Two articles in today's New York Times discuss the presidential candidates and their relations with Wall Street or the banking industry. A front-page article, headlined "Banking Ties Could Hurt Joe Biden in Race With Populist Overtone," reports on Vice President Biden's links to the credit-card industry in Delaware, framing it as a potential vulnerability. A second article appears on the front of the business section and is headlined, "Candidates' Divergent Views on Wall Street." It reports that Jeb Bush was "a paid adviser to Lehman Brothers and Barclays immediately before the financial crisis."
What's odd is that neither article mentions that Bill and Hillary Clinton were paid $875,000 in 2013 for four speeches to Goldman Sachs. You'd think that if the less recent banking connections of Mr. Bush and Mr. Biden are such big news for the Times, Mrs. Clinton's Goldman connections would at least be worth a mention in at least one of the articles. They are both pretty long. The business section article also reports that Mrs. Clinton supports increasing the capital gains tax so that "a wealthy speculator who sells a stock after holding it for two years, for instance, would pay a 39.6 percent tax rate on any gains — the same top rate that is taxed on ordinary income." But that top rate applies not only to "speculators" but to people who had to sell the stock for some other reason — say, to pay unexpected family medical bills. And 39.6 percent substantially understates the tax that applies. After state and local taxes and the ObamaCare extra tax applies, the government can wind up with more than half of every dollar of income.