Lower tax rates produce more jobs?

CNN's Eliot Spitzer strongly differs with anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist on that just one day before President Obama is set to outline his long-term deficit reduction proposals in a high-profile speech at George Washington University.  FULL POST

In an interview with CNN's "In The Arena" host Eliot Spitzer, Governor Deval Patrick (D-Mass.) admits racism maybe playing into the birther movement.

Patrick, a close friend and political ally of the president, campaigned for him in 2008 and says he will repeat an appearance with Obama during the 2012 presidential campaign.

When asked whether the questioning of President Obama’s birth certificate can be linked to racism, Patrick said, “Well, there might be.” FULL POST

Author William Cohan discusses his book "Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World" with Eliot Spitzer.

CLICK HERE to read our OFF-SET interview with Cohan, exclusive to the In The Arena blog!.

Japan raises it's nuclear crisis level to 7, but James Walsh, CNN contributor and International Security Analyst Research Associate in the Security Studies Program at MIT, says it wasn't as bad as Chernobyl. FULL POST

Hosni Mubarak is hospitalized two days after Egypt's chief prosecutor summoned him for questioning. Coincidence?  Maybe.

Gov. Deval Patrick (D-MA), sits down with “In The Arena” Host, Eliot Spitzer to discuss his journey from being a poor child living in Chicago to be the first African-American governor of Massachusetts.

Gov. Patrick is scheduled to appear In The Arena on Tuesday, April 12, 2011. Here's an excerpt from his new book:

A REASON TO BELIEVE
Governor Deval Patrick

Reprinted from A REASON TO BELIEVE by Governor Deval Patrick.  Copyright © 2011.  Published by Broadway Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

         P R E FA C E

Once, when I was fifteen, I had to catch a bus to meet a friend, and I was running late. We lived on the South Side of Chicago, near the corner of 54th Street and Wabash Avenue, so I raced south down Wabash past the whitewalled commercial bakery that always smelled of sour yeast, across the weed- filled median on Garfield Boulevard, and east down a block past the liquor store, the Laundromat, and the shop that sold live chickens to housewives. The shopkeeper could slaughter the bird or the women could do it themselves at home.

I reached the bus stop just as the familiar green and white CTA bus pulled up, oily and wheezing. I climbed the steps, reached for my coins, and only then realized that I did not have enough for the fare. The driver, a world- weary black man with a gray grizzle and salt- and- pepper mustache, had already jerked the bus into gear and started down the street. He gave me a withering look and told me gruffly to sit down, pointing to a seat close to the door. I obeyed. FULL POST

Answering Tuesday’s six OFF-SET questions is William D. Cohan, the former Wall Street senior banker and best-selling investigative journalist, and author of “House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street.” The book detailed how the current financial crisis began with the collapses of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. He also wrote the bestseller, “The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co.” which won the 2007 Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award for its candid revela­tions about how Wall Street works.

In addition to his years as Associate and then Vice President at Lazard Frères, he was a Director in the Mergers & Acquisitions Group at Merrill Lynch and a Managing Director at JPMorgan Chase. Cohan writes regularly for Vanity Fair, Fortune, ArtNews, and The Financial Times. His op-ed columns have also appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post. He is also a contributing editor for Bloom­berg TV.

His new book is titled, “Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World.”

Cohan is scheduled to appear In The Arena on Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2011.

What is “the Goldman Way” and is it why the company has been so successful?

To me the "Goldman Way" means hiring only the best and brightest young college and graduate-school graduates and inculcating them early and often in the Goldman doctrines regarding teamwork and sharing information and in the importance of making money at nearly all costs.

The combination of these traits - plus uniquely on Wall Street - a compensation system that isn't solely a bonus culture but also rewards the top 400 senior partners at the firm for generating pre-tax income rather than just revenue has resulted in a risk-management and profit-making machine the likes of which is rarely seen in the history of Capitalism. FULL POST

David Stockman, former U.S. Congressman and OMB director under Ronald Reagan, who, in discussing last week's budget negotiations, told this blog, “The Republicans proved that they don't have the courage of their misguided convictions.”

Eliot asks him about the efforts to tame America's debt and Stockman says, "We are issuing $6 billion of debt every day" and adds that elected officials are "dreamwalking."

CLICK HERE to read Stockman's most recent OFF-SET interview (4-11-11)

Eliot speaks with Hebah Ahmed, founder of Muslim Women Outreach, on France's controversial ban on wearing Islamic veils such as burqas which took effect Monday. Debating Ahmed is Mona Eltahawy, a New York-based journalist and commentator and an international lecturer on Arab and Muslim issues. Her essays make her one of only a few writers whose work appears regularly in both the Arab and U.S. media.  FULL POST

Today's Number of the Day is $45.8 billion.

That was our trade deficit in February–down from $47 billion in January.

The trade deficit is the difference between exports and imports, and the fact that we have a deficit means that we are importing more cars and clothing than we are selling to foreign nations.

We have been running a trade deficit consistently since 1975, and the fact that it is smaller than in past months would usually be considered a good thing, because the more stuff we sell, the better our economy is doing.

The problem with February's number is that the United States both imported less AND sold less, suggesting that maybe the economy is beginning to slow down again.

What we would hope for is that the trade deficit would decline because our exports would be surging–indicating increasing demand from foreign nations for the software, music, and high-tech equipment produced here.

In fact, our exports declined by $2.4 billion from January to February.

This number is merely one tiny data point, but sometimes those little data points are the best indicators of what is really going on. FULL POST