Your customized headlines for Sat, Apr 14, 2012

Perhaps no one has more at stake in this year's presidential election than the ultra-wealthy.

If Republican front-runner Mitt Romney reaches the White House, he will push for the top 1 percent of American earners to save an average of $150,000 in taxes, according to an analysis of his tax plan by the Tax Policy Center. In a second Obama administration, these Americans would pay about $83,000 more than they do now.

On the same day that President and Michelle Obama reported that they earned $790,000 in 2011 and paid just over 20 percent in federal taxes, Mitt Romney and his wife asked the Internal Revenue Service for an extension in filing their returns.

It's one of those eternal truths. Just as you can be sure that daffodils and forsythia will blossom this time of year, you can be sure that mutual-fund investors will collectively act like blooming idiots by doing the wrong thing with their money.

John P. Jumper's high-velocity military career was over, and the former Air Force chief of staff was settling into a quiet retirement in Fredericksburg.

He and his wife had built a house. He'd signed on to corporate boards. He was ready for visits from the grandkids. Then came an unexpected call to duty: an offer to run contracting giant Science Applications International Corp. The weeks since have been a blur.

Every time a new clue turned up during renovations — a child's lace-up shoe, a bottle, a candle-holder — Abigail Wiebenson would wonder: Just who had lived in her S Street NW house?

"We'd find these things and I'd say, 'There've gotta be good stories to be told here,' " Wiebenson says.

John P. Jumper's high-velocity military career was over, and the former Air Force chief of staff was settling into a quiet retirement in Fredericksburg.

He and his wife had built a house. He'd signed on to corporate boards. He was ready for visits from the grandkids. Then came an unexpected call to duty: an offer to run contracting giant Science Applications International Corp. The weeks since have been a blur.

Perhaps no one has more at stake in this year's presidential election than the ultra-wealthy.

If Republican front-runner Mitt Romney reaches the White House, he will push for the top 1 percent of American earners to save an average of $150,000 in taxes, according to an analysis of his tax plan by the Tax Policy Center. In a second Obama administration, these Americans would pay about $83,000 more than they do now.

Think you could writer a better tax code than the one we've got? Here's your chance: The fine folks at Splitwise have a very cool interactive tax graphic where you can change the marginal rates on different income groups and eliminate various deductions and see the effect on the deficit. Go nuts.

Ever since the housing bubble burst, Americans have been fleeing the distant suburbs and exurbs. That's one way to read a recent Census Bureau report showing that those areas are being eclipsed by growth in cities and "high-density suburbs" in the past year. Here's a chart from Brookings: