America's students are facing a serious threat from subprime private loans, and the situation could worsen unless Congress votes to close a potential loophole in the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency.
The United States has long granted trade preferences to developing countries that meet various criteria. These criteria, which are stipulated by the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), have changed with time — reflecting U.S. economic and foreign policy priorities.
While the criteria include non-support for terrorism, enforcement of intellectual property rights, and respect for internationally recognized worker rights, the GSP does not include an environmental provision.
The United States has long granted trade preferences to developing countries that meet various criteria. These criteria, which are stipulated by the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), have changed with time — reflecting U.S. economic and foreign policy priorities.
While the criteria include non-support for terrorism, enforcement of intellectual property rights, and respect for internationally recognized worker rights, the GSP does not include an environmental provision.
Comprehensive and meaningful systemic risk reform must undo many of the ill-advised deregulatory measuresof the past 20 years, including the four key changes wrought by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.
Since the Spring of 2007 and continuing into the Summer of 2009, Public Works: The Demos Center for the Public Sector and the Topos Partnership have collaborated on a Ford Foundation-funded effort to create a new public conversation on the role of government in the economy. This effort has included a wide range of qualitative and quantitative research efforts, spanned a period of dramatic change in the national economic landscape, and built on earlier research conducted by Topos principals concerning the public's view of government and public understandings of low wage work.
Even before the Great Recession of 2008, today's young adults were on track to have the dubious distinction of being the first generation in a century not likely to end up better off than their parents. Stagnant wages, job insecurity, the decline in employer sponsored health insurance and retirement benefits, rapid increases in the cost of basic expenses, soaring debt, and minimal savings have diminished the prospects for opportunity and mobility.
In a recent report from the Heritage Center for Data Analysis (2008) titled Welfare Reform a Factor in Lower Voter Registration at Public Assistance Offices, authors Muhlhausen and Tyrrell argue that the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA)--passed in 1996 as part of Clinton's Welfare overhaul-- is an important cause of the decline in the number of individuals who have registered to vote in public assistance agencies.
Congress passed the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) in 1993 in order to increase the number of eligible citizens who register to vote in federal elections. To help meet this goal, Section 7 of the NVRA requires state public assistance agencies to provide voter registration services to applicants and clients. Recent research has indicated that the number of voter registration applications from public assistance agencies has de- clined 79 percent since initial implementation of the law in 1995.
To increase postsecondary success among low- to moderate-income students, we must reform financial aid and provide additional financial supports to help students cover the cost of living expenses.
Even before the downturn, millions of households were experiencing difficulties meeting the most basic expenses. Now, as families experience declining home values and tightened credit markets, many are falling behind on their mortgage and credit card payments.
Credit card debt continues to threaten the financial stability of many low- and middle-income families in the United States, hampering their ability to save and move up the economic ladder. When shortfalls arise, credit has been the only available safety net to help these families make ends meet. In this economic crisis, even though America’s households took on less credit card debt in 2008 than the year before, high levels of revolving debt from previous charges and compounding interest keep balances high and trap families in a vicious cycle.
Part of a Demos series of reports on deregulation showing that often the most significant impact is on the quality and reliability of work — in this case, on port trucking.
Over the past eight years, even as the U.S. signed a number of new bilateral trade pacts, the U.S. government actually decreased its capacity for promoting strong labor standards and enforcing the labor provisions of trade agreements. The Bush Administration sought to slash funding for the Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) at the U.S. Department of Labor and, though it wasn't entirely successful in this effort, it still managed to significantly downsize the agency.
This report presents new evidence of how trade-related job losses are impacting women workers. It shows how women workers are concentrated in industries which have been drastically affected by the surge in cheap imports over the past decade. The report also shows that current policy responses to dislocations faced by women workers are woefully insufficient, with many laid off women workers receiving little help in securing comparably paying jobs or handling family obligations as they participate in retraining and conduct employment searches.
Hundreds of thousands of families lost their homes because of loans that were often not fully explained or under¬stood. Beyond the Mortgage Meltdown distills the origins and nature of the crisis in the housing market. Senior Fellow James Lardner highlights the complicity of regulators and lawmakers in the genesis of the mortgage epidemic, and warns that bolder steps will be needed to stem the rate of foreclosures along with its broader economic impact to protect both markets and consumers against future catastrophe.
Same Day Voter Registration (also known as Election Day Registration) permits eligible citizens to register and vote on the same day.
This fact sheet outlines some of the advantages of Same Day Registration, particularly its impact on voter turnout and its potential to ensure that every vote is properly counted, as well as a look at why we need Same Day Registration in America's "patchwork quilt of registration processes," and some success stories from states that have successfully utilized Same Day Registration in the 2008 presidential election.