Tuesday, February 21 2012

Presidents often trade imperfect policy for political expediency, and the tax proposals in President Barack Obama’s fiscal 2013 budget are a good example. In stitching new bits and pieces to an already Frankenstein-like income-tax code, the budget is a showcase for muddled aims producing bad policy, especially when it comes to taxing investment income.

One week ago, Afghans marked Liberation Day, the 23rd anniversary of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan on Feb. 15, 1989. Recent developments are hastening another liberation -- that of the U.S. from Afghanistan.

Mitt Romney’s enduring problem is that we don’t know what lies beneath the eager-to-please demeanor that leads him to emit impenetrable lines like the one this weekend about loving Michigan because its “trees are the right height.”

The collapse in housing and the 33 percent plunge in house prices since 2006 are favoring renting over homeownership. This trend will dominate the housing market for the next four or five years, and put additional pressure on a weak economy.

If, as opinion polls suggest, the French Socialist Party’s presidential candidate, Francois Hollande, ousts Nicolas Sarkozy in elections this spring, the euro area may be in for a new wave of instability with far- reaching consequences for financial markets and the euro system itself.

Almost 120 years ago, on Sept. 11, 1893, a young Indian man, clad in saffron robes, stood up at a massive gathering in Chicago and delivered one of the most rousing and frequently quoted speeches of modern religious history. The speaker's name was Narendranath Datta, but in India he went by Swami Vivekananda, and this is how he is now remembered. The event was the first-ever World Parliament of Religions, a visionary attempt to start a global dialogue among people of all faiths.

The Persian News Network, the U.S. government's broadcasting arm to the Iranian people, was the topic of a Bloomberg View editorial today. If you haven't heard of it before, that's probably because of an antiquated clause in Public Law 80-402: the  U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948.