Bloomberg News's Jonathan Weil raises some questions about Treasury Secretary Paulson's behavior as described in Mr. Paulson's book On The Brink, which was reviewed on this site last week. Mr. Weil says the memoir makes clear that Mr. Paulson knew that Lehman Brothers had overstated its assets. "It does leave you wondering, though, if it ever occurred to him to tell anyone at the Securities and Exchange Commission or the Justice Department that Lehman's accounting might need to be investigated. His book provides no indication that he did," Mr. Weil writes. Mr. Paulson and Ben Bernanke were in the same position with Merrill Lynch: "Neither Paulson nor Bernanke saw fit to tell the SEC. Nor did they press the companies' executives to come clean with the public." Says Mr. Weil: "The requirement that publicly owned corporations disclose complete and accurate financial reports is part of the bedrock of U.S. securities laws. Just as important is the promise that the government will enforce those laws when they've been broken. Undermine the public's faith in either of those functions, and confidence in the capital markets crumbles." He warns of "The danger that powerful companies won't follow the law when their executives believe the government won't hold them to it."

Now that Massachusetts has nearly universal health coverage thanks to its Republican governor, Mitt Romney, the current governor, a Democrat, Deval Patrick, is seeking authority from the state legislature to, as the Boston Globe puts it, "give the insurance commissioner the power to essentially cap health care price increases." Those who think health care reform is mainly about cost control may cheer this development; those who think that government price controls lead to shortages and discourage innovation will rue it. There may be some advantages to seeing how this works out in the laboratory of the states before trying it on a nationwide basis.

When the Institute for New Economic Thinking funded with $50 million from George Soros convenes its inaugural conference April 8 at King's College, Cambridge University, speaking at the opening night dinner will be Bruce Caldwell, who is the director of Duke University's Center for the History of Political Economy, the general editor of The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek, and the author of Hayek's Challenge: An Intellectual Biography of F.A. Hayek.

The "chairman and editor-in-chief" of the Slate Group, Jacob Weisberg -- I'm going to have to start calling myself chairman and editor-in-chief of the FutureOfCapitalism group -- inveighs against "the childishness, ignorance, and growing incoherence of the public at large." He means the American public. What a contrast to the late Robert Bartley of the Wall Street Journal, who used to talk about the wisdom of the voters. It's a fine line between what Mr. Weisberg writes and contempt for the masses. If you really believe that Americans are childish and ignorant, then why trust them to decide for themselves what or how much to eat or whether to purchase health insurance? Why trust them even to elect their own leaders? Writes Michael Kinsley: "If nothing else, give Weisberg points for guts." Link via The Browser.

"As the government assumes a larger share of health care costs, it is increasingly able to use that as a justification to intrude into personal decisions or private enterprises, whether it's a matter of smoking policy, trans-fats, or salt," we wrote last month. Now the Wall Street Journal is out with an editorial praising Michelle Obama's campaign against childhood obesity, reasoning, "the reality is that U.S. obesity imposes huge costs on taxpayers. In 2006, the per capita increase in spending attributable to obesity was 36% for Medicare and 47% for Medicaid, according to a paper last year in Health Affairs. Many fat kids grow up to be fat adults, and you've got to start somewhere."

Over the weekend we flagged a report about how after New Jersey imposed a "millionaire's tax" in 2004, fewer wealthy households arrived in the state and more left. Now the Wall Street Journal's news department -- that's right, Rupert Murdch's Wall Street Journal, not the New York Times -- is protesting that analysis with a blog item headlined "Don't Blame Higher Taxes for Loss of New Jersey's Rich." The Journal's evidence? "A Census Bureau survey of wealthy New Jerseyans found their top reason for leaving, by far, was a new job offer." It doesn't seem to have occurred to the Journal reporter that the reason job offers were coming from other states is that the other states -- the ones creating those jobs that are good enough to lure away the high-income New Jerseyans -- had lower taxes.

General Electric is disputing the account given by Henry Paulson in his book On The Brink of conversations between Mr. Paulson and the chief executive of GE, Jeffrey Immelt. The Economist has an account of the differences.

