In the final book of the famous series of political novels that began with ADVISE AND CONSENT, we get a (relatively) happy ending called THE PROMISE OF JOY, in which Drury's idealized hero, Orrin Knox, finally becomes President. His inaugural speech is recorded in some detail. This one paragraph -- which does not really arise out of anything else in the plot, jumps out at me. "Agriculture will continue to receive the same close attention from my administration that it has received from others. The price gap between producer and consumer is still too low for the producer, too high for the consumer, too close to profiteering for the middleman. We will seek ways to close that gap." What on earth does that mean? As I say, it is from Drury's hero. We should not lightly write it off as meaningless political blather. The gap between producer and consumer? Presumably this refers to the gap between what the farmer gets selling wheat and what the consumers put out buying the
Macquarie Infrastructure v. Moab Partners -- a unanimous decision came down from our Supreme Court last week. The opinion, written by Justice Sotomayor, says in essence that securities fraud, regarded as an actionable private tort, is a tort of malfeasance, not of nonfeasance. Let us abstract from the particular facts a bit. Consider any case in which a plaintiff believes that he was sold stock by the issuing corporation at an unrealistically high price. He has sued. Asked why he bought it at such a price, the plaintiff might say, "They didn't tell me about X, a fact known to them and one that soon thereafter eliminated the value of the securities at issue." This decision tells that plaintiff: that isn't enough. You're going to have to plead, and in due course prove, that they made materially false statements, not simply that they failed to make certain true ones. The decision is a matter of interpreting the text of an SEC rule, 10b–5(b), which makes it