Marketplace Scratch Pad

Morning Reading

Scott Jagow Nov 16, 2009

Good morning. Hope you had a good weekend. President Obama’s in China, so we’ll begin with that:

China currency boost would be unfair (Marketplace Morning Report)

While the US economy struggles, China’s rises (NPR)

Lobbyists wrote lawmaker speeches (New York Times)

In the official record of the historic House debate on overhauling health care, the speeches of many lawmakers echo with similarities. Often, that was no accident.

Statements by more than a dozen lawmakers were ghostwritten, in whole or in part, by Washington lobbyists working for Genentech, one of the world’s largest biotechnology companies.

Re-regulation won’t prevent the next crisis (Bloomberg)

Like all humans, regulators are fallible. When it comes to the next big crisis, “a large number of well meaning and well-paid regulators will miss it by a country mile,” says Bob Barbera, chief economist at ITG Hoenig, a New York brokerage.

All the focus on regulation, or re-regulation, is entirely misplaced, Barbera says. “What we need is a broader definition of monetary policy.”

10 years later, a less expensive Dow 10,000 (LA Times)

But the return to 10,000 also serves as a bitter reminder that stocks have gone virtually nowhere, on balance, for more than a decade…

Look a bit deeper, though, and you’ll find that there have been some changes in the domestic market, too, in the last 10 years — and largely for the better. Some of them, however, are hard to see at first glance.

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