The 2008 financial crisis was no accident. It was the result of a decades-long deregulation effort, lobbied for by the financial industry and executed by our political institutions. Now, as the facts of the financial collapse fade from memory, some would rather rewrite their part in history than keep history from repeating itself.
Consumer advocacy groups have long complained that there is no link between bad credit and job performance. They argue that such checks lead to discriminatory hiring.
The system is profitable but imperfect, and for decades critics have attacked it for all sorts of offenses. In 1969, Columbia University legal scholar Alan Westin testified to Congress that the companies violated Americans’ right to privacy and that their inaccuracies damaged lives.
eddy Roosevelt famously argued that, when it comes to foreign policy, one should “Speak softly, and carry a big stick.” Similarly, an apt summation of the political inclinations of billionaires might be, “Speak softly, and carry a big check.”
In the 2016 presidential election, we are approaching a singular and momentous crossroads in our nation’s history. Will we, or will we not, make a serious effort to achieve a low-carbon future for our children and our planet? The fossil fuel magnates and the GOP say no, because we can’t or shouldn’t, but more than 75 percent of Americans want our leaders to take significant steps to fight climate change, according to a poll released in January 2015 by the New York Times, Stanford University, and Resources for the Future.
US stock prices opened trading much higher today after yesterday’s rout and the rout the day before that and the rout the day before that. European markets were up also. The Chinese markets, which closed at 3 a.m. New York time, were off by another 7%, but the government cut interest rates to increase liquidity in the economy and raised the requirements to buy on margin (how much of a stock’s value one can borrow from the brokerage firm).
Great news, is it not? We can all relax and enjoy the end of the summer.
The co-counsel in the case, Jenn Rolnick-Borchetta of Demos, a progressive policy organization, told POLITICO New York, the need to give information to people who have been stopped by the police “has been ordered, but what that is going to look like isn’t yet figured out.”
“The pilot form has a blank space for officers to fill in their information," said Borchetta, who said that creates a potential problem because “we know officers don’t give their info, or the right info.”
Millennials have an average credit score of 625 (based on the Experian VantageScore 3.0 credit score), compared to 650 for Generation X and 709 for those over 50 years old. They also use an average of 43 percent of their credit limits—compared to 34 percent nationally—and their average debt (excluding mortgages) totals 77 percent of their income, compared to 49 percent nationally.
Executive action on paid sick days for employees of federal contractors would be in keeping with Obama’s steps to raise workplace standards for contract employees.
Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, senior counsel for Demos, praised Oklahoma for agreeing to address what she said was “a disconcerting number of people who should have gotten voter-registration assistance and didn’t get it at all.” Demos and other organizations pursued the case based on statistics showing a disproportionately low number of low-income people who were registered in Oklahoma, which sparked an investigation.
The missing link in the inequality debate is not financial stability, but financial domination of the broader economy, what has come to be called “financialization.” Financialization, as a new Demos report demonstrates, is not only measurable by risk and volatility or by the mere expanding volume of financial activities; rather, it should also be measured by how the non-financial economy—the economy of jobs and wages, production and enterprise growth—is increasingly dist
An analysis of competitive House races in the 2014 midterms by MASSPIRG and the think tank Demos confirmed that such a program could fundamentally change the balance of power in Congressional elections.
Is it a problem when the Supreme Court is out of step with public opinion? While in many cases the answer is no, when it comes to the question of money and politics and the financing of campaigns and elections, its counter-majoritarianism is a threat to democracy.