No idea is more central to conservative economic thinking than the belief that cutting taxes leads to higher economic growth. One can certainly understand the appeal of this belief: It would be great if government could collect the same amount of revenue, but with much lower tax rates, because those rates fostered strong growth.
The weather may be cooling, but the summer of money laundering is far from over. There hasn’t really been an uptick in banks looking the other way on dirty money (they have for years), it’s that regulators are finally stepping up.
Sick of investment advice from hacks like Warren Buffet and Donald Trump? Ask a congress member.Roll Call published their latest list of the “50 Richest Members of the 112th Congress” last week. Texan House Representative Mike McCaul took first place, reporting a minimum net worth of $305.46 million for 2011.
Four years ago today, Lehman Brothers collapsed as Hank Paulson and his colleagues made the fateful decision that free market principles demanded that at least one bank crippled by the deteriorating financial system had to be sacrificed at the altar of moral hazard. These “deciders” had no idea of the firestorm they were igniting. They did not foresee that the financial system that had evolved during 30 years of deregulation (based on specious economic theory and ideology) was so interconnected that it would collapse like a house of cards. Within a few weeks, the U.S.
It’s time we change how we think about poverty. The newly released Census report on poverty received a lot of attention from the chattering class. But was it really deserved?
There are many ways in which the rate understates poverty. The poverty line, individuals making $11,484 a year, has been used since 1964. A CBS report explores its inadequacy:
Iowa’s Democratic attorney general and Republican secretary of state made a show of solidarity last month in announcing they were fighting a lawsuit that challenges the emergency powers the secretary of state has given himself to purge registered voters he isn’t convinced are U.S. citizens.
“We’re working together here to make sure that people who are not eligible to vote don’t vote,” said Attorney General Tom Miller.
The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing yesterday called "The Citizens United Court and the Continuing Importance of the Voting Rights Act." At first glance, this may seem a strange title. Citizens United, after all, was a (flawed) decision about the role of money in politics.
Today, Ben Bernanke announced that the Fed would launch another round of $40 billion dollar a month quantitative easing, a decision that analysts expected after his pessimistic appraisal of the recovery in Jackson Hole last week. Bernanke's not only doubling down on quantitative easing, but, unlike in past rounds, the program will be open-ended. The Fed's pledged to continue purchasing until the recovery strengthens.
Here’s one especially for the folks who, while vehemently attacking the Chicago teachers’ strike, insist that they generally love and support organized labor. Warehouse employees in southern California would greatly benefit from your outpouring of solidarity.
A common perception of the upcoming presidential election is that it will pivot on whether voters credit the recent uptick in employment as indicative of an economic turnaround, and thus support the President. Or whether they view record unemployment as a sign that a new approach to the economy is called for, even if the downward trend has been arrested.
This is consistent with academic models of presidential elections in which high unemployment at election-time, at least in the past, has predicted defeat for the party in power.
A new report from the World Business Council for Sustainable Business details the importance of environmental accounting. As the report highlights that while every business depends on ecosystems, these resources are being rapidly depleted. The impact that resources depletion has on businesses is multi-layered:
Accurately described as "One of the Worst Ideas from Congress in Decades," plans to advance the Independent Regulatory Analysis Act were this week delayed until November by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
POLITICO led this morning with a piece arguing that Mitt Romney's clay feet on the subject of national security threaten to turn him into John Kerry. I don't quite buy the comparison, however Kerry-like Mr Romney may be in his stiffness and aloofness; Mr Romney never claimed national security as a core competency, as Mr Kerry did.
A very different kind of organizing campaign than AFSCME’s is going on in states across the country with a single undemocratic purpose: to keep voters away from the ballot box.
The new Census data on poverty is out and it's filled with all the usual depressing facts. Fifteen percent of Americans live below the poverty line -- an official threshold which itself is laughably low and detached from reality. More accurate measurements have long found that a greater share of Americans are experiencing serious economic hardship than government statistics imply.
The Census data released today reinforces that reducing poverty should be