As good as John McCain’s pro-growth, supply-side tax plan is, his cap-and-trade strategy unveiled this morning is very hard for conservatives to swallow. The whole cap-and-trade experience in Europe and elsewhere reveals that this is a huge government command-and-control operation that taxes, spends, and regulates on a grand scale.

As far as the Intrade pay-to-play prediction market is concerned, Senator Obama has enjoyed a considerable surge since Tuesday’s primaries. Take a look.

U.S. economist John Lipsky, who is the first deputy managing director of the IMF, is giving a speech today before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York that warns of the spread of global inflation.

Some notable quotes from last night's special primary politics edition of Kudlow & Company: Hillary's Mission Impossible This [Democratic] nomination – they will take it away from Hillary Clinton when they unwrap her cold, dead fingers from around it. She’s not going away.

The day after North Carolina and Indiana the Intrade pay-to-play betting odds in the race for president show Obama at 54 percent and McCain at 38 percent. But wait — it gets worse. The Democrats are favored to win the House and Senate by over 90 percent.

Hillary’s Wall Street bashing is a giant cheap shot and a big disappointment from the junior senator from New York. After all, Wall Street is the heart of the New York economy. It supplies an enormous volume of tax collections to finance city and state experiments in socialism and welfarism.

THE STOCK MARKET & ECONOMY...Our market all-stars will discuss and debate all the latest news, trends and developments affecting investors. With Jack Gage, Forbes magazine associate editor and others. Also: $200 OIL & THE ECONOMY and HOUSING: DO MARKETS WANT AN FHA BAILOUT?