It barely raises any money. It won't discourage people from buying corporate jets. So why does the president spend so much time talking about it?

The administration is due to release its budget later today, at which point I'll dive in emerge sometime later with a trenchant analysis clutched in my teeth as I swim madly for the shore.  Meanwhile, a note on something we know will be in the budget: deficit reduction via elimination of the perfidious "tax breaks for corporate jets".  The president seems to have been obsessed with corporate jets at least since The Audacity of Hope, and continues to argue strongly against them at every opportunity; they were a cornerstone of his stump speeches.

Legendary hedge-fund manager says austerity isn't working.

The drumbeat against austerity measures championed by Germany is growing louder. On Tuesday investor George Soros criticized Germany’s austerity policies in Europe, and suggested it leave the euro zone. He also strongly criticized the bailout it proposed in Cyprus because it forced Cypriots who had savings to share in the cost, which undermined the European model of banks relying on deposits.

Read it at CNBC

Seeks to replace sequester

Read my lips: more new taxes! The White House unveiled a budget today that makes deep cuts into the U.S. deficit by raising taxes on the wealthy and by replacing the sequester cuts. In the budget, Obama also proposed curbing the growth of cost-of-living increases in federal programs like Social Security. The odds of his budget being enacted are slim to none in a divided Congress, but may move the conversation on taxes and entitlements forward.

Read it at Reuters

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Wages may not be rising much. But an increasing number of workers are finding they can make more money at work by losing weight.

If you’ve tried all-cabbage soup diets and juice cleanses and still can’t slim down, consider the new diet craze sweeping the nation: cash for weight loss. Group workouts for money are set to replace Atkins and South Beach as the most motivating weight-loss regime.Companies and insurance companies have been experimenting with offering monetary carrots to encourage employees to eat more carrots. The Affordable Care Act—a.k.a. Obamacare—offers more financial incentives for employees trying to get healthy by losing weight or quitting smoking.

Should Google and Facebook employees pay taxes on all that free food?

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the IRS is eyeing one of the many fabulous perks of working for a high-tech company: free food. If the Journal is right, Googlers and Facebookers could soon be paying taxes on their consumption of all those luscious free meals.  Should the IRS really treat those meals as compensation? My colleague Daniel Gross doesn't think so. On the one hand, those meals really are pretty great; I've eaten in the Google cafeteria in D.

SUSAN GOLDMAN

Trading in stock halted.

Accounting firm KPMG resigned from its assignment as auditor for the troubled nutritional-supplement company Herbalife Tuesday, prompting The New York Stock Exchange to immediately halt trading in the company's shares. No stranger to bad news, Herbalife has been the subject of an epic clash between hedge fund titans Bill Ackman, Daniel Loeb, and Carl Icahn for several months—a fight the media has nicknamed “the battle of the billionaires.” Ackman called Herbalife a sophisticated “pyramid scheme,” before shorting the company's stock and placing a $1 billion bet against it. Meanwhile, Loeb and Icahn staunchly defend the company, pushing back against Ackman and continuing to buy its shares.

Read it at CNBC

In his visit to Berlin.

On his visit to Berlin today, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew pushed European countries with a budget surplus to engage in policies that would spur consumption and growth. Lew also stressed the U.S. position that a strong and healthy Europe is vital to the American economy.

Read it at Reuters

Larry Busacca/WireImage

Having tackled kids’ education, the Khan Academy founder teams up with Bank of America on his next big project: teaching adults about money.

With 6 million students logging on to its site every month seeking help with everything from physics to art history, Khan Academy is one of the largest educational resources in the world. But now, the nonprofit is attempting to reach a new audience: adults who want to improve their understanding of their finances. At BetterMoneyHabits.com, Khan Academy, in partnership with Bank of America, is offering video lessons on the essentials of money management, with topics ranging from creating a budget to understanding compound interest.

Astrid Stawiarz/Getty

He engineered the runaway success of Apple’s retail empire, but crashed and burned at the lowbrow department store. Daniel Gross on the fall of Ron Johnson.

Was Apple a smashing retail success because Ron Johnson, the executive who built Apple’s retail operations, was a retail genius? Or was Johnson deemed to be a smashing success in retail because of Apple’s genius for devising expensive, must-have products?It sure seems like the latter: Johnson’s tumultuous 18-month tenure as chief executive officer of troubled department store chain JCPenney came to a unceremonious end Monday.Johnson was hired as CEO in July 2011 and formally took the reins in November 2011.

590-foot Azzam eclipses Eclipse

Whatever floats your boat. The world’s largest private yacht, the 590-foot Azzam, has launched. The ship has put the vessel that used to hold the record, Eclipse, owned by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, into eclipse. The owner of the $600 million ship hasn’t been publicly identified, but press reports point to the Persian Gulf.

Read it at Yahoo