Last summer, on her final day as the Chairman of the FDIC, Shelia Bair decried the short-termism that has overtaken both Wall Street and Washington, where “[o]ur financial markets remain too focused on quick profits, and our political process is driven by a two-year election cycle and its relentless demands for fundraising.” This short-termism has taken hold of the reins of our larger political system and increasingly characterizes policy initiatives at every level of government.
This is the week when President Obama captured headlines and prime television coverage by assembling his team in the Rose Garden and finally employing the bully pulpit against speculation in the oil markets. He demanded action to curb the clear impact of rampant speculative trading of energy on the prices paid for gasoline every day by all Americans. He also renewed the case against the outrageous subsidies to big oil companies that are nothing short of shameful.
Students attending or planning to attend college know that a postsecondary credential is a minimum requirement for getting a good paying job. But they are frustrated that, while their education also means great dividends for the nation as a whole, they’re increasingly being asked to shoulder a rising and unaffordable share of the costs.
Example from a line that received a 2010 Innovation Award from the Ethical Fashion ForumOver President’s Day, I wrote about how environmentally destructive something as simple as a pair of jeans can be when taking into consid
Well, maybe I was wrong when I said there was almost nothing the President could do to impact gas prices. Yesterday, President Obama released a set of proposals to limit oil speculation.
In the past three decades, college costs have risen significantly faster than inflation and are now at roughly 25 percent of the average household's income. This isn't true just for private schools.
The problem of American democracy isn't solely that there's too much money in our politics. It's that the money comes from a narrow (and extremely rich) slice of the electorate.
The derivatives industry is squeezing Washington like a python. Desperate to control the tone and thrust of derivatives regulation, industry lobbyists have been swarming over the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission, each of which is writing derivatives rules as mandated by the Dodd-Frank reform law.
1. The government has collected less in taxes as a proportion of the economy in the past three years than it has in any three-year period since World War II, and tax rates are at historic lows.
A compromise has been reached on New York's living wage, and it is now estimated that it will help only 400-500 workers a year. Even the bill's opponents will tell you this legislation is no threat to their livelihood.
The “Buffett Rule” proposed by President Obama and now being considered by the Senate would be an important symbolic step toward a fairer tax system. By instituting a minimum tax on very high earners, it would advance the principle of progressive taxation and reform the tax code in an overdue way.