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Krugman on raising the Medicare eligibility age and how this affects lower income seniors. The urgent need to rein in health care costs in the U.S. as other countries have done.

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Michelle Obama delivers a rousing speech in Pheonix, Arizona, as she campaigns across the country for Hillary Clinton, saying "they are trying to take away your hope." And by reminding voters Obama lost the state in 2012 by only 208,000 votes or 63 votes per precinct, so voters should not stay home. She tried to revive the 2008 campaign theme of "hope" of the Obama campaign in that year.

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Frank Rich on the lobbyists influence on Congress and the Obama administration at top levels. And the efforts by lobbyists to kill any efforts at reform. He details the activities of lobbyists working with the Obama adminsitraion. President Obama risks losing his opportunity for change and with it his credibility as a change advocate. A series of Washington Post articles have detailed the activities of lobbyists in high places that threaten to gut most of the President's reform proposals. Rich points out that it is not clear whether the ostentatious daily activities at a meeting place the Ristorante Tosca is abad omen for the lobbyists or also for the Obama adminsitration or for both. This opinion piece was listed No 1 in the Most popular articles on October 4, 2009, which says the public is listening and watching.

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Failure of U.S. regulatory agencies to implement an important provision of the Dodd-Frank legislation- instructing regulators to find all references to ratings agencies in their rules, and then replace them with better standards for judging credit risk. Treasury's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, is one of the agencies trying to gut this reform, says this Wall Steet Journal editorial. The S.E.C. voted unanimously in March and April to propose rules eliminating credit agencies in their regulations on money funds and stock brokerages. As the comment periods have ended, the Journal calls for the rules to be immediately made final. Officials from FDIC and OCC are dragging their feet on this. One problem they face is their assumption that the Dodd-Frank law requires them to come up with the perfect rule for measuring credit risk. This is not what the change is intended to do. It is enough says the Journal to return the responsibility for the right metrics and the hard work of analyzing a security back to where it belongs- to people who manage these assets and institutional managers. Even if they made some mistakes it would be far less than the systemic risk posed by having all major institutions making the same mistake at the same time and the entire system following flawed ratings by the big three credit ratings agencies. This happened in the 2008 mortgage securities financial crisis. S&P has stated that it does not support the old system. And new alternatives are appearing for ratings- CreditSights, Rapid Ratings, Kroll Bond Ratings which got S.E.C.' support, and other alternatives still to come....

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Romney's advisors work to re-focus the campaign with more time spent by the candidate in the swing states and states too close to call- Iowa, Colorado, Wisconsin. This is in addition to Ohio, Florida and Virginia, which are seen as critical.

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Former U.S. Treasury secretary Robert Rubin talks to Charlie Rose about the August 2 Debt Ceiling and Deficit legislation. He says there are two constructive things about the legislation. There are no serious cuts in 2011 and 2012, so there will be almost no loss in demand as spending cuts do not affect the immediate 18 month period. Former Treasury Secretary Summers also makes this point. And that the cuts include defense and non-defense. He favors the approach of the Bowles-Simpson Commission. On the overall situation Rubin points out the importance of getting a real public discussion going about what this means, what the consequences of decisions made now. Especially important for Rubin is public understanding of the importance of setting up a serious deficit reduction program that sets the date of implementation a couple of years into the future to give time to get back on track, and the need for increased revenues. A useful point Rubin makes is that the question of jobs and the question of getting into a sound position fiscally are really the same question. He cites his experience in 1993 when he helped President Clinton setup and implement a deficit reduction program- which had half spending cuts and half revenue increases. Bowles-Simpson Commission recommendations for closing loopholes for tax expenditures and Martin Feldstein's similiar proposal for limiting the deductions and exclusions to 2% of Adjusted Gross Income offer an option that creates revenues without any tax increases....

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A NYT report on Donald Trump's long standing relationship with his lawyer Roy Cohn,  who was also an advisor to Senator Joseph McCarthy. The report says Roy Cohn used aggressive legal tactics in lawsuits and influenced Trump's style of doing business in his real estate dealings. It is a detailed report of Roy Cohn's influence on Trump, which the reporters say has influenced the way  Trump ran his 2016 election campaign. It shows Cohn as protecting Trump in lawsuits, and Cohn's sense that Trump would someday play a big role in New York's real estate business, as Cohn's first meeting with Trump started when Trump was beginning his career in the early 70's. 

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Sara Korshid, a Egyptian journalist, laments the wasted last two and a half years in which the military was ousted only to have the Muslim Brotherhood take office under a flawed and rushed road map set by the then military leaders, without a clear allocation of powers between the judiciary, parliament and the executive branches of government. The failure of the Muslim Brotherhood led by older authoritarian leaders to reach out to accomodate liberals -who supported Morsi and helped him get elected with 51% of the vote- leading to the ouster of president Morsi brings the Egyptian people back to square one. Real misgivings about having the military intervene are shared by liberals like Korshid, who are yet determined to start the process over to get it right.

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Feldstein, adviser to the Romney campaign, refutes the assertion based on computer models that the Romney Tax Plan of a 20% across the board cut in taxes cannot be paid for by limiting the deductions of high income tax earners. His own analysis based on IRS data, shows taxpayers with adjusted gross incomes of over $100,000 made itemized deductions of $636 billion in 2009. By taxing these deductions at a 30% marginal rate, additional revenue of $191 billion can be raised to pay for the Romney Tax Plan's static revenue loss of $181 billion. A smaller revenue loss of $148 billion is predicted based on increased incomes and taxes from the behavioural effects of lower taxes on earners. He says this was the thinking behind the Reagan tax cuts of 1986 and the Simpson-Bowles commission plan that would generate economic growth by reforming the tax system's distortions.