As you travel from Wall Street to Pennsylvania Avenue, economic rationality stops and political rationality takes over just as you hit the Beltway. This site is your ticket across that gap, analyzing what makes political sense, what makes economic sense, and rarely what just makes sense.

We will provide top economic and political analysis, describe insiders' thinking, and scoop the media as often as we can. You will find plenty of predictions and enough humor to keep you coming back for more.

There are many reasons behind what governments and markets do to each other, and we're going to keep blogging until we uncover them all.

Capital Gains and Gains reflects the personal opinions and insights of Stan Collender, Pete Davis, Andrew Samwick and Troy K. Schneider. It does not necessarily reflect the opinions of any organization with which these individuals are affiliated.

About Stan Collender

Stan Collender is a former New Yorker who, after getting a degree from the University of California, Berkeley, moved to Washington to get it out of his system. That was more than 30 years ago.

During most of his career, Collender has worked on the federal budget and congressional budget process, including stints on the staff of the House and Senate Budget Committees; founding the Federal Budget Report, a newsletter that was published for almost two decades; and for the past 11 years writing a weekly column for NationalJournal.com and now RollCall.com. He is currently a managing director for Qorvis Communications, where he spends most of his time working with and for financial services clients.

About Pete Davis

Pete Davis advises Wall Street money managers on Washington policy developments that affect the financial markets. President of his own consulting firm since 1992, Davis Capital Investment Ideas, he draws on 11 years of experience as a Capitol Hill economist with the Joint Committee on Taxation (1974-1981), the Senate Budget Committee (1981-1983), and Senator Robert C. Byrd (1992). He worked in the House and Senate, and for Republicans and Democrats.

Davis brought the first computer policy model, the Treasury Individual Income Tax Model, to Capitol Hill in early 1974, when he became a revenue estimator on the Joint Committee on Taxation. He formulated the 1975 rebate, the earned income tax credit, the 1976 estate tax rates, the 1978 marginal tax rates, and the Roth-Kemp tax cut. He left Capitol Hill in 1983 for the Washington Research Office of Prudential-Bache Securities, where he advised investors for seven years.

Davis has long written a newsletter on the Washington-Wall Street connection for his clients; Capital Gains and Games is his first foray into the blogosphere.

About Andrew Samwick

Andrew Samwick is a professor of economics and Director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. He is most widely known for his work on the economics of retirement, and his scholarly work has covered a range of topics, including pensions, saving, taxation, portfolio choice, and executive compensation. In July 2003, Samwick joined the staff of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, serving for a year as its chief economist and helping to direct the work of about 20 economists in support of the three Presidential appointees on the Council.

Samwick's previous blog was the widely read Vox Baby -- the archives of which are available here.

About Troy K. Schneider

Troy K. Schneider is New Media Editor at the New America Foundation -- a non-partisan think tank based in Washington, D.C.

Prior to joining New America, Schneider was Managing Director for Electronic Publishing at the Atlantic Media Company, where he oversaw the online operations of The Atlantic Monthly, National Journal, The Hotline and The Almanac of American Politics, among other publications. As the founding editor of NationalJournal.com, he commissioned and edited Collender's aforementioned "Budget Battles" column.

Schneider has written for a wide range of publications, including The New York Times, WashingtonPost.com, Governing, and many of the other titles listed above. With Capital Gains and Games, however, his role is that of publisher and occasional editor.