While most in the US were celebrating the 4th of July, a Russian immigrant living in New Jersey was being held on federal charges of stealing top-secret computer trading codes from a major New York-based financial institution—that sources say is none other than Goldman Sachs. The allegations, if true, are big news because the codes the accused man, Sergey Aleynikov, tried to steal is the secret code to unlocking Goldman’s automated stocks and commodities trading businesses. Federal authorities allege the computer codes and related-trading files that Aleynikov uploaded to a German-based website help this major “financial institution” generate millions of dollars in profits each year. The platform is one of the things that apparently gives Goldman a leg-up over the competition when it comes to rapid-fire trading of stocks and commodities. Federal authorities say the platform quickly processes rapid developments in the markets and uses top secret mathematical formulas to allow the firm to make highly-profitable automated trades. –“A Goldman trading scandal?,” Matthew Goldstein, Reuters (via)

The California morass has Democrats in Washington trembling. The reason is simple. If Obama’s health-care plan passes, then we may well end up paying for it with federal slips of paper worth less than California’s. Obama has bet everything on passing health care this year. The publicity surrounding the California debt fiasco almost assures his resounding defeat. It takes years and years to make a mess as terrible as the California debacle, but the recipe is simple. All that you need is two political parties that are always willing to offer easy government solutions for every need of the voters, but never willing to make the tough decisions necessary to finance the government largess that results. Voters will occasionally change their allegiance from one party to the other, but the bacchanal will continue regardless of the names on the office doors. –“California’s Nightmare Will Kill Obamanomics,” Kevin Hassett, Bloomberg

Mr. Mehta witnessed the effects of partition firsthand: he saw a young man beaten and lynched by a mob in the street in front of his home. He said that the horror of the incident stayed with him for the rest of his life. By the time he left school, in 1952, he had found the primary motifs of his art: falling human figures, bulls trussed for slaughter and the buffalo demon being crushed by an all-powerful divinity. –“Tyeb Mehta, Painter of Emerging India, Dies at 84,” Holland Cotter, The New York Times