After the D.C. Council approved a bill that requires large retailers to pay their workers a "living wage" of $12.50 -- and Walmart retreated from the capital in protest -- we thought it'd be worth considering what that requirement could do for the economy.
Picking a new chairman of the Federal Reserve may be the most important nomination a president can make. The next Fed chair will play an instrumental role in determining the future trajectory of America’s straggling recovery, and determining how financial regulation gets implemented.
The Senate Finance Committee wrote an open letter last month to the rest of the Senate calling for tax code reform suggestions. The due date for proposals was this past week. Among other parts of the code, the charitable tax deduction faces potential overhaul.
I am of course glad to see President Obama focus the country on what he correctly identifies as the most pressing national problem, the crushing of the middle class. The solution he laid out in his address at Knox College, a middle-out economics which sees the middle class as the engine of the economy, is both good economics and a powerful political message. It is what progressives and Democrats need to keep emphasizing over and over again, both rhetorically and in their legislative agendas.
I am of course glad to see President Obama focus the country on what he correctly identifies as the most pressing national problem, the crushing of the middle class. The solution he laid out in his address at Knox College, a middle-out economics which sees the middle class as the engine of the economy, is both good economics and a powerful political message. It is what progressives and Democrats need to keep emphasizing over and over again, both rhetorically and in their legislative agendas.
Today President Obama will give a major economic address in Illinois, the first in a series of speeches designed to refocus the national conversation on job creation and the struggling economy.
Employer-sponsored plans such as 401(k)s are workers' best hope for a secure retirement. Critics of the 401(k) system contend that the plans weren't designed to be the foundation of a secure retirement and should be scrapped in favor of something tailor-made, while supporters of the system say it just needs fine-tuning. While regulators, academics and the financial industry tussle over the best way to get everyone to retirement, investors have to keep saving as much as possible and, just as importantly, keep expenses low.
How financial market practices not only risk catastrophic systemic failure like 2008, they constitute a massive extraction of value from the real economy by the financial sector.
Over the past decade or two, top transnational corporations -- including Apple, GE, and Google -- have figured out how to sidestep national tax collection systems, depriving governments of billions of dollars in revenues.
Financial markets, now heavily dependent on technology, need to be safeguarded against cyberattacks, natural disasters and the more prosaic scourge of human error that can cause massive disruptions, according to experts and a federal panel.
Employers don't want to look at the resumes of unemployed people. In fact, they don't even want those resumes sent to them.
Some employers will actually do whatever it takes — without doing anything illegal — to prevent the unemployed from applying for positions at their company.
Low-wage workers employed under federal concession and lease agreements went on strike at Union Station on Thursday, calling on President Obama to guarantee them a living wage and a voice on the job.
Without a doubt, the big banks should be broken up; the need is even more urgent than it was in 2007 or 2008. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas – hardly an Occupy Wall Street affiliate – titled its 2011 Annual Report "Choosing the Road to Prosperity: Why We Must End Too Big to Fail – Now."
When Governor Lincoln Chaffee signed the Temporary Care Giver’s Insurance law last week, Rhode Island became the third state—along with California and New Jersey—to grant paid time off to care for a sick loved one or a new baby.
Rhode Island’s law, which goes into effect in 2014, will not only provide most workers with up to four weeks off with about two-thirds of their salaries (up to $752 a week), it will protect employees from being fired and losing their health insurance while they’re out.
If you think Wall Street has cleaned up its act after a global financial disaster and then sweeping reform legislation, think again. A new survey by Labaton Sucharow, a law firm that represents Wall Street whistleblowers, has revealed that the financial services industry still has profound ethical problems.
Well, that’s embarrassing. McDonald’s sample budget for its employees lays bare the reality of trying to make it on a food service job at $7.72 an hour (mildly above the federal minimum wage of $7.25).
The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) recently issued several try-at-home remedies to aid in the struggle against unruly debt collection firms. In a blog post, they introduced:
This morning, severalmedia outlets rushed to report that Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler had lost his battle to secure robust rules governing the international exercise of the Commission’s jurisdiction to govern derivatives.