Newsweek's Jonathan Alter was on the Today show this morning to promote his new book about President Obama. Asked about Mr. Obama's approval rating, Mr. Alter replied: "It's this fascinating gap that we also saw with Ronald Reagan. The policies are not tremendously popular but the president remains well respected. I think for Obama the key is authenticity, he just doesn't seem like a phony....He's got a kind of psychological health to him, and even if you don't like what he's doing, you have to respect the man, he brings a thoughtfulness to the process."

For me the impression of Mr. Obama as authentic and non-phony has been eroded by all the flip-flops. Sometimes it's hard even for psychologists to assess someone's psychological health, let alone a newsmagazine reporter.

The Financial Times has a scoop: "Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs chief executive, is playing a personal role in helping to arrange a $125m rescue for a Chicago community bank which provides loans to lower-income communities, people familiar with the matter say. The lender, ShoreBank, was told by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in March that it had 60 days to raise capital or risk being seized. Mr Blankfein has been making phone calls to rally support for a deal that would see some of the country's biggest financial groups help the Chicago community bank."

The Wall Street Journal picks up a New York Times report of a claim by White House budget director Peter Orszag that the Senate in the next few weeks is going to pass the tax increase on "carried interest" of hedge fund, venture capital, real estate, oil and gas, and private equity fund managers. The Journal also notes a report that Rep. Barney Frank is going to find a way to exempt venture capital, which only underscores how this is an exercise in the government deciding to tax people who are unpopular. My Washington Examiner article on this tax from last month is here.

The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times both lead today with news article about investigations of the financial industry based on anonymous sources. The Journal's article is based on a single identified source, described with impressive vagueness as "a person familiar with the matter." The story says that Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, UBS, Deutsche Bank, and JPMorgan Chase are all under "preliminary criminal scrutiny" by federal prosecutors working with securities regulators.

The Journal also quotes J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley spokespeople as saying the firms are unaware of the probe.

The Times article, meanwhile, quotes "two people with knowledge of the investigation" as saying that the New York attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, is investigating "Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, UBS, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Crédit Agricole and Merrill Lynch, which is now owned by Bank of America" for supposedly having misled ratings agencies.

It's worth thinking about where this news is coming from and why the Journal and the Times are willing to hide the identities of those who are putting the news out. It seems unlikely that the news is coming from the financial firms -- its release is likely to cause their stock prices to go down, and it is unlikely that one firm is aware of the identities of every other firm under investigation. It's possible that the news came from a member of Congress or from another law enforcement or regulatory agency that has been briefed on the investigation yet is not directly involved. It's possible it came from a member of the defense bar who leaked it in violation of attorney-client privilege. The fourth possibility is the most troubling -- that the leaks are coming on a semi-authorized basis from the prosecutors themselves in an effort to turn up the heat on the banks without having to actually gather the evidence necessary to file charges or win an indictment.

Why is that troubling?

Clifford Asness and Aaron Brown write in today's Wall Street Journal on what to expect if the Dodd financial "reform" bill passes:

No financial professional will be able to turn down a "request" for a campaign contribution, and all financial institutions will hire former staffers as advisers or directors. No regulator can afford to antagonize a potential future employer. Regulators themselves must kowtow to Congress, which can use them for under-the-table subsidies to favored groups. None of this is new to politics, of course, but the scale and lack of defined powers are.

One of the points we have been making around here is the use of Orwellian language to sell legislation in Washington. Both parties do it; Republicans call their proposed tax increase on seniors earning more than $170,000 a year the "Patients' Choice Act," while Democrats call bank taxes "fees."

The latest example is the use of the phrase "orderly liquidation authority" to describe the provision in the financial "reform" bill that allows the FDIC to seize a vast range of financial companies that are merely in "danger of default"  and then allows the FDIC to serve simultaneously as corporate management, creditor of the corporation, and referee of the liquidation process, while also allowing the FDIC to discriminate among creditors of the same class and give higher recoveries to whomever it likes.

