which the official said, "we have a series of entities that do not pay corporate income tax. Some of which are really giant firms, you know Koch Industries is a multibillion dollar businesses."

Apparently the information on the corporate structure of Koch Industries had not been previously reported. Said Mr. Holden: "We are very concerned about why this would be said about us, particularly in this setting. We are concerned where this information would have been obtained from. We also are concerned in light of recent events that we have been singled out by the government and others as a campaign against us because of our political views."

It's reminiscent of Nixon wanting to use the IRS to audit political opponents.

President Obama appeared on CNBC for an hour today for what the cable channel billed as a "town hall."

It featured the president at his solipsistic finest and also offered a look at the case Mr. Obama will be making going into November's midterm elections.

"The whole reason I ran is that my life is a testament to the American dream," Mr. Obama said, departing from his claim ten days ago that "I ran because I felt that we had to have a different economic philosophy."

Mr. Obama tried to explain to an initial questioner all the things that his administration had done to protect her from profiteering credit card companies, mortgage brokers, health insurers, and student loan providers.

CNBC's John Harwood challenged the president: "You talk about them like dogs," Mr. Harwood said, showing a clip from Kenneth Langone — identified as a "billionaire" — advising Mr. Obama not to make people in business feel like they are villains or criminals. Asked Mr. Harwood, "Are you vilifying businesses?"

"Absolutely not," Mr. Obama insisted.

A professor at NYU's Stern School of Business, Jeffrey Wurgler, has a new paper out on the downside of index-linked investments. He writes, "the increasing popularity of index-linked investing may well be reducing its ability to deliver its advertised benefits while at the same time increasing its broader economic costs." More:

If a one-time inclusion effect of a few percentage points were the end of the story, then the overall impact of indexing on prices would be modest. But the inclusion effect is just the beginning. The return pattern of the newly-included S&P 500 member changes magically and quickly. It begins to move more closely with its 499 new neighbors and less closely with the rest of the market. It is as if it has joined a new school of fish.

The New York Times's Nobel laureate, Paul Krugman, has a new column under the headline, "The Angry Rich and Taxes." Mr. Krugman writes, "among the undeniably rich, a belligerent sense of entitlement has taken hold: it's their money, and they have the right to keep it." This isn't a belligerent sense of entitlement; it's the basic concept of property rights; it is their money.

Bloomberg News has a piece covering a talk that Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman Charles Munger gave at the University of Michigan in which Mr. Munger more or less explains why he hasn't signed on to the Warren Buffett-Bill Gates "Giving Pledge." From the article:

At the same event, Munger said private investment may advance society more than charity. He's a director at Costco Wholesale Corp., the largest U.S. warehouse-club chain, and has been Berkshire's vice chairman for more than three decades.

"I believe Costco does more for civilization than the Rockefeller Foundation," Munger said. "I think it's a better place. You get a bunch of very intelligent people sitting around trying to do good, I immediately get kind of suspicious and squirm in my seat."