Back on January 29 we flagged a New York Post article reporting, "A $750,000 payment from Mayor Bloomberg's campaign was delivered to a mysterious Albany company that wasn't even created until one month after the November elections, The Post has learned. In an unusual transaction, Bloomberg's campaign last month sent a $1.2 million check to the state Independence Party -- and the party in turn transferred $750,000 to a previously unknown firm called Special Election Operations. The Independence Party appears to have kept the remaining $450,000. Special Election Operations has no Web site, isn't found in any Internet or database searches, and was incorporated with the state on Dec. 3, about a month after Bloomberg won re-election as an independent." Now the New York Times says the office of the District Attorney for New York County is looking into the matter.

The federal secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, has sent a letter to Anthem Blue Cross saying, "I was very disturbed to learn through media accounts that Anthem Blue Cross plans to raise premiums for its California customers by as much as 39 percent. ...Your company's strong financial position makes these rate increases even more difficult to understand. As you know, your parent company, WellPoint Incorporated, has seen its profits soar, earning $2.7 billion in the last quarter of 2009 alone."

President Obama, who back in December was denouncing bankers as fat cats and suicide bombers and only weeks ago was denouncing them as "selfish" and their bonuses as "obscene," now tells Bloomberg Businessweek in an interview that he doesn't mind the money that the chief executives of Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are making: "I, like most of the American people, don't begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free- market system." We flagged this reversal originally back on February 5. We'll see if it holds or if it's just related to what audience Mr. Obama is addressing or what his political needs are at the time.

Warren Buffett has described himself and Berkshire Hathaway as a net "beneficiary" of the government's extraordinary actions during the financial crisis. Yesterday, Mr. Buffett got together with Henry Paulson, who, as Treasury secretary, helped to sideline some Berkshire competitors while bailing out some Berkshire investments, to praise Mr. Paulson and to help Mr. Paulson sell some copies of his book. These guys are sure pushing their own narrative of the financial crisis -- that government activism heroically averted what could have been a much worse outcome -- over the competing narrative -- that government activism made things worse. If CNBC sent Lloyd Blankfein out to interview Mr. Paulson about his new book, it'd be laughed at, or at least questioned about the appropriateness of it. But Mr. Buffett has a way of being seen as kind of floating above the fray, rather than an interested financial player himself. Not to mention that the whole thing is being aired and touted on CNBC, which, for now, is still a unit of GE, which got its own bailout from Mr. Paulson.

Greece is raising one of its marginal personal income tax rates to 38% from 25% while at the same time trying to "clamp down on widespread tax evasion," reports the Wall Street Journal. As Anthony Weiner would say, in another context, "Good luck with that." The higher the rate, the more likely people are to try to avoid paying.

"What about Italy?" John Carney of BusinessInsider.com emails as a follow-up to my earlier post, picked up on BusinessInsider.com, about PIGS Without Jews. The answer? As Bloomberg News reported this week, "The 'I' in PIGS Stands for Ireland, Not Italy." Italy's in better shape. And it's got more Jews. My friend and former colleague at the Forward and New York Sun Rachel Donadio is over there. And the Honorable Fiamma Nirenstein is a member of the Chamber of Deputies.

With Justice Sotomayor ensconced as the "first Hispanic" (Cardozo notwithstanding) on the Supreme Court, there seems to be a new premium on diversity in judicial nominations, at least in New York. Senator Schumer dropped two suggestions today: Raymond Lohier for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Daniel Alter for a position on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District. Mr. Schumer described Mr. Lohier as "a proud Haitian American...who would enhance the diversity of the federal bench," and the senator described Mr. Alter as "a history-maker who will be the first openly gay male judge in American history," which will come as news to federal judge Vaughn Walker, who was named to the bench by President George H.W. Bush. My friends and relatives on the bar, whose opinion counts for a lot in my book, say Mr. Alter is one of the best lawyers in the city, identity politics aside. Still, follow this logic all the way to its conclusion, and maybe Mr. Schumer should step aside for a Haitian American or openly gay senator. Or an openly gay Haitian American senator. We're all for a diverse bench, but somehow it seemed less of a priority for Senator Schumer when it was Miguel Estrada who was being nominated.

Add two more Democrats to the list of those openly breaking with President Obama. Senator Schumer of New York issues a press release warning that Mr. Obama's budget "imperils NYC Harbor Security and Safety." And Rep. Anthony Weiner responds to Mr. Obama's stated desire to work with Republicans to pass a health care bill with a sarcastic, "Good luck with that....If the president wants to pass meaningful health care reform, here's an idea from someone who actually wants to pass a bill..." The "if" suggests Mr. Weiner isn't even sure that Mr. Obama wants to pass "meaningful health care reform."