Now the companies responsible for this technology are branching out. Companies like Norway's Cyviz, Belgium's Barco and Canada's Christie Digital are marketing 3-D "media walls" to militaries, to pharmaceutical companies, to aerospace companies, and more. Pharmaceutical researchers based in offices around the world can simultaneously, for instance, make a close examination of the molecular structure of a virus, and figure out strategies for attacking it. The companies are hot competitors in Washington, D.C., at the moment, vying for the business of government agencies.

I asked Washington-based Cyviz executive Jeff Eisenhard to talk about the technology.

How? The link is an obscure tax provision in the House version of the health care bill, explains tax attorney Jerome Breed, a partner at Bryan Cave LLP. The provision actually has nothing to do with health care either—its purpose is to raise revenue.

The provision centers around the idea of “economic substance.” It puts into legislation the idea that a transaction (such as putting solar panels on a house or a buying health care policy) has to have some economic substance (i.e. an economic return) to be eligible for a tax credit. In the case of solar panels, the federal government offers a tax credit of 30% of the cost of systems consumers install. But what if the return to the consumer is mostly in the tax credit—so that they really don’t get any other economic benefit? “It’s not clear if, when you take away the effect of the credit, there has been a meaningful change in their economic position,” explains Breed. So if an economic substance requirement passed, the consumer would no longer be eligible for the tax credit.

Renwables power isn’t the only industry that could get hit by this provision. The economic substance doctrine would also make it harder to use the low income housing tax credit, the credit for rehabbing historical buildings, and others, says Breed.

Why is the provision in the bill at all? It’s a revenue raiser. The House expects to get about $5.4 billion, mostly from penalties levied from transactions that don’t meet the economic substance test. The provision is also supposed to discourage people from entering into transactions that don’t result in economic substance, thus preventing tax money for being used for dubious purposes.

Clearly, some sort of provision disallowing dubious transactions is needed. Otherwise, “there could be fraud,” says Breed. “Someone could claim tax credit for building 1000 solar panels in the desert that don’t exist, or could claim that the panels cost $1 million when they only cost $100,000. So it’s appropriate to protect against that type of transaction.”

The worry is, though, that a blanket prohibition against transactions without economic substance will also knock out many legitimate transactions. Tax lawyers have been meeting with the Joint Committee on Taxation to push for a compromise position, so far without success.

The U.S. union workforce is increasingly female, Asian or Latino, and more highly educated, according to a study released today by the non-profit Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C.

The report, “The Changing Face of Labor, 1983-2008," chronicles the demographic shift that’s taken place over the past 25 years among union members. It underscores that new forces will continue to shape the political agendas of labor unions, which played a key role in get-out-the-vote operations in Presidential elections.

“The view that the typical union worker is a white male manufacturing worker may have been correct a quarter of a century ago, but it’s not an
accurate description of those in today's labor movement,” said John Schmitt, senior economist at CEPR and an author of the report. “The unionized workforce is changing with the country.”

All told, 58% of U.S. doctors said their patients often have difficulty paying for medications and other medical care, compared with 5% to 37% in the other countries surveyed. In addition, U.S. doctors are less likely than those in the other countries surveyed to offer care outside of regular office hours, and are far, far behind several other nations in the use of electronic health records that could reduce errors.

The survey, conducted by the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund, questioned 10,000 doctors in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Britain and the U.S. between February and July of this year.

The U.S. spent $7,290 per person on health care in 2007 -- more than double the expenditures by Britain, France and Germany -- with no meaningful edge in the quality of care on a number of measures, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The UN ranks France the best in the world for health care.

The Commonwealth Fund concludes:

Despite spending more on health care than other countries, an international survey finds the United States lags behind on important measures of access, quality, and use of health information technology. There are opportunities to learn as other countries move ahead to enhance the primary care foundations of their health care systems.

A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research claims that extending the carryback period from two years to five years as proposed in the legislation would prove to be a $34 billion financial windfall for corporate America (most major banks are excluded from receiving the tax benefits because firms that received TARP money do not qualify).

