So we have finally found out who Big Brother is: Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York. This relatively small man does not look intimidating but he is Big Brother. Look what he has done since becoming mayor. He banned smoking indoors, he made trans fat illegal in restaurants, he made restaurants post the calories on menu items, he installed cameras all over city streets. Now he is banning soft drinks greater than 16 ounces. I know he means well but somewhere along the line we have to say, enough is enough. Next thing you know, it will be no cups of coffee bigger that 2 ounces; without cream and sugar. Then it is no ice cream bigger that 1 ounce cup. No pizza with extra cheese etc. Anyways, I don't think any of these measures are going to make a big dent in the obesity epidemics.

If Mayor Bloomberg wants to play Big Brother and get better result then he should regulate Wall Street and the banks. No more credit default swaps, no more inside trading, no more dangerous derivatives. Impossible to regulate even by Big Brother? You are probably right since these entities are bigger than even Big Brother. But Big Brother cannot regulate waist lines either since those are also bigger than Big Brother.

On the news at the same time was that we are selling a lot of stuff to rich middle east countries like Qater and Unite Arab Emirates. Among our exports are fast foods and sinful food items like cheesecake from Chicago. So we think these stuff are so bad for us but perfectly good to sell to rest of the world. And you say American world leadership is dead!

I see that people are already filing lawsuits regarding the Facebook IPO. Frankly I am surprised that this has not happened a lot more. The average investor does not have a chance with these IPOs. If they are hot, they are all grabbed by the big institutions. Now it comes out that Morgan Stanley told big investors information about Facebook that was not made public. I think this is not first time it has happened. The thing is, I think the public are more cynical about Wall Street than ever before since the Great Depression. Having seen recently JP Morgan Chase making risky bet just couple of weeks ago and seeing Facebook stock plummeted quickly in two days, people are going to be suspicious. You know, the market is all about confidence and believe that everything is straight. If these confidence and beliefs are shaken, then we will have bigger problems than we have now. Stronger regulation and enforcement must be in place, otherwise people are going to hide their money under the mattress.

Even though I think Katherine Jenkins should have won, I can see why Donald Driver did. I think of all nine dances during the two night of competition, his country dance was the best. It was original and full of risks and he executed it. I thought he passed Levy during the final even though Levy was way better during the season. Levy's dances all looked similar and I agree with Len that his free style dance was not up to par. Jenkins was still the best overall but for some reason football players have a big following. I would not expect that people who are big fans of football would be fans of ballroom dancing. Also why are football players so good compare with basketball players? Now if Jeremy Lin can do well on this show, then Linsanity would be returning because the surprise would not be an Asian can dance, but a basketball player can!

I agree with LBOAYM that it was probably worse for Romney to claim that he forgot about the bullying incident when he was in high school than to admit that he did something stupid. Who advised him to say that he forgot? I would have come up with better answers than that.

1. Claim that the guy deserved it because he said Romney's favorite shoes are flip flops.

2. The guy claimed that Romney, as junior class president had made an individual mandate that everyone had to buy the year book. Romney had said that the senior president was wrong to make everyone in the school buy the year book. He said it should be up to individual classes.

3. The guy claim that Romney was against bail out for the chess team. Eventually the chess team was bailed out and won the state championship and now Romney claimed that the bankruptcy he advocated led to the chess team's success.

See, the guy deserved this so Romney was justified to beating him up. He should just have said so.

Who came up with the gay president bit? Clinton was called the first Black president. Obama said that he would not call him that until he can see if Clinton can dance. I think we should wait and see if Obama can win "Project Runway" before we call him the first gay president.

Speaking of dancing and tv shows. Maria did get rob on DWTS. I think Donald Driver should have been out. It is a very close competition this season and all four could have beaten Donnie Osmond for sure.

The news that JP Morgan Chase lost $2 billion and possibly more in derivative trading is shocking. Not that I did not expect this type of news to occur, but so soon after the financial crisis started four years ago? Really? While Wall Street is trying to kill or soften the Volcker Rule which was suppose to regulate such risky "investments"? This is like seeing your drug addict friends died and you go ahead to take the drugs yourself. We never did learn from the Savings and Loans debacle in the 1980's. But at least almost 30 years gone by before another big disaster hit. Now Chase is trying to do it again in 4 years, really?

I have said it before, derivatives are just legalized gambling. They are not investments. Hedge funds have made a lot of money but some have gone belly up also. Some of these are run or consulted by Nobel winning economists. But economists are not better at gambling than anyone of us. Otherwise they would be all going to Las Vegas. So pass the Volcker Rule without any loopholes please. Wall Street cannot police itself. As I have always said, capitalism is the best system but capitalism without regulations would be just greed and chaos.

Interesting election results over the weekend. First, France elected a new president and Greece defeated the top two parties in power. Both of these results mean the rejection of austerity measures enacted since the economic downturn in Europe. The austerity measures demanded by Germany has been hugely unpopular in Europe. It has not help the budget deficits and the economy of Europe is doing worse than that of the U.S. In England, which is not part of the euro, a 20% across the board cut has made things worse so far. In this country, Obama may well lose the election because a lot of people think that his government spending is socialistic and is holding the country's economic recovery back. Well, I am no economist and people can believe what they want but the success of the bailout of GM, Chrysler and AIG, among others, make me glad that I am here and not in Europe!

The ouster of Richard Lugar by the Tea Party is another big loss in bipartianship. Lugar was one of those people who reached across the aisle to get things done. He was also a great foreign policy expert. With his departure and that of Olympia Snowe, extremism will be worse than ever in Congress.

The Knicks are eliminated today. Jeremy Lin did not play in the series as expected. Stephen A. Smith asked the other day: "Can't he give the team 15-20 minutes? Not that I am saying that he does not want to play?'' Of course the last statement means he is questioning whether Lin is not playing because he is afraid that a poor performance will hurt his value in free agency this summer. This is absurd. If Lin could have played, he would have. A bad performance will not hurt him. Everybody can play poorly against Miami, not to mention someone coming off knee surgery and has not played in 5 weeks. The truth is the Knicks should not want him to play even if he could. They were not going to win anyway. He will be the point guard next season now that Baron Davis is out for a whole year. Why rush him back and potentially ruin his career and the Knicks chances in the future? Brandon Roy came back too early and his career eventually ended and so was Portland's chances. Rest up, Jeremy. Hope you get a call to play on the squad that scrimmages with the U.S. Olympic team. Playing against Deron Williams, Chris Paul etc. will be a great experience and improve his play next season.

Observations about couple of current events. First the back and forth the last few days between Obama and Romney regarding the anniversary of the killing of bin Laden. This was a great victory for Obama and in this election year it is no surprise that he is going to bring this to the front. He pointed out that Romney had said in the past that not so much resources should be spent in hunting down bin Laden. Romney hit back by saying that even Carter would have ordered the raid. To me, this is not much of an issue. I don't think that Obama will gain too much by talking a lot about this between now and November. Certainly his secret trip to Afghanistan yesterday does appear to be spiking the football in the end zone. The truth is that Obama was lucky. Sure Carter would have ordered the raid. He did that against Iran, remember? That didn't turn out too good and Carter was humiliated. Neither president went on the raids himself and had little to do with the outcome. But the lucky one became a hero and the unlucky one became the goat.

To me the raid was not reason why I think Obama would be better on foreign policy. I think he is much more measured in using force. When people were telling him to enter Libya or stay out, he did the right thing by getting NATO to do the job with our support. No American lives were lost with the success there. While both talk about the support for Israel, it is obvious to me that Romney (and almost any other Republican) would be more likely to preemptively strike Iran. It is this war hawk mentality that I think is very dangerous to our country. Anyone can order the most powerful force in the world to attack. It takes much more leadership to use force only when necessary. I think Obama would have gone into Afghanistan in 2001 but he would not have gone into Iraq and cost us thousands of lives and a trillion dollars.

The other event is about Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng. I think this whole thing was planned to embarrass China at the worst moment: the arrival of Hilary Clinton and Tim Geithner in China. Chen was supposedly under house arrest. I am sure that China has been monitoring his computer, cell phone etc. But if he was truly under house arrest, I find it hard to believe that he could have escaped and went all the way from Shandong to the U.S. embassy in Beijing without being apprehended. The guy is blind, he had to climb a fence! How did they know the guards are not going to be watching and they can get by them. After that they had to traveled hundreds of miles to Beijing. If he was under house arrest, how long before the guards realized he was not there anymore? Once they found him missing, I am sure they figured that he is going to a western embassy. Policemen would have been there and arrest him before he gets in. So I don't think that he was monitored that closely by China.

Chen has young children and a wife. What did he think would happened to them if he escaped? This does not sound like a guy who wanted asylum to get out of the country, unless he is very selfish. Throughout his stay in the embassy he had told the Americans he wanted to stay in China but just want better conditions. Then once the deal was made and he got into a hospital he said that the Americans had left him and that his family was threatened. He then wanted to leave the country with his family. Well, he knew darn well that that was not possible once he is in Chinese hands again. I think with all the world watching, Chen and other human rights activists know that any mistreatment to him and his family would be more eggs on China's face. Even if China keeps its bargain and do not harm them, I think the activists will complain about mistreatment anyway. To me this was all planned out just to embarrass China, nothing was going to be accomplished in the name of human rights.

But of course, this one man's action had big consequences. There were a lot on the table with Clinton's trip. North Korea, Iran, Syria, world trades are all important topics that will affect the lives of millions of people. Now China is mad and the Obama administration is going to be accused by the Republicans that it mishandled the situation by giving Chen back to China. No important work will now come out of this scheduled high level meeting. I think this planned show of escape is rather selfish on the part of Chen. I don't think he helped the cause of human rights in China and may hurt millions in other parts of the world. Not to mention he put his family at great risk with nothing to show for it.