From a column by former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, about Elana Kagan:

Charles Fried, a prominent jurist at Harvard, says, "I do not doubt that her heart beats on the left." It could hardly be otherwise. Kagan hails from a very small ideological neighborhood -- Manhattan, Princeton University, the University of Chicago, and Harvard Law School.

The House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing today on H.R. 4869, the "Restroom Gender Parity in Federal Buildings Act." Fox News Channel has coverage of the bill that "seeks to address the unequal number of restroom facilities for women in federal buildings by requiring at least a 1-to-1 ratio for toilets, including urinals, in women's and men's restrooms." From the Fox News dispatch:

The legislation would cover most federal facilities in Washington and across the country, including all properties managed by the National Parks Service, the Defense Department, the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

"Today, women still lack equal access to restrooms in many places of employment, education, and recreation," said Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., chairman of the committee who authored the legislation.

Senator Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, says he will offer an amendment to the financial regulatory overhaul in an attempt to crack down on employees who leave financial regulatory agencies and then go to work for the firms they regulate.A Grassley press release (received here by email, not yet, at this writing, posted to the senator's Web site) says the amendment would "establish a two-year ban on these former employees from representing clients before their former employer. The ban is similar to the revolving door ban the Senate places on its own members and would apply to employees that are paid a salary that is statutorily authorized above the standard government pay scale."

More from the press release:

The financial journalist John Carney is going to work for CNBC, the network announced today.

The best take I've seen on the defeat of Democratic incumbent congressman Alan Mollohan in yesterday's West Virginia primary is this from the Washington Examiner's Chri Stirewalt, who is from the district. He quotes the local paper: "Questions also have been raised about Mollohan's personal finances and how his personal wealth increased from $500,000 in 2000 to $6.3 million in 2007" while serving in Congress.

A professor at the University of San Diego, Frank Partnoy, defends Goldman Sachs in a column for the Financial Times: "I am troubled by government officials' relentless focus on Goldman. They are ­firing at the wrong bank, with the wrong bullets. Goldman is not to blame for this financial crisis.Of the banks that dominated the market a few years ago, why would the government target the only one to survive the crisis financially intact?...if the other big investment banks had made similar "net short" trades in 2007, there would not have been a financial crisis. Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch collapsed because they took massive positions in the opposite direction. Given the cost of government bail-outs, why chastise the only prudent investment bank?...Goldman is the healthiest, most profitable remaining target. Some banks are dead; others might not survive government attack. Politicians who need to throw a bank under the bus might pick the one most likely to live through the rumble. The easiest and safest scapegoat is the one with the highest salaries and profits."

Santa Clara County in California is considering a ban on children's toys that are given away with meals at fast-food restaurants, the Financial Times reports. The FT quotes the president of the California Restaurant Association: "Ultimately, parents decide what their children eat and whether a meal includes a toy or not - that is the role of a parent...Most parents can resist their children's pressure to get a toy. The county government does not need to serve as the parent of the parents."

The Wall Street Journal's "Greater New York" section today carries an article about Brooklyn's Peter Luger Steakhouse. "Before you slice into a signature $88 porterhouse steak for two, make sure to visit the ATM. The steakhouse takes cash only," the article says, neglecting to mention that the restaurant also accepts the Peter Luger Card.

Walter Williams has a new column up on the value of free market capitalism as an anti-poverty program:

Did Carnegie, Mellon, Rockefeller and Guggenheim start out rich? Andrew Carnegie worked as a bobbin boy, changing spools of thread in a cotton mill 12 hours a day, six days a week, earning $1.20 a week. A young John D. Rockefeller worked as a clerk. Meyer Guggenheim started out as a peddler. Andrew Mellon did have a leg up; his father was a lawyer and banker. Sam Walton milked the family's cows, bottled the milk and delivered it and newspapers to customers. Richard Sears was a railroad station agent. Alvah Roebuck began work as a watchmaker. Together, they founded Sears, Roebuck and Company in 1893. John Cash Penney (founder of JCPenney department stores) worked for a local dry goods merchant.