Happy New Year 2013

Okay, help me out here, informed readers.

The 112th Congress formally comes to an end on January 3, when the new session's members will be sworn in.

Whatever the Senate has done, if the House hasn't done likewise, won't count once the 112th session expires.

So ... the possibility of the big 'compromise' every one is talking about turns on a 2 day difference between two different deadlines.

We've already gone off the 'cliff.' The Bush tax cuts have expired, we are living in 2013 with the pre-Bush tax rates formally back in force.

So, the Senators, by acting on Dec. 31, before the cliff, were able -- and will always be able -- to describe their action as raising taxes on 'those fat cats' (relative to 2012 law).

But members of the House, by acting on the 1st or 2d of 2013, will be able to describe their actions as a tax cut, relative to the new/resurrected/Clinton-era rates, if they pass the same bill. So of course they haven't violated any pledge they may have signed not to raise taxes, because the tax increase took place automatically, not by their vote, and they will then have voted to lessen it slightly, i.e. to decrease taxes.

Is that it?

If it isn't brilliant, it is insane. I can't decide which.

Barnes & Noble trial

I'll just linkfarm today.

The trial in the Barnes & Noble poison pill case is underway.

Corporate managers aren't usually eager to pick fights with their second-largest shareholder. But of course nothing is business-as-usual that involves Ron Burkle, the adversary-shareholder in question.

Burkle, the "grocery billionaire" who shows up in stories about the Clinton family, had enough juice to get Jared Paul Stern fired from the Post back in 2006. But, it seems, not quite enough juice to have Stern to get him prosecuted.

That Jared is not to be confused with this guy.

Anyway, the present excitement concerns Barnes & Noble, in a trial before Chancery Court Judge Leo Strine.

Burkle claims that certain directors are engaged in a “self-dealing scheme designed to entrench the Riggio family.”

Go at it, Rock'em, Sock'em robots!

Larry Summers

Ryan Lizza has written a lenghty story on Larry Summers, one of the key economic-policy figures of this administration, for vanity Fair. It is available online here. Warning, it is rather long.

You can get the gist of it from the lucky fish.

Lizza confronted Summers with a tidbit from Rubin's memoir (written back in 2002). Summers was Rubin's second-in-command at the Treasury Department under Clinton.

Rubin wrote:

"Larry thought I was overly concerned with the risks of derivatives. His argument was characteristic of many students of markets, who argue that derivatives serve an important purpose in allocating risk by letting each person take as much of whatever kind of risk he wants. Larry’s position held together under normal circumstances but seemed to me not to take into account what might happen under extraordinary circumstances.”