St. Louis Fed President James Bullard is worried about deflation, and he has a new paper out today, that has caught the attention of Fed watchers everywhere. Here's the money quote:

The U.S. is closer to a Japanese-style outcome today than at any time in recent history.

For a quick review of what happened during Japan's "lost decade," listen to our interview with Adam Posen, author of Japan's Financial Crisis and Its Parallels to U.S. Experience.

Citigroup has agreed to pay the SEC $75 million to settle charges that the company misled investors about the amount of its subprime exposure. According to the complaint,

...Citigroup repeatedly made misleading statements in earnings calls and public filings about the extent of its holdings of assets backed by subprime mortgages. Between July and mid-October 2007, Citigroup represented that subprime exposure in its investment banking unit was $13 billion or less, when in fact it was more than $50 billion.

Bruno Vincent/Getty Images Europe

Internet gambling could soon be legal again.

Faced with huge budget shortfalls, Congress is considering legalizing and taxing Internet gambling, a move that could generate billions of dollars in tax revenue for the government.

A House committee yesterday approved a bill that would legalize online poker and other non-sports betting. A companion bill, which has yet to be voted on, would allow the Internal Revenue Service to begin taxing online gambling businesses.

"This is money sitting on the table," a spokesman for a Washington-based Internet gambling initiative told Bloomberg News.

Goldman Sachs employees are going to have to be a lot more careful about which words they use in emails, text messages and instant messages. The WSJ reports that the company has warned its employees it will soon be screening their electronic communication for swear words and acronyms (even words that contain *** won't fly.)

Why the stepped up enforcement? Well it's likely got something to do with that infamous Senate hearing back in April, when Senator Carl Levin, quoting from a Goldman memo, said the word s****y at least 12 times in under 5 minutes.

The Federal Reserve says "sluggish" activity in real estate markets contributed to slower growth in some areas of the country, in the last two months. In its latest survey of the 12 Federal Reserve Districts, known as the Beige Book, the Fed found that while "economic activity has continued to increase, on balance, " many districts reporting increased activity noted that it was only "modest."

Nearly all Districts reported sluggish housing markets in the months since the homebuyer tax credit expired on April 30. While some Districts, such as Boston and St. Louis, reported an increase in May and June home sales on a year-over-year basis, some contacts noted that these sales may reflect closings of homes under contract by the April tax credit deadline.

Commercial and industrial real estate markets continued to struggle in all twelve Districts. Overall, vacancy rates were flat to slightly increased and continued to exert downward pressure on rents. Construction activity remained weak in most Districts.

Areas that saw improvement include the manufacturing and service sectors.

The report is in line with comments made by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke last week, during which he said he expected "moderate growth," but expected the housing market to remain "weak, with the overhang of vacant or foreclosed houses weighing on home prices and construction."

Nick Ut/AP

Rick Norsigian of Fresno, Calif. bought a set of glass negatives for $45 at a garage sale a decade ago. Today, his find may be worth $200 million.

A set of glass negatives purchased a decade ago at a garage sale may have gained $199,999,955 in value yesterday. A team of experts on Tuesday identified the set as the work of the iconic American photographer Ansel Adams, the WSJ reports.

But the folks at Adams' publishing rights trust aren't buying it.

"Do you have any idea how many people were photographing Yosemite in the 1920s and 1930s? Millions! It could be anyone," the managing trustee told the WSJ.

The controversy over whether the negatives may be millions of dollars worth of art, or just a dusty pile of glass shards, calls back a question we investigated last month: How do you decide how much a work of art is worth?

Monkey Business Images

What do you remember from kindergarten? Maybe your teacher or your best friend's name, but what about what you learned? Can you recall what you were taught?

A new study about kindergarten education suggests that what took place in that classroom may play a much larger role in your future than previously thought, particularly in regards to earnings potential.

Chana Joffe-Walt/NPR

This house in Florida was sold into what may have been a mortgage-fraud ring.

Recently we learned from a group of reporters at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune that one of the mortgages in Toxie, our toxic asset, was part of a real-estate scheme being investigated by the FBI. It's a scheme that allegedly involves $200 million in fraudulent loans.

So we traveled to Florida to find out how the scheme worked. The reporters there told us it all centered around a man named Craig Adams, who was flipping houses back and forth among a circle of friends and business associates. The people in the circle would buy homes for higher and higher prices, taking out larger and larger loans from the bank and then divide that money amongst themselves.

The first person whose home was sold into that circle was Dr. Fred Bloom, who watched the price on his former home rise rapidly for 10 years, before he finally learned the truth.

Robert Smith/NPR

At the $7 million playground that opened today in New York City, there are hundreds of giant foam shapes for kids to play with, and not a swing set in sight.

The Imagination Playground is the latest in a string of fancy, innovative playgrounds that have opened recently in the city. For anybody who has ever gone down a slide, this raises a few questions:

Why were playgrounds so boring for so long? And what's suddenly changed?

Credit-card rewards — cash back, frequent-flier miles, etc. — benefit the wealthy at the expense of the poor, according to a new study by economists at the Boston Fed.

These being economists, they even put some precise numbers on the finding:

On average, and after accounting for rewards paid to households by banks, the lowest-income household ($20,000 or less annually) pays $23 and the highest-income household ($150,000 or more annually) receives $756 every year.

Here's the authors' reasoning.

Alyson Hurt/NPR

"Since reaching its recent trough in April 2009, the housing market has really only stabilized at this lower level."

Home prices rose in May, according to figures released this morning.

A bunch of other housing indicators have been pointing to a weakening housing market lately, so rise in the Case Shiller index — up 1 percent compared with the previous month, and up 5 percent compared with May of '09 — was a bit of a surprise.

Even S&P, which puts out the index, doesn't seem to have much faith in the rise.

sfpark.org

San Francisco is about to spend $25 million to answer a simple question: How much should a city charge for parking?

The price should be cheap enough that most of the metered spaces and city parking lots are always almost full.

But it shouldn't be so cheap that spaces are entirely full, leaving drivers frustrated and adding to congestion as cars circle endlessly looking for a place to park.

"It's the 'Goldilocks' principle of parking spaces," said Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at UCLA who wrote a book called "The High Cost of Free Parking."

Shoup's work was the inspiration for a high-tech project San Francisco is launching today. Its aim: to set parking prices just right.

BP said today that it's taking a charge of $32.2 billion to pay for the Gulf oil spill. And, the company suggested, it could ultimately wind up on the hook for more.

The charge includes the costs associated with the spill to date (including those incurred by the federal government), the $20 billion escrow fund that was already announced and "future costs which can be estimated reliably at this time."

Next up on Washington's list of Economic Things to Fight Over: the Bush tax cuts. The cuts were passed as temporary measures in 2001 and 2003, and they're set to expire at the end of this year. Congress is trying to figure out what to do.

What's the fight over?

Republicans and Dems agree that the cuts should largely remain in place next year for most people.

But the Obama administration and many Congressional Dems want to allow the cuts to expire for families making more than $250,000 a year. That could raise nearly $500 billion over the next 10 years, according to one estimate.

Republicans, and some Congressional Dems, want to extend the tax cuts for the wealthy as well.