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A Quick Look at Bloomberg News's Opinion Section for March 26, 2012

Ho-hum, just another day of business as usual in the nation's capital.
Except for the part where nine unelected jurists start deciding the fate
of Barack Obama's signature accomplishment, not to mention how a few hundred
million of us are going to go about paying our doctors. The View editors
don't have many doubts as to how they'd like the Supreme Court to see things
when it comes to Obama's individual mandate. "Every American, by virtue of
his or her existence, is a consumer of health care," they write. "Health
care accounts for about 18 percent of the economy, and an even larger share
of the federal budget. Hospitals and insurance companies and their
affiliates operate and treat patients on a national scale and across state
lines ... The power to regulate interstate commerce also comes with the
power (or so the Supreme Court said 188 years ago) to choose 'the rule by
which commerce is to be governed.' The individual mandate is that rule."
([2]Link.)
Links:
1. http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=98bac6cd6075b07f398b277fa&id=f5c9ee4243&e=002874f745
2. http://bloom.bg/GPVOph

Columnist Noah Feldman thinks the justices should put an end to political
word games and use a little economic logic: "The court ought to skip the
political semantics and treat the fee as the tax which, in essence, it
really is. The court is capable of such common sense: Last week, Justice
Anthony Kennedy wrote in a landmark opinion that our criminal justice system
is today a system of plea bargains, not a system of trials. That significant
decision only came about because he and four other justices described the
world the way it really is. The same spirit should pervade this week’s oral
argument. Economic reality determined the structure of the health-care bill.
Economic reality should determine that it is constitutional." ([3]Link.)
Links:
3. http://bloom.bg/GSU4j5

Anything else going on? Just more bubbling intrigue at Goldman Sachs, of
course. And, as always, columnist William D. Cohan has the inside dish. "A
careful reading of former Goldman employee Greg Smith’s infamous New York
Times op-ed article -- along with a twist of conspiracy theory -- suggests
that the jockeying to replace Lloyd Blankfein, who has been Goldman’s chief
executive officer since June 2006, is well under way," writes Cohan. "It’s
also possible that Smith may have unwittingly, or perhaps wittingly, given a
boost to one candidate previously thought to have been out of the running:
J. Michael Evans, head of the firm’s global growth markets." ([4]Link.)
Links:
4. http://bloom.bg/H2f6Nu

Also, the View editors point out that while the politics of public pensions
has cooled off, the economics have gotten worse. ([5]Link.)
Op-ed contributors Dennis Kelleher and Marc Jarsulic are concerned that "the
Volcker rule, the part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act that seeks to limit the
threat that big banks’ high-risk trading poses to the entire financial
system, is in trouble." ([6]Link.)
And columnist Simon Johnson and co-writer James Kwak explain how the War of
1812 is responsible (sort of) for today's massive federal debt. ([7]Link.)
Links:
5. http://bloom.bg/GOvMsn
6. http://bloom.bg/H3KV51
7. http://bloom.bg/H77Pui

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