The 36-page document was put together in September by the International Federation of Health Plans, which represents 100 insurers in 31 countries. It consists of a number of charts that show the difference between what the U.S. pays for any number of medical services, and what other industrialized countries pay.

First, the president is meeting for the board of outside advisors -- known as the the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board (PERAB) -- he named soon after taking office. This will be the second meeting of the PERAB, whose outside members include GE CEO Jeff Immelt, AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka and Robert Wolf, the head of UBS Group America. Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker heads the group; a full list of attendees is below.

According to the White House, the idea is to discuss "long-term, innovation based ideas to sustain growth and continue to create jobs of the future." The meeting, which will take place in the Roosevelt Room, starts at 11:10 and is being streamed on www.whitehouse.gov/live.

And that's just a start. In the afternoon, starting at 2 PM, the President's full economic team will be attemding a meeting of the National Economic Council led by NEC head Larry Summers. They, too, will be mulling over the state of the economy and debating Administration efforts to create new jobs and put the country on the path to sustainable, long-term growth.

Both meetings have an all star roster. Summers's NEC meeting will include Domestic Policy advisor Melody Barnes, Office of Energy and Climate Change Director Carol Browner, Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, Export-Important Bank Chairman Fred Hochberg, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett, NSC Director James Jones, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, Chief of Staff to the Vice President Ron Klain, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, SBA Administrator Karen Mills, OMB Director Peter Orszag, Interior Secretary Ken Salazer, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

The PERAB meeting, chaired by Volcker, features a host of prominent insiders and outsiders as well. Board members include Anna Burger, Chair, Change to Win; John Doerr, Partner, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers; William H. Donaldson, Former Chairman, SEC; Roger W. Ferguson, Jr., President & CEO, TIAA-CREF; Mark T. Gallogly, Founder & Managing Partner, Centerbridge Partners L.P.; Timothy Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury; Austan Goolsbee, Staff Director and Chief Economist; Jeff Immelt, Chairman & CEO, GE; Monica C. Lozano, Publisher & Chief Executive Officer, La Opinion; Charles E. Phillips, Jr., President, Oracle Corporation; Penny Pritzker, Chairman & Founder, Pritzker Realty Group; Larry Summers, Director of the National Economic Council; David F. Swensen, Chief Investment Officer, Yale University; Richard L. Trumka, President, AFL-CIO; Paul Volcker, Chairman; Robert Wolf, Chairman & CEO, UBS Group Americas. There are a few other administration attendees as well, including David Axelrod, Special Advisor to the President; Carol Browner, Office of Energy and Climate Change Director; Rahm Emanuel, Chief of Staff; Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to the President and Director of Inter-governmental Affairs

The world's largest publicly traded oil company reported its third-quarter earnings today, and -- apart from its missed profit numbers -- natural gas is the most significant story.

It's been clear for a year or more that Exxon -- along with most of Big Oil -- is becoming more of a natural gas-led company than a dominant oil play. That's significant because generally oil earns a lot more money by volume than natural gas. But since accessible conventional oil is in shorter and shorter supply -- at least at economical-to-produce costs -- Big Oil is making a virtue of the necessity of turning to natural gas for replenishing its reserve base.

While Reid won plaudits from unions and the left of his party by pledging to include a public insurance plan that states can opt out of in the Senate bill, Pelosi backed down on her efforts to include the most aggressive plans for a public option in the House bill. For weeks, she had been pushing for a "robust" public option that would reimburse hospitals and doctors at Medicare rates. But conservative Blue Dogs and others from rural states would have none of it: they insisted that they would only support a public insurance option if it negotiates rates with health care providers like any private insurer.

FDIC Chief Sheila Bair spoke at the Town Hall Los Angeles this morning, sharing her thoughts on financial markets and some of the policy issues she faces as one of the nation’s top banking authorities. Formerly a professor of regulatory affairs at the University of Massachusetts, Bair speaks in a rapid fire style. So I’ll put her comments in bullet points.

On the economy as a whole
Bair said the Administration was winding down some of the emergency programs introduced in the wake of the crisis such as the TARP funding. “Things are getting better,” she said. “It’s time for government to get out and let the markets work.”

They’ll be more bad news though.
“Banking is a lagging indicator. They’ll go through the process of cleaning up their balance sheets for at least two quarters past the end of the recession.” There are now 416 trouble banks, 106 that have failed this year. Bair said banks will see $100 billion in losses over the five year period beginning in 2008. About $60 billion has been recognized already.

It’s increasingly likely that Congress will extend and expand the popular home buyer tax credit, which will expire next month. CNN.com reported today that a compromise proposal based on bills that have already been introduced could pass the Senate as early as this week (assuming that it is attached to a bill to extend unemployment benefits).

The compromise bill would likely open the program to some existing homeowners. The expiring tax credit is limited to buyers who have not owned a home for at least two years.

Unfortunately, GMAC highlights its weak point all too clearly.

That's not to say that the proposed legislation is useless. Even critics of the approach tend to agree that the federal government needs to do a better job of watching for financial-sector risks that could shake the economy, and needs better tools to do that, as well as to dismantle big and complex firms before they threaten serious harm. Systemic-risk monitoring and resolution authority are by most accounts badly needed.

But in the end, the question isn't just whether the government is vigilant enough, or has the right tools at hand, but also whether it will have the political will to use them -- and to stick out the consequences. That's where GMAC comes in.

A bit of a brouhaha erupted recently over basketball games at the White House. Seems President Barack Obama likes to unwind over a friendly game of basketball, and invites a rotating squad of high-level Washington power brokers to join him on the White House court. All of them, of course, are men, a growing point of contention in the feminist blogosphere.

I can already hear the groans from many readers, who likely think this is just a bunch of angry women getting their knickers in a twist over some minor male/female difference. I might have thought the same, except for an image that stopped me short while reading a front page story in the New York Times about the controversy, headlined "Man's World At White House? No Harm, No Foul, Aides Say."

The Fed's proposals are broad -- reaching every bank, with special attention for the biggest, and potentially touching every facet of the pay structure. The Treasury's rules only apply to the seven companies that have gotten extraordinary taxpayer aid -- including AIG, Bank of America, GM and Chrysler -- but dig deep into the minutiae of compensation for as many as 175 executives and top earners at those firms.

But both efforts, while ambitious, illustrate what may prove to be the key shortcomings of their approaches: The Fed's guidelines count on the agency to succeed where it failed before, and the Treasury's dictates fall back on some of the old assumptions about pay and performance that lay behind pre-crisis compensation practices.

“Sembra” went on to hold a Q&A session, elaborating on the Chamber’s purported new position. But suddenly, Eric Wohlschlegel, the Chamber’s real press person, burst in through the back door of the Press Club’s Zenger Room. “This press conference is a hoax,” he said. “I don’t know who these people are, but they don’t represent the Chamber!”

Wohlschlegel said he had heard about the event just a few minutes before, when a reporter mistakenly turned up at the U.S. Chamber itself looking for the press conference. Press conference? What press conference? Hearing what it supposedly was about, Wohlschlegel rushed over to the Press Club to confront the imposters. A number of the 'reporters' in the room were not real reporters either.

It was too late for at least one media outlet. Reuters had already run a story on its webpage with the news of the Chamber’s reversal—and the story had been also picked up by the New York Times web page. Reuters and the New York Times ran a hasty correction. CNBC also was taken in.

Who was responsible for the hoax? My first thought was Greenpeace. After all, it was a well-organized, not inexpensive stunt. The hoaxers rented the room at the Press Club, created their own Chamber of Commerce stationary and website, and even had a phone number which led to voice mail saying “you have reached the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.”

But while a Greenpeace staffer was impressed by the stunt, he said that his organization was not involved. Instead, the imposters came from a prankster group called the Yes Men. In the past, they’ve been successful at impersonating everyone from a Dow Chemical spokesman (and appearing as such on BBC news) to ExxonMobil representatives.