How to value the economic role that natural resources play and incorporate some of these external costs so that not only are we aware of the impacts, we can begin to start incorporate them into pricing.
The Supreme Court issued a little-noticed decision in a Maryland case that gave the green light to states to eliminate the repugnant practice of “prison-based gerrymandering.”
Yesterday, Wells Fargo was slapped with $175 million fine for systematically steering minority homeowners into higher interest loans -- and, indeed, providing financial incentives for brokers to stick borrowers with the highest rates they could. Abhorrent behavior.
An essential element of the American Dream is ensuring that each generation has greater opportunities than the last. What, then, do we make of a generation that can earn more than their parents, but still can't seem to climb the economic ladder?
Every day brings more reminders of the terrible unfairness that besets our country, the tragic reversal of fortune experienced by millions who once had good lives and steady jobs, now gone.
An article in the current issue of Rolling Stone chronicles “The Fallen: The Sharp, Sudden Decline of America’s Middle Class” and describes a handful of middle-class men and women made homeless, forced to live out of their cars in church parking lots in Southern California.
Nearly every week comes more evidence that the culture of the financial sector hasn't changed much since the crisis of 2008. Greed remains the norm, along with lax ethics.
The think tank Demos has been doing a really stellar job commemorating the anniversary of Michael Harrington’s “The Other America” — as mentioned in my poverty charts post yesterday — and their best item so far is this series of beautiful interactive charts illustrating the state of poverty in America:
Following up on our last post on the link between climate change and extreme weather, a new scientific study was released that found that manmade climate change increases the probability of extreme weather patterns. The study was a joint effort between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the U.S. and the Met Office in the U.K.
Fifty years ago, Michael Harrington wrote The Other America, documenting – among the many ravages of poverty – that millions of children in the richest country on earth went to bed hungry every night. His book inspired two Democratic presidents, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, to launch a war on poverty, then estimated at more than 20 percent of the population.
So far, as a result of the LIBOR scandal -- in which Barclays manipulated the all-important London Inter-bank Offered Rate, which governs hundreds of trillions of dollars of loans, securities and derivatives -- the bank has been fined over $450 million by regulators and its CEO and COO have resigned. A broader investigation is underway. The implications of the episode to the new financial regulatory regime currently being implemented are wide-ranging and only slowly emerging.
President Obama opened up a fissure within his own party when he called yesterday for repealing the Bush tax cuts for households making over $250,000. Other Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, have argued for a repeal that would only affect households making over $1 million.
Since 2008, working families have done everything they can to get by – changing spending habits, paying down debt, taking on 2nd (or 3rd jobs), digging into savings and retirement funds, and even cutting back on medical care – but they’re still falling behind.
The home mortgage crisis and Great Recession destroyed a generation of economic progress for African-American families. Now, reports the Washington Post, the discriminatory impact of credit scores and reports could cement the disadvantages into place for decades to come.
The latest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reveal the last in a three month trend of weak job growth. With only 80,000 jobs added in the month of June, the economy failed to generate enough work to keep up with the population growth of the labor force, much less fuel a recovery for America’s workers. The unemployment rate for all workers held steady at 8.2 percent.
Even though it’s only the 9th of July, nearly 3,400 maximum and minimum temperature records have been tied or broken so far this month. Dozens of people have died and the lack of rainfall combined with the extreme heat is threatening the Midwest’s corn crop.
Are big corporations taking over American elections? It depends whether you ask liberals or conservatives, who can’t even agree on the basic facts.
In the liberal universe, big corporations have swallowed politics. Common Cause President Bob Edgar summed up this version of reality at a press conference in March, declaring: “We, the people, will not stand idly by while the country’s major corporations use their massive wealth to buy our democracy.”
The LIBOR-fixing scandal that has engulfed Barclays and prompted investigation of Citigroup, Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC, UBS, Lloyds, Deutsche Bank, ICAP (the huge broker for traders) and possibly others has been down-played by some experts and induced outrage from others. More fines like the $453 million extracted from Barclays will undoubtedly be announced. And perhaps more resignations such as those of Barclay’s CEO and COO last week are in the offing. But the financial press is struggling to find the broader implications.