Boeing took a bit of a bashing here yesterday, so it's tempting to ease off a bit. I've got nothing against the company and would rather fly in a Boeing than in a EU-subsidized Airbus. But while, in the course of writing the Bank v. U.S. item, I was searching for examples of press scrutiny of wasteful government spending in amounts less than $519 million, I came across the news that Boeing had been granted a no-bid $15.9 million federal stimulus contract for environmental clean up and monitoring at a site that Boeing itself was fined in 2007 for polluting. Green jobs!

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit handed down an opinion yesterday in a case known as Bank v. U.S. The opinion, by Judge William Bryson, a Clinton appointee who clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall, is remarkable for its account of how the government went back on a deal it made with a bank. That breach of a promise essentially forced Anchor Savings Bank (now part of JPMorgan Chase) to sell off a mortgage banking company called Residential Funding Corporation to General Motors Acceptance Corporation. Judge Bryson and two of his collegues upheld a ruling ordering the government to pay JPMorgan Chase at least $356 million in damages. From the opinion:

RFC was an industry leader at the time Anchor purchased it. In the first quarter of 1988, RFC was the largest issuer of private MBS in the nation. RFC generated over $10.5 million in net profit in its first year under Anchor and $7.8 million in net profit during the first seven months of the following year. The business was highly successful and fit well with Anchor's long-term business plans.... In mid-1989, Anchor's CEO wrote that RFC "continues to fly" and was "authorized to double its volume in 1990." At about the same time, Anchor and RFC developed a business plan designed to expand RFC's business into other areas.

On August 9, 1989, Congress enacted the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act, Pub. L. No. 101-73, 103 Stat. 183 (1989) ("FIRREA"). The new statute—and particularly its implementing regulations, which were announced in October 1989—effectively terminated the favorable treatment of supervisory goodwill that had been promised to Anchor at the time of the supervisory mergers. The sudden eradication of more than half a billion dollars of regulatory capital caused Anchor to fall out of capital compliance by more than $300 million. Facing the threat of seizure and liquidation by the government, Anchor scrambled to raise the necessary capital through a swift series of asset sales. Those sales resulted in the divestiture of RFC...

There are so many points here that are potentially analogous to our current situation that it is hard to know where to begin.

The Washington Examiner has a run-down under the headline "missed deadlines pile up for Obama":

* Promised to close Guantanamo Bay prison within a year of taking office

* Set an August, 2009 deadline to pass health care reform

* Then, Christmas

* Now, March 18

* Vowed to sign health care bill in 2009

* Called for an energy bill by the end of 2009

* Sought a financial regulation bill by the end of 2009

* Demanded Iran prove by the end of 2009 that its nuke program was peaceful

Some of the delays will probably be blamed on those pesky Republicans, but, on the other hand, Mr. Obama's party, the Democrats, control both the House and the Senate.

It's still possible to buy residential real estate in Brooklyn with a 3.5% down payment, according to an ad on the front page of Brownstoner.com for this building at 100 Engert St. in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. A financing worksheet from the Web site from GFI Mortgage Bankers Inc. describes a scenario in which a buyer puts down 3.5% for a $475,000 one bedroom apartment in Greenpoint. The interest rate is 5%. "They will run out soon," the Web site advises. But hope springs eternal.

Chief Justice Roberts says, following President Obama's treatment of him and his fellow justices at the State of the Union address: "The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering while the court — according the requirements of protocol — has to sit there expressionless, I think is very troubling." I've got a generally favorable view of the chief justice, and I, too, was troubled by that section of Mr. Obama's speech. But the reference to "the requirements of protocol" is a bit mystifying. Are these requirements written down anywhere? Is there a penalty for violating them? The Associated Press reports: "Justice Samuel Alito was the only justice to respond at the time, shaking his head and mouthing the words 'not true' as Obama continued." Who handled the situation better, Justice Alito or Chief Justice Roberts? Perhaps what Justice Roberts is troubled by is that the whole face-off managed to diminish both the executive branch and the judicial branch. Maybe next year he'll skip the speech and make his point that way. Would that violate "the requirements of protocol"?

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on a health care overhaul, in a speech yesterday: "we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy."

Might it be nice to find out what is in it before passing it?

Why do Americans dislike taxes? Because they are racist, says Ethan Porter, writing in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas: "Some of it is racial; your tax money, says the subconscious of many American voters, isn't just wasted on overpriced toilet seats and money for the poor–it's wasted on poor people who don't look like you."

This is just another example of the low opinion in which the left-wing American elite holds the American public. First it was Slate's Jacob Weisberg complaining of " the childishness, ignorance, and growing incoherence of the public at large."

As George Will put it Sunday in another context: "There you have the premise of this legislation and the core of today's liberalism: the American people are such dopes they can't be counted upon to buy their own insurance."

President Obama will speak tomorrow at the annual conference of the Export-Import Bank. The Washington Examiner's Timothy Carney examines just exactly what the Export-Import Bank is, and find what he calls "an unparalleled case of corporate welfare -- a government program dedicated almost entirely to serving one well-connected company. Of the $9.3 billion in loan guarantees Ex-Im issued in fiscal 2009, $8.4 billion subsidized Boeing sales."

Update: The Wall Street Journal editorial page is also worked up over Boeing today, on a Pentagon procurement issue.

The New York Daily News has published an op-ed piece I wrote about Governor Paterson and Mayor Bloomberg's idea of imposing a penny-an-ounce tax on sugary sodas: "This idea for squeezing more change out of our pockets deserves to be poured down the drain faster than a half-empty can of warm, flat and heavily sweetened day-old soda." To readers arriving at FutureOfCapitalism.com for the first time because you saw the Daily News article: Welcome! Please consider bookmarking us, subscribing to our RSS feed, or signing up for our free daily mailing list. You can also follow us on Twitter or Facebook.

Emily Schaefer, a research fellow and director of the Center on Entrepreneurial Innovation at The Independent Institute and assistant professor of economics at San Jose State University, has an op-ed piece in the San Jose Mercury News comparing private and government regulation of the auto industry:

Compare the NHTSA [National Highway Traffic Safety Administration] and Consumers Union, both of which have just over 600 employees. The government agency costs taxpayers some $870 million annually, while the Consumers Union costs taxpayers nothing and, in fact, generates more than $200 million annually in revenue.

Consumers Union provides free services such as the ConsumerReports.org Web site, where updates on product safety and recalls are available, as well as premium products like Consumer Reports magazine.

The New Yorker has a Talk of the Town item by James Surowiecki that the magazine's Web site, at least, headlines "Private Equity's Egregious Tax Loophole." The article quotes the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett, in favor of changing the rules so that private equity and hedge fund managers pay higher taxes than they do now: "At a congressional hearing on the subject, Warren Buffett said, 'If you believe in taxing people who earn income on their occupation, I think you should tax people on carried interest.'" I'll have more to say about the overall carried interest issue at another time and place, but for starters, the New Yorker treats Mr. Buffett's opinion on this as if he's just a selfless citizen concerned for what's best for public tax policy. And that may be the source of Mr. Buffett's opinion. But the New Yorker totally ignores the fact that one of Mr. Buffett's businesses is competing with private equity firms and hedge funds for deals. So he has a financial interest in having taxes raised on his competitors. It would raise their cost of doing business and makes it harder for them to compete with Berkshire Hathaway when a family or firm decides it wants to sell a business. Nor does the article mention that while Mr. Buffett is testifying to Congress in favor of raising taxes on his competitors, he has structured his own affairs -- making money through long-term capital gains on Berkshire Hathaway stock that he rarely sells, creating charitable foundations for family members, giving away much of his fortune to avoid the death/estate tax -- so as to pay as little tax as possible. This is just another example of the press giving Mr. Buffett a free ride.

Back on February 26, we noted that the Chinese government was apparently blocking Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery from its bid to buy Hummer from GM. Automotive News China has a more extensive explanation of the Chinese government role in approving foreign acquisitions in the Chinese auto industry:

Gaining government approval is now, and will continue to be the foremost task of any Chinese company, state-owned or private, when it seeks to acquire foreign auto assets.

So why is government approval so vital?

Well, if the company is state-owned, the necessity of government approval goes without saying. ..

China didn't start privatizing its economy until the late 1970s. Due to their short history, private Chinese companies are relatively small. They don't have enough capital to make acquisitions overseas on their own.

To get the money they need they have to borrow from a bank. And the banks in China are nearly all state-owned or controlled.

"Why not appointees like Phil Gramm?" is the sub-headline on the Wall Street Journal's editorial today about President Obama's deficit commission. The editorial suggests that the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, should "name the likes of former Texas Senator Phil Gramm as one of his three appointees." It's not entirely clear whether the Journal actually wants Mr. Gramm on the commission or just the "likes of" him. But if Mr. Gramm were named, maybe he could help reduce the deficit in his current role as vice chairman of UBS by doing something about all those 4,450 UBS accounts that the Swiss government doesn't want to disclose to the Internal Revenue Service. If the Journal wants to turn the deficit commission into a win for the Republicans, maybe it could find a better commissioner to suggest than a senator-turned-Swiss banker, or the likes of him?

Former Bush speechwriter William McGurn has an excellent little column with a close analysis of how President Obama chooses the words he uses to talk about health care.

FutureOfCapitalism.com article on Steve Levy, the Democratic county executive of Suffolk County, as a potential Republican candidate for governor of New York: February 17, 2010.

Wall Street Journal article on same: March 9, 2010.