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Marketplace Scratch Pad

Morning Reading

Scott Jagow Mar 24, 2010

Good morning. Here’s a sampling of what I’ve read so far, from Main Street to Wall Street, and with all the Buffalo wings you can afford…

The recovery depends on Main Street (Robert Reich/Financial Times)

None of this is stopping supply-side fanatics from arguing government needs to cut taxes on big corporations to spur the recovery. Their argument is absurd. Big companies do not know what to do with all the cash they have as it is. They are not investing it in new plant or jobs. So why should the government cut their taxes and enlarge their cash hoards even more?

The picture on Main Street is the opposite. Small businesses are not selling much because they have to rely on American consumers and Americans still are not buying much.

Wall Street despised in poll, but people are leery of adding too much regulation (Bloomberg)

Americans are leery about creating a new federal agency to make consumer-protection rules for mortgages and credit cards and would prefer to enhance the existing powers of banking regulators.

Most people interviewed in the Bloomberg National Poll say they don’t like Wall Street, banks or insurance companies and favor letting the government punish bankers who helped cause the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

The necessity of Failure (Washington Times)

The cry from the political class is, as always, “We need more government regulation” – and the establishment media, as always, are cheering. Do we really need more government regulation? Play detective. Congress, in the form of Sen. Christopher J. Dodd’s financial regulatory reform proposal, is flirting with giving the Fed much more power over many more institutions, yet the Fed was a major player in the financial meltdown and missed all of the warning signs. If you were in a military campaign and had to pick a reconnaissance team to warn you of the next possible attack, would you pick the team that had missed the previous attacks?

Health reform: A look at changes for the uninsured (PBS NewsHour)

Chinese consumed millions of gallons of toxic sewage oil (Raw Story) Well, I used to like Chinese food…

Chinese cooking oil siphoned from restaurants’ waste tanks and stripped out of raw sewage is being resold on the cheap and has for years tainted approximately one out of every ten meals cooked in the eastern nation, according to a recent study.

Chicken wing prices continue to soar (NPR) I’ve noticed this for years at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo (home of the original Buffalo wing) and when I make my own…

“Every time that there is Christmas, wings go up,” he said. “Super Bowl, wings go up — but the problem is they never come down. They go up and they stay there.”

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