Your customized headlines for Fri, Mar 16, 2012

The International Monetary Fund agreed Thursday to contribute $36 billion toward the latest bailout of Greece, deepening the agency's financial exposure to a country that has become one of its most difficult rescue projects.

Federal regulators won an initial round Thursday in their defense of Wall Street fraud settlements that include no admission of wrongdoing.

The Securities and Exchange Commission and Citigroup "have a strong likelihood of success" in their joint effort to overturn a judge's decision to reject their $285 million fraud settlement, a three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals wrote.

The Carlyle Group has named Travelers Chairman Jay Fishman and former Marriott International executive William Shaw to its board of directors, and reported robust 2011 profits as the company prepares to go public.

For Goldman Sachs, the real damage of the last two days didn't come from disgruntled trader Greg Smith's resignation op-ed. It came from Goldman's defenders.

Many of the replies said, either explicitly or in effect, of course Goldman rips off its clients if doing so will help it make money. Only the naive would think otherwise. As an editorial in Bloomberg View put it , "It must have been a terrible shock when Smith concluded that Goldman actually was primarily about making money." (Disclosure: I'm a contributor to Bloomberg View.)

If you earn $500,000 this year in Maryland, you might want to stop there. Earn $1 more and your tax bill could jump by thousands of dollars.

Maryland Senate Democrats in recent weeks moved away from Gov. Martin O'Malley's (D) proposal to target six-figure earners for tax increases, preferring instead an across-the-board hike to help close a budget shortfall.

The International Monetary Fund agreed Thursday to contribute $36 billion toward the latest bailout of Greece, deepening the agency's financial exposure to a country that has become one of its most difficult rescue projects.

—Do cities benefit from hosting the NCAA?

—Male fruit flies, spurned by females, turn to booze.

—It turns out that the Muppets are, in fact, clients of Goldman Sachs.

—Roger Lowenstein profiles Ben Bernanke.

After Texas blocked abortion providers' participation in its Medicaid Women's Health Program, the White House officially notified the state Thursday afternoon that it will pull all funds from the program, which totalled about $39 million last year.

In the debate over health reform, there's a lot of crystal ball-gazing over whether employees will continue to offer health insurance, or send their employees to the new health insurance marketplaces where many could purchase subsidized coverage. One concern is that if lots of employers do this, the health reform law's price tag would skyrocket as more Americans have the federal government footing part of their insurance bill.

In York, Pa., he speaks of his father living at the local YMCA. In front of Toledo autoworkers, he calls himself the "son of an automobile man." In Media, Pa., he is the "grandson of Ambrose Finnegan," a Scranton ad man turned gas company worker. But he is also the great-grandson, on his mother's side, of Edward F. Blewitt, a member of the Pennsylvania state Senate. On his paternal side, he is connected to Maryland through a great-great grandfather who sold produce and a grandfather whose transition from Baltimore kerosene salesman to Wilmington oil executive earned the family a temporary taste of wealth. His family was rich in Boston, comfortable in Long Island and broke in Scranton. One relative died in World War II, and another, "Old Man Sheen," ran shipyards in Virginia.