Regulation

ABC anchor Diane Sawyer, who in February demanded to know who will “keep insurance companies from jacking up premiums while making huge profits?”, on Friday found her champion in the Superintendent of Maine’s Bureau of Insurance, hailing Mila Kofman as a “super-cop” and a “gladiator” for rejecting a rate hike requested by Anthem Blue Cross. Kofman proclaimed “we are the super-cops on the street.…

New fuel standards make both the left and the media happy. It's easy to tell. There wasn't a single voice of opposition criticizing the latest act of Big Government on major prime-time news outlets ABC, CBS or NBC. "Environmentalists are hailing the move as nothing short of historic," NBC's Lee Cowan said of the federal government's new fuel efficiency standards. The networks did much the same.…

Watch the latest business video at <a href="http://video.foxbusiness.com/">video.foxbusiness.com</a>Curt Schilling is finding out that starting a small business in the state of Massachusetts is more taxing than 50,000 heckling Yankee fans could ever be. Schilling and wife Shonda were interviewed on…

Here's a story you might not be aware of what with all the media's focus on ObamaCare's passage and the MSM's short attention span when it comes to international news. Yesterday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy decided to back down from a July deadline to pass a carbon dioxide tax into law. Apparently French business leaders had voiced strong objection, noting that it would put French business…

The liberal media's favorite targets - Wall Street "fat cats" - have endured a firestorm of outrage and attack over bonuses since the financial meltdown. As some, like CNBC contributor Rick Santelli pointed out however, part of the screaming is the result of it is Obama and the White House whipping up political outrage.  Now we'll have a chance to see if it's also selective outrage. Fox…

The Washington Post today called on Gov. Martin O'Malley (D-Md.) to push for and Maryland legislators to pass a plastic bag tax patterned after the District of Columbia's 5-cent-per-bag levy.The Post couched the need for the tax in terms of safeguarding the health of the Chesapeake Bay -- much as the D.C. bag tax is purportedly earmarked for cleanup of the Anacostia River.But curiously enough,…

It's a topic that would probably make the average individual's eyes glaze over, but will have a profound impact on the economy - for better or worse. The topic - financial regulation reform. With Senate Banking Chairman Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., setting his proposal out for the public, the take away on the reporting from two of the country's major newspapers - The New York Times and Wall…

"He dug into the idiocy and negligence that produced the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression," Steve Kroft opened a segment of the March 14 CBS "60 Minutes," featuring author Michael Lewis' latest work - "The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine." If Lewis "dug into the idiocy and negligence," he did so selectively - or that's what viewers could conclude from the long "60…

NBC's "Today" gave backhanded praise to Bank of America (BofA) on March 11 because of its decision to stop charging overdraft fees for debit-card transactions. "This is clearly an effort by Bank of America to repair its battered image," senior investigative correspondent Lisa Myers said. "But it's also a meaningful step that will save consumers money and keep families from spending more than…

Is it "crossing the line" to ban salt from use in restaurant kitchens? That's what MSNBC's Tamron Hall asked of her viewers shortly before 3 p.m. on March 11. To discuss the issue, she interviewed New York State Assemblyman Felix Ortiz (D) on his proposed legislation calling for a ban of salt use in Empire State restaurant kitchens. Each violation would carry a $1,000 fine.Hall failed to balance…

After the closing bell on Friday, just in time for everyone to stop paying close attention, mortgage behemoth and ward of the state Fannie Mae ("Fan") released its fourth-quarter and full-year financial results. Its press release (PDF) informs us that its $74.4 billion loss in 2009 (inclusive of dividends paid to the government) followed a $58.8 billion loss in 2008. For those keeping score at…

CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanja Gupta pressed HHS Secretary Kathleen for price controls in all parts of the health care industry on Thursday's Newsroom. Gupta stated that insurance companies were "just the tip of the iceberg" of health care costs: "There are a lot of different organizations, groups, people who contribute to health care costs. Are you going to be going after all these…

My supposedly informative but in reality selective CNNMoney.com E-mail just alerted me to the fact that the unemployment rate dropped in January, but "somehow" forgot to reveal that 20,000 seasonally adjusted jobs were lost (see related post by BMI/NB's Julia Seymour): CNNMoney.com also "forgot" to say anything about a downward 900,000-job revision (actually, even worse) to previous data (text is…