Below The Beltway

Today’s Washington Post reports on the increasing use of outsourcing in the legal profession:
GURGAON, India — When Aashish Sharma graduated from law school two years ago, his father had visions of seeing him argue in an Indian court and eventually become an honorable judge.
Instead, Sharma, 25, now sits all day in front of a computer […]

Kevin Drum really, really doesn’t like those retail loyalty programs:
LOYALTY CARDS….I really loathe retail loyalty card programs. Really really really. Just wanted to get that off my chest.
Coyote Blog links to Drum’s screed, and then to this post from back in 2005:
I HATE most new loyalty programs at stores. When loyalty programs really […]

I don’t always agree with Glenn Beck, but he hits the nail on the head in this segment about the phony arguments being raised on the campaign trail about the allegedly massive profits being made by oil companies:

H/T: Mises Economic Blog

The Department of Justice has given the okay to the long-pending planned merger of XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio:
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The U.S. Justice Department approved the merger between satellite radio companies Sirius and XM Monday, more than a year after the two companies first announced their deal.
In its decision, the Department […]

As I noted earlier today, last night J.P. Morgan finalized a deal to acquire Bear Stearns for a bargain basement price:
March 17 (Bloomberg) — JPMorgan Chase & Co. agreed to buy Bear Stearns Cos. for $240 million, about 90 percent less than its value last week, after a run on the company ended 85 years […]

Mad Money’s Jim Cramer on Bear Stearns last week

J.P. Morgan may be dead, but his firm is coming to the rescue of Wall Street once again:
In a shocking deal reached on Sunday to save Bear Stearns, JPMorgan Chase agreed to pay a mere $2 a share to buy all of Bear — less than one-tenth the firm’s market price on Friday.
As part of […]

While campaigning in Ohio, Hillary Clinton has claimed that she was against the North American Free Trade Agreement from the beginning. As Barack Obama has noted, it’s very convenient for her to say that now because she never took a public position on the treaty as First Lady.
So what was her position ?
Former Labor Secretary […]

Good for business, bad for teenage boys:
Maybe it was the lusty mannequins in its stores, the massage oil on its shelves or the overabundance of cleavage on the glittery runway of its annual TV fashion show. But yesterday, Victoria’s Secret chief executive Sharen J. Turney acknowledged that the chain had gotten “too sexy.”
Is such a […]

It was another bad day on Wall Street:
Stocks were sharply lower on Wall Street on Friday after a painful dose of weak economic data reignited fears that a recession may be imminent. A new round of woes in the financial industry also contributed to the sell-off.
The Dow Jones industrials dropped more than 100 points right […]