An apartment is now renting for half a million dollars a month in Manhattan, The Wall Street Journal reports. The lease is the most expensive ever in New York City.

The 4,786-square-foot apartment, a full floor in the Pierre Hotel overlooking Central Park, has six bedrooms and six and a half bathrooms. Amenities include a Jaguar driven by a chauffeur. The same renter has also leased a guest suite for an additional $150,000 a month.

It would be an error to draw any general conclusions about the finances of the very rich from a single lease in Manhattan. A paper released Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research compares a few strategies for estimating the total wealth of the nation's richest people and finds different methods yield a wide range of results for the past 30 years or so. Then again, the nationality of the renter is not known. In Russia, where the concentration of wealth has become extreme, only 111 people own about one fifth of the country's capital.

In any case, for anyone concerned about trends in the concentration of wealth, New York's half-million-dollar monthly rental is good news in at least one respect.

One of the real dangers of an increasing concentration of wealth, as Larry Summers has written, would be that the rich can't find enough things to spend all their money on. You can only use so many iPads, after all. Instead of spending, the rich would let their wealth pile up. There would be fewer buyers for everything the economy provides, from babysitting to pick-up trucks, and ultimately fewer chances for the lower classes to make a living.

That the 39th floor of the Pierre Hotel has been leased is a sign that the fabulously rich are finding things to spend their money on. So are solid titanium toothbrushes and so many other apparently frivolous goods and services the modern luxury market has invented.

What's in Wonkbook: 1) Torture report to be released 2) Opinions, including Friedersdorf and Brooks on policing 3) Budget could be delayed 4) California's drought 5) How the Red Sea might have parted for Moses, and more

Number of the day: 315,943. That's how many people the Obama administration deported last year, a 14 percent decline since the previous year and the fewest since he took office. Miriam Jordan in The Wall Street Journal.

Map of the day:

Nearly half of the country's Christmas trees are harvested in six counties in North Carolina and Oregon. Christopher Ingraham in The Washington Post.

1. Summary of torture report to be released

Sen. Dianne Feinstein will discuss the findings in a floor speech Tuesday. The redacted 480-page summary of a classified 6,000-page report will be released along with responses from Republicans and the CIA. Michael A. Memoli in the Los Angeles Times.

The summary includes graphic details. One man was kept awake and interrogated continuously for five days. Based on case studies, the report's authors finds that torture did not produce any useful intelligence that could not have been obtained by other means. Mark Hosenball and Jeff Mason for Reuters.

Republicans argue the summary will put Americans in danger abroad.  "Some leading Republican lawmakers have warned against releasing the report, saying that domestic and foreign intelligence reports indicate that a detailed account of the brutal interrogation methods used by the C.I.A. during the George W. Bush administration could incite unrest and violence, even resulting in the deaths of Americans." Mark Landler and Peter Baker in The New York Times.

Feinstein has supported the intelligence apparatus in other controversies. The Democrat from California defended the CIA's use of drones and the NSA's spying programs, for example, but she argues that torture is contrary to our values. "Anyone who reads this is going to never let this happen again," she said. Brian Bennett in the Los Angeles Times.

WALDMAN: If the release incites violence, then maybe the United States shouldn't practice torture. "The cynicism necessary to attempt to blame the blowback from their torture program on those who want it exposed is truly a wonder. On one hand, they insist that they did nothing wrong and the program was humane, professional, and legal. On the other they implicitly accept that the truth is so ghastly that if it is released there will be an explosive backlash against America." The Washington Post.

Bush and his lieutenants should be pardoned. By issuing pardons, President Obama can demonstrate symbolically what his administration does not have the courage to prove in the courtroom: that the torture program was illegal and criminal. Anthony D. Romero in The New York Times.

2. Top opinions

FRIEDERSDORF: If the theory of "broken windows" is true, it should be applied to police themselves. "Many people in Ferguson, Cleveland, New York City, and elsewhere would feel relieved and reassured if bad cops were stopped at the first sign of misbehavior rather than kept around for their example to spread." The Atlantic.

BROOKS: The stresses of police work make accountability for officers a challenge. Rates of suicide and post-traumatic stress disorder are frighteningly elevated for cops. That's why: "a self-supporting and insular police culture develops: In this culture no one understands police work except fellow officers; the training in the academy is useless; to do the job you’ve got to bend the rules." The New York Times.

LEONHARDT: Doug Elmendorf's CBO has been pessimistic on Obamacare. For a while now, medical costs have come in below the office's projections. Republicans in Congress who want to replace Elmendorf are even more pessimistic, though. Reflexive pessimism, without a look at the evidence, accomplishes nothing. The New York Times.

MILBANK: The New Republic is dead. Chris Hughes is "a dilettante and a fraud" who betrayed his promises to the staff. The Washington Post.

3. Budget vote could be delayed

Congress's $1.1 trillion bill could be postponed due to a dispute over terrorism insurance. The bill would keep the government operating at least through next fall. If lawmakers can't reach an agreement on terrorism insurance, they're prepared to extend Thursday's deadline to avoid shutting down the government. Ed O'Keefe in The Washington Post.

Yes,there's something called terrorism insurance. Without it, Super Bowl XLIX could be delayed or canceled. Insurers have been unwilling to issue policies against terrorism since Sept. 11, 2001. Without a subsidy from the federal government, financing large construction projects and major sporting events would be difficult, as banks would hesitate to make loans to borrowers at risk of a catastrophic attack. (As an aside, shutting down the Super Bowl would be far more politically damaging to fiscal conservatives in Congress than shutting down the government.) Howard Kunreuther and Erwann Michel-Kerjan for Bloomberg.

Republicans force concessions, including a limitation on federal authority to regulate water. The EPA's new plan to better protect water quality has raised hackles among farmers and industry representatives. Meanwhile, a proposal under discussion Monday would provide $5.4 billion in funding to contain Ebola and would also limit nutritional requirements in school lunches. Jonathan Weisman and Ashley Parker in The New York Times.

The EPA wants to regulate just about all of the water in the United States, and even a few dry creeks. Proposed federal rules on water quality would exceed the agency's authority, which is limited to waterways that are significant for interstate commerce. M. Reed Hopper and Todd F. Gaziano in The Wall Street Journal.

GREIFF: The new rules on water quality would save money. Dumping in creeks and streams has made it impossible for cities to provide safe drinking water to their residents without major investments. Bloomberg.

4. Report finds Calif. drought not due to climate change

A federal report finds that natural variation in weather patterns can explain the drought. California is the driest it has been in 12 centuries, according to previous research, but that might not be due to global warming, government researchers and academic climatologists concluded. That said, the report also forecast that California will become drier as the planet warms. Jason Samenow in The Washington Post.

The state's efforts to conserve water been uneven. Some districts haven't reduced their usage, while others are doing so drastically. Rocklin, a suburb of Sacramento, has reduced consumption by a third, ripping out 28 football fields' worth of grass. Jim Carlton in The Wall Street Journal. 

The White House has threatened to veto a drought-relief bill. Environmentalists want to be sure that salmon and smelt are protected during the drought, but the shortage of water is increasing prices for fruit and damaging California's economy. The Wall Street Journal.

5. In case you missed it

The Fed could be preparing to signal a shift on interest rates. At its meeting next week, the central bank will have to decide whether to continue its pledge to keep rates low for a "considerable time," or whether to give investors something more specific. Jon Hilsenrath in The Wall Street Journal.

Prescription opioid addicts are shopping across state lines. A new study finds that patients are finding ways of avoiding state tracking systems in order to find doctors who will give them prescription drugs. Deaths related to prescription painkillers are now more common than fatal traffic accidents. Jason Millman in The Washington Post.

Only one in four cyclists are women. Women work for less than men, and fewer of them can afford a car. If more women biked, they would enjoy expanded economic opportunities, but concerns about street harassment, the need to travel with children and the fear of looking dorky all keep them off the roads. Lucia Graves in National Journal.

The Red Sea really could have parted for Moses. Well, not the Red Sea, but the historical Sea of Reeds, if it was located in the Nile Delta. A 60-mile-per-hour wind could have moved a shallow, brackish lake, creating a bridge of dry land. Chris Mooney in The Washington Post.

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