One of few clear-cut ways to decrease gas prices is to reel in Wall Street speculation. Wall Street speculation drives up oil prices because it distorts the perception of oil supply. In response to increasing tensions in the Middle East, Wall Street speculators are hoarding crude oil contracts, expecting that they will increase in price when (or if) the oil supply is disrupted and can be sold at a later time for profit.
The conventional wisdom in some quarters is that Hollywood movie stars who get involved in politics are light-weights and dilettantes who have no business holding forth on public affairs. Today's arrest of George Clooney at the Sudanese embassy, in a protest about Darfur, no doubt, is inciting some of the usual tongue clucking.
The uproar over Greg Smith’s parting shot op-ed as he walked from Goldman Sachs is remarkable. Strongly held opinions will be shared in many cocktail party conversations in Manhattan and the Hamptons this weekend. Some will say that Smith must have an ax to grind over a dead-end posting to the London derivatives desk. Many will complain of his ingratitude for more than a decade of assumed generosity on each bonus day.
TheWall Street Journal ran a disingenuous and misleading opinion piece on Sunday evening titled "The Corporate Disclosure Assault," arguing that “[u]nions and liberal activists are using proxy rules to attack business political speech.” The piece—exactly like the undisclosed corporate money it’s pandering to—doesn’t even have an author listed.
Sounding the alarm about climate change has long been an uphill battle because its effects can seem remote or too far in the future. Even if the planet is warming, skeptics say, how do we know that human activity is the cause and why should we care?
Every year, though, comes more concrete evidence of why we should care as the very real costs of climate change start to kick in.
The International Monetary Fund’s former chief economist recently described one of the world’s leading economies as fundamentally unsound because the political process is captured by financial firms. But he wasn’t talking about just any banana republic. He was talking about the U.S.A.
Progressives are endlessly disappointed by opinion polls that show that a large majority of Americans don't trust government. Indeed, public trust in government is now at a historic low.
State governments are in for a rough year, according to a recent report from Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "For fiscal year 2013, the fiscal year that begins July 1, 2012, 29 states have projected or have addressed shortfalls totaling $47 billion."
As the Supreme Court takes up the Affordable Care Act and its most controversial provision, the individual mandate to purchase health insurance, legal analysts are busily debating how the ruling might go -- looking back decades for precedents.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the first ever survey of green jobs today with some very promising numbers. In 2010, 3.1 million jobs were Green Goods and Services jobs (GGS) with 2.3 million in the private sector and 860,300 in the public sector. These numbers are even higher than the Brookings Institution estimates released last fall. Brookings estimated that 2.7 million people were employed in the green economy.
Few trends in human history have been more environmentally destructive than the rise of America's car culture starting in the 20th century. Americans drive their cars more than people in any other country and drive less fuel-efficient cars. There are 808 cars in the United States for every 1000 people, a rate 50 percent higher than most European countries.
The Federal Reserve Board of Dallas released a report from its chief researcher, Harvey Rosenblum, which has caused quite a stir. The report cites Fed statistics showing that the five largest US banks hold a remarkable 52% of all bank assets:
Today is the second anniversary of Obama’s healthcare reform being signed into law, but he’s not commenting on it. He may be afraid of touching this new third rail of politics that the right has created, but there are some reasons young Americans should be celebrating today.