New York City-based readers can tune in tonight on NY1, the all-news cable channel, to see me discussing President Obama's proposed overhaul of financial regulations. The show is Inside City Hall, which airs from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. and is repeated again from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. I'm not sure where in there the financial overhaul segment is appearing.

From this coming Sunday's both flattering and on another level devastatingly, witheringly mean New York Times magazine profile of Politico "Playbook" reporter Mike Allen:

On a recent Friday night, a couple hundred influentials gathered for a Mardi Gras-themed birthday party for Betsy Fischer, the executive producer of "Meet the Press." Held at the Washington home of the lobbyist Jack Quinn, the party was a classic Suck-Up City affair in which everyone seemed to be congratulating one another on some recent story, book deal, show or haircut (and, by the way, your boss is doing a swell job, and maybe we could do an interview).

To the long list of issues on which Barack Obama took one stance during the presidential campaign and has taken another as President -- a tax on expensive health insurance policies, an individual mandate to buy health insurance, the role of Zbigniew Brzezinski, and, if the leaks from the deficit reduction commission about a Value Added Tax are to be believed, no tax increases on Americans earning less than $250,000 -- New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof would add Sudan and Darfur policy: "Until he reached the White House, Barack Obama repeatedly insisted that the United States apply more pressure on Sudan so as to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe in Darfur and elsewhere. Yet, as president, Mr. Obama and his aides have caved, leaving Sudan gloating at American weakness."

Those who call for more taxes on the "rich" or who complain that capitalism is a system in which the rich exploit the poor often forget that a lot of the rich used to be poor. Bloomberg has an interview with Isaac Tshuva, whose company bought and redeveloped New York's Plaza hotel. The wire describes him as an "Israeli billionaire" and quotes Forbes's estimate of his net worth at $2.1 billion. It also notes that he grew up in a one-bedroom apartment with 10 family members after immigrating to Israel from Libya, and that "he doesn't wear a watch so as not to forget when his parents couldn't afford one for his Bar Mitzvah."

Whatever capitalism's flaws, as an engine of upward mobility for the poor, it's hard to surpass it.

The Tea Party Express, a national tea party group, has endorsed a Democratic incumbent member of Congress, Walt Minnick of Idaho, who voted against the stimulus, against cap-and-trade, and against ObamaCare. That has prompted some grumbling from Republicans, Ed Morrissey reports.

Two Democratic congressmen, Barney Frank and Jim McDermott, are proposing to repeal the ban on Internet gambling imposed in 2006, legalize the activity, and tax it, notices the Washington Examiner.

One of the biggest business news items of the day was the Apple earnings release -- the company reported fiscal second quarter revenue of $13.5 billion and profit of $3.07 billion (reasonable? or excessive?), which sent the stock up nearly 6%. At this rate Apple's sales, which Yahoo! finance puts at $46.7 billion for the past 12 months, are approaching the entire GDP of Syria, which the CIA World Factbook puts at $54.99 billion.

Why use Syria as a comparison? Why, because Mr. Jobs's biological father, Abdulfattah Jandali, was a Syrian professor of political science who came to America and gave Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs up for adoption.

From a column by the Manhattan Institute's Steven Malanga posted at RealClearMarkets.com:

Speaking on TV on Sunday about the Goldman case, former President Clinton said that lax enforcement at the SEC had contributed to the environment permitting such deals, and he added that if his SEC chair, Arthur Levitt, had remained in place, much of what occurred in financial markets would have been prevented. But Levitt himself, speaking to Bloomberg radio on Monday morning in New York, said he thought the SEC had overreached itself with the Abacus case and worried about the precedent of the commission intervening in deals among sophisticated investors who understood the risks in such contracts.

The president of the American Antitrust Institute, Albert Foer, has an op-ed in today's New York Times exposing the fees that credit card companies charge businesses that accept the cards. Here's the crux of it: "Congress should authorize the Federal Reserve to limit credit card interchange fees to their actual cost, fairly determined, plus a reasonable profit. The annual savings to merchants would be in the tens of billions of dollars. Since retailing is highly competitive, most of these savings would be passed on to consumers in lower prices or in the form of improved services by retailers that could afford to hire more people."

This concept of a "reasonable profit" is also seen in the International Monetary Fund's proposal of a FAT, or Financial Activities Tax, that might apply to "profits only above some threshold rate of return," so that "the FAT would become a tax on 'excess' returns in the financial sector."

It looks like ObamaCare was just the beginning. Senate Democrats are going back for more legislation aimed at giving the Secretary of Health and Human Services "the power to review premiums and block 'any rate increase found to be unreasonable,'" reports the New York Times.

John Paulson seems to be engaging in the age-old tactic of those under scrutiny -- point at someone else to blame.

The Financial Times reports on a letter Mr. Paulson sent after the Securities and Exchange Commission filed civil fraud charges against Goldman Sachs for failing to disclose Mr. Paulson's role on the short side of a bet on the housing market to those on the long side of the bet. Mr. Paulson and his firm have not been charged but they have been the target of some negative press commentary.

"We believed that the two-year adjustable rate mortgages made to lower income borrowers with poor credit history, little or no documentation, no downpayment and rates that would shortly reset at usurious interest rates set the stage for significant delinquencies and foreclosures, thus eroding the value of these securities," the Paulson letter states.

The Wall Street Journal gives the chairman of the FDIC, a big vote of confidence in its editorial today on financial "reform.": "it gives the FDIC the discretion to discriminate among creditors as it judges who gets paid what as part of a resolution. Current FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair wouldn't abuse this power, but her successors might." Looks like the Journal editorial writers hadn't invested in Washington Mutual; if they had, they might be a little less confident in Ms. Bair's discretion.

Regular readers of this site know that I am hardly a knee-jerk defender of the big banks. But I think Michelle Malkin, who is a force in right-wing news and opinion circles, as described in this New York Sun profile of her, carries it too far in her latest column describing the Obama administration as being "infested" with the men of Goldman Sachs. That particular language resonates, and it has a sordid history.

John Stossel debunks "myths about capitalism" in his latest column.

The International Monetary Fund, where the United States has 16.74% voting power, is proposing (pdf) two new global taxes -- a "Financial Stability Contribution," or FSC, and a "Financial Activities Tax," or "FAT." This is in preparation for a G-20 summit in June. (Link via USA Today.)