I'm not a lawyer but the assertion this week by Raj Rajaratnam, the founder of Galleon Group that the feds shouldn't have wiretapped him because they didn't need to seems kind of - what's the lawyer word? - specious.

A big piece of the government's case is built around wiretaps in which Galleon associates seem to be talking about insider trading in a manner that's not very flattering to their defense (20 people have been indicted).  "If the wiretaps are suppressed, it won't completely destroy it, but will definitely pull the rug out from under the government's case," Joseph DiBenedetto, a criminal defense lawyer not involved in the case, tells the NY Times.

It's a cliché to say that the latest joblessness stats are "not as bad" as the last report.  But there you have it, fewer first-time filings for unemployment benefits in the week ending Nov. 21 than in the week before that.

The Labor Department usually releases the report on a Thursday, but published it today because tomorrow is Thanksgiving (irony alert).

Wondering who in these tumultuous times you can trust to rate mortgage securities?

Join the crowd.  Thus the coronation last week of PIMCO by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners in announcing its hiring of the world's biggest bond fund to stand in for the companies -- Moody's Investor Services, Standard's and Poor and Fitch -- that have the government imprimatur to do this work but haven't executed so good these past couple of three or four years.

Goldman Sachs, finally, is responding constructively to the public relations beating it's been taking these past several profitable months. 

The deal between the IRS and UBS is getting quite the flurry of attention. Turns out the Swiss banking giant hasn’t been just pulling names out of a hat in cooperating with the American tax inquiry. It’s followed a cutoff point on the size of accounts – and then, presumably, pulling names out of a hat.

The WSJ reports that somewhere in the neighborhood of 14,700 U.S. taxpayers have stepped up to take advantage of an amnesty program on the IRS investigation into broader offshore tax evasion. But the agency is quick today to say that UBS still owes it about 4,000 names. The bank has turned in roughly 500 people but its agreement with the IRS promises 4,450.

New-law alert: Companies can no longer ask employees to part with genetic background information.  The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act – from here on out known as GINA – goes into effect this month and what it boils down to for employers is a ban on any requirement that would make workers cough up (so to speak) such information.  It also explicitly bars companies from using genetic information in deciding whom to fire, hire or promote.  And it makes it illegal for employer health-care plans to use genetic information to determine whether a worker is included in such a plan.

"A lot of people incentivize employees to provide this family medical information,” John C. Stivarius Jr., an Atlanta lawyer and expert on the new rule tells the NY Times. “They give them some extra paid time off if they participate in surveys. Now they can't do that.”

Prosecutors gamely accepted Tuesday's jury decision to acquit two former Bear Stearns hedge fund executives, and champions of the defendants said it was a sign that the government was banking too much on public rancor toward Wall Street and not enough on evidence.

That's some creepy stuff the feds wheeled out on Thursday in their indictment (names here) of 14 more people in the Galleon Group insider-trading scandal.  

It's a tangled and unseemly web prosecutors are describing (the art department at the SEC posts a helpful diagram here).

In a move that sent jitters through the banking industry this week - and that may yet infect the U.S. - the European Union told public-bailout recipient ING to get rid of its insurance holdings and focus on its original business - banking.

It's the fallout of the devilish deal ING implicitly bought into when it accepted public aid, and it reduces Amsterdam-based ING's status enormously - its insurance business is what it's known best for.