The New Republic

Glenn Beck: And you win by 3 points? That's a victory? You've double‑teamed an accountant and you only won by three points. Boy, you guys are good... That's like the Yankees playing a high school team and winning by three runs. Oh, wow! READ MORE >>

The Information Master: Jean-Baptiste Colbert's Secret State Intelligence System By Jacob Soll (University of Michigan Press, 277 pp., $65)   READ MORE >>

Edward Jay Epstein has become the de facto historian of the Madoff scandal. Every time he and I speak, he has found another key to the master Ponzi schemer's evil genius. There was a time when the Securities and Exchange Commission trusted Madoff absolutely. So he was able to clear two other stock markets by saying that the documents they used in their defense were kosher. Ah, but the rub was that those documents were actually treyf (not kosher) and they had been cooked up by Madoff himself. READ MORE >>

Anyone who dug my post from last night should check out the op-ed in this morning's Wall Street Journal from former SEC Chair Arthur Levitt and former SEC Chief Accountant Lynn Turner. They do a much better job than I could of explaining the importance of mark-to-market accounting in reviving investor trust: "It's like your personal balance sheet," they write. READ MORE >>