kelsium:

“Fairness to bankers may not seem like the most pressing issue on the justice agenda. But in addition to being unfair, conflating actual crooks and the innocent affluent makes it hard to claim that raising their taxes isn’t punishment for some form of misbehavior. Taxes are not a punishment; they are a source of necessary revenue. But if you tie them to the financial scandal, they sound pretty punitive.”

I don’t agree with everything in this Bloomberg op-ed by Michael Kinsley, but I do think this is a very valid point about the problem with the rhetoric of the left right now. We don’t tax people because they are bad people who deserve to be taxed; we tax them because they are people who need to contribute their share.

inothernews:

Note to middle-classers sticking up for the rich: the rich are laughing at you.

I spent the morning slogging through a new magazine about alternative investing. One of the lead stories told me that “colored diamonds” are an emerging asset class because a few hedge funds have entered into the market and market prices are now more transparent than they were before. Apparently, the best (“best”) of these gems sell for at least $500,000 per carat — sidebar: Early gem traders weighed the stones against carob seeds; hence the standard unit of measurement, the carat. Didja know! — and the article ends with an assertion that “this asset class is gaining fans.”

So, yeah: Diamonds. I tried, but I couldn’t exactly jump up and down after learning this.

What the bloody hell:

Financier and cricket mogul Sir Allen Stanford was unfit to stand trial on charges of running a $7-billion fraud and needs treatment for a drug addiction, a US judge ruled.

Stanford’s trial had been due to begin this week but was postponed indefinitely until he could be considered fit to prepare his defense.

To plagiarize Kanye West, Jerome gets more time than Brandon, etc.