Cantor Watched Britney Spears Concert During Obama Presser, Landrieu Denies Rumors  —  There was more than one whip at last night's Britney Spears concert in Washington DC.  —  Three GOP aides confirmed to the Huffington Post that House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) …

Obama's bank plan could rob the taxpayer  —  The Geithner-Summers plan, officially called the public/private investment programme, is a thinly veiled attempt to transfer up to hundreds of billions of dollars of US taxpayer funds to the commercial banks, by buying toxic assets from the banks at far above their market value.

Geithner to Propose Vast Expansion Of U.S. Oversight of Financial System  —  Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner plans to propose today a sweeping expansion of federal authority over the financial system, breaking from an era in which the government stood back from financial markets …

Palin unplugged in speech to Alaska GOP dinner  —  (CNN) - Sarah Palin is teeing off on the media once again.  —  In a little-noticed speech to a GOP dinner in Alaska last week, Palin riffed for nearly an hour on a variety of topics — including her relationship with former McCain staffers …

Steele On Rush Flap: “It's All Strategic”  —  Michael Steele just doesn't know how to stop.  —  Steele appeared on CNN this afternoon, and was asked by host Don Lemon whether he's ever considered running for president, and right off the bat he managed to give the sensible, correct answer …

China and the Dollar  —  Markets don't like Treasury talking down the dollar's status.  —  As if the dollar didn't have enough problems, Timothy Geithner took China's bait yesterday and said he was “quite open” to its suggestion this week to displace the greenback with an “international reserve currency.”

E.U. President Blasts U.S. Spending  —  Czech Premier Calls Obama Administration's Economic Policies ‘a Road to Hell’  —  The president of the European Union on Wednesday ripped the Obama administration's economic policies, calling its deficit spending and bank bailouts “a road to hell.”

Another Obama nominee withdraws  —  Chalk up another casualty in the Obama administration's attempts to staff federal agencies.  —  Jon Cannon, nominated to be the deputy director of the Environmental Protection Agency, pulled his name from consideration today, citing questions over a non-profit …

White House announces tax reform task force  —  The Obama administration announced Wednesday that it is creating a task force to examine ways to simplify the tax code, close tax loopholes, lessen tax evasion and reduce corporate welfare.  —  The task force will be part of former Federal …

Cities Deal With a Surge in Shanty Towns  —  FRESNO, Calif. — As the operations manager of a outreach center for the homeless here, Paul Stack is used to seeing people down on their luck.  What he had never seen before was people living in tents and lean-tos on the railroad lot across from the center.

Ed Henry's take on exchange with Obama  —  Ed Henry, CNN's senior White House correspondent, got a tough answer from President Obama when he asked Tuesday night why Obama waited days to express outrage on the AIG bonuses.  “Because I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak,” Obama said.

The Civil Heretic  —  FOR MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY the eminent physicist Freeman Dyson has quietly resided in Prince­ton, N.J., on the wooded former farmland that is home to his employer, the Institute for Advanced Study, this country's most rarefied community of scholars.

Albany Reaches Deal to Repeal '70s-Era Drug Laws  —  ALBANY — Gov. David A. Paterson and New York legislative leaders have reached an agreement to dismantle much of what remains of the state's strict 1970s-era drug laws, once among the toughest in the nation.

Bold claims of stimulus jobs can't be measured  —  Featured Topics: - Barack Obama - Presidential Transition  —  WASHINGTON - If space exploration were conducted like the job forecasts under the government's new stimulus law, man surely would have missed the moon.  But this isn't rocket science.

The Fierce Urgency of Peace  —  Pressure on President Obama to recast the failed American approach to Israel-Palestine is building from former senior officials whose counsel he respects.  —  Following up on a letter dated Nov. 6, 2008, that was handed to Obama late last year by Paul Volcker …

AIG Fights a Fire at Its Paris Unit  —  Executives' Resignations Put Billions in Contracts at Risk of Default  —  Amid the flap over bonuses at American International Group Inc. two of the company's top managers in Paris have resigned.  Their moves have left the giant insurer …

Modeling an FDIC Robbery.  —  I want to explain the Geithner Put for those without a finance background who want to understand how FDIC is going to get looted.  (Warning: Will contain graphs, and be long and boring even by normal standards here.)  Recap: Banks have “toxic waste” assets, which they want to sell.

DOUBLE-DIPPERS  —  CITI, BOFA BUYING BACK LAUNDERED LOANS AT LOWER RATES  —  As Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner orchestrated a plan to help the nation's largest banks purge themselves of toxic mortgage assets, Citigroup and Bank of America have been aggressively scooping up those same securities …

Obama's Prime Time Pitch  —  Some exaggerations and misstatements from his evening news conference.  —  President Obama sometimes strayed from the facts or made dubious claims during his hour-long evening news conference March 24.  — He said his budget projections are based on economic assumptions that …

Auto Task Force to Back More Loans, With Strings  —  President Barack Obama last month handed his auto-industry team a seemingly impossible task: to engineer the most complicated industrial restructuring ever attempted by the federal government, and to do it fast.

Obama's political arm buys TV time to pressure Congress  —  WASHINGTON (CNN) - After several e-mail pleas and a nationwide door-knocking campaign, President Obama's political arm will start airing a television commercial Thursday, urging voters to pressure Congress to approve his budget.