It’s depressing to watch, but it is missing the point that the Volcker rule would not have prevented the loss and is probably unworkable.

From the perspective of the corporate profit and loss statement, a trading loss is one expense item in the context of all revenues and expenses. So $2 billion should be compared to the bank's $26.7 billion in pretax profits for 2011, suggesting a reduction of something less than 10 percent in annual profit.

The European Union is planning to tax all airlines that travel to and from the 27 EU nations based on the amount of carbon emissions they produce.  The tax, to be collected beginning in 2013 for prior year emissions, will be calculated based on the length of each flight. The farther the airlines travel, the heftier the tax.

It's tempting to call the shameful taxpayer subsidy for electric cars - vehicles that are unaffordable for all but a small number of wealthy Americans - this nation's costly little secret.

Baby Seven Billion will have a greater chance to live to adulthood and receive an education—and a lower chance of suffering extreme material poverty—than a child at any previous juncture in history. This prospect, in and of itself, should be a cause for celebration.

A new report by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) argues that one of the greatest mistakes the United States can make is to imagine that Iranian activities in a given arena--the nuclear program, for example--are isolated from Iranian undertakings in another. The report examines those other areas

Losing money is embarrassing. And an embarrassed Jamie Dimon publicly admitted that J.P. Morgan Chase goofed. Three senior executives lost their jobs as a result. But politicians and regulators in Washington are rushing to leverage the bank's misfortune for their own gain.