Yesterday I wrote about the hypocrisy of Mitt Romney and Tommy Thompson for bashing the Obama Administration's decision to grant states more flexibility around TANF -- when Republicans, including both Romney and Thompson -- called for such flexibility during the Bush years.
On Monday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke gave a new jolt of momentum to the growing push for new measures of progress going “beyond GDP.” In prepared remarks for the 32nd general conference of the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth (IARIW), held this week in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Bernanke noted the failure of conventional market indicators in capturing the severe household impacts of the Great Recession and the continuing distress for many families and individ
A little-noticed CBO report yesterday, part of their Monthly Budget Review, found that the US has raised substantially more revenue this year than the last, while federal spending remained about the same. Whereas last year, the budget totaled $1.1 trillion by July, this year it’s only $975 billion. The deficit’s been cut by an unexpected spike in tax revenue.
The United States has two problems when it comes to jobs: There aren't enough jobs, as we all know; and a great many jobs are lousy -- a problem we hear about far less. A lousy job is one with low wages, minimal benefits, and few opportunities to move up.
About a fifth of jobs in the U.S. fit this description. And given how many workers that is -- people who work but are barely making it -- turning bad jobs into good jobs is arguably as important as creating more jobs.
It’s become a truism, but the evidence continues to mount that the Ryan budget plan would disproportionately hurt the young, sick, and poor. A new Center on Budget Policy Priorities report explores the impact of the $3 trillion dollar deficit-reduction plan on state and local governments. The cuts to state and local governments would be much more severe than those incurred by sequestration, three times greater in 2014 alone.
One day Standard Chartered bank and its powerful allies are complaining that New York's bank regulator, Benjamin Lawsky, has overreached and saying that, at most, they had laundered only $14 million for Iran. The next day -- as in today -- Standard Chartered is agreeing to pay a $340 million civil penalty to settle Lawsky's suit and agreeing, explicitly, that Lawsky's original figure of laundered funds -- a whopping $250 billion -- was correct.
Sixteen years ago, when Bill Clinton signed a harsh welfare reform law, one upside seemed to be that U.S. society could move past the endless, polarizing debate about welfare dependency.
Ben Protess made an interesting comparison today in a DealBook article on the rise of CFTC Chief Gary Gensler and the agency's successful work on the LIBOR rate fixing scandal:
Pennsylvania state court judge Robert Simpson refused to issue a preliminary injunction against the state’s controversial voter ID legislation today, despite allegations that the law was discriminatory and passed for partisan gain.
Ben Protess made an interesting comparison today in a DealBook article on the rise of CFTC Chief Gary Gensler and the agency's successful work on the LIBOR rate fixing scandal:
ALBANY — Cleanup of hard-hit areas in New York from Tropical Storm Irene is expected to take months because roads and bridges have to be rebuilt, farms restored and infrastructure reconstructed.
While experts say the flooding was impossible to prevent, the storm that ravaged upstate wasn't initially expected because most of the original focus was on New York City and its suburbs, which ultimately didn't get hit as badly as rural areas.
Sen.
A Silverton think tank said Tuesday that Oregon's middle class faces big issues in coming years.
The Oregon Center for Public Policy, in a report called The Fraying of Oregon's Middle Class, contends that well-paying jobs are in short supply as the cost of maintaining a family continues to increase. The center compiled the report with New York-based researcher Demos.
On Thursday, President Obama will deliver a major speech on America's employment crisis. But too often, what is lost in the call for job creation is a clear idea of what jobs we want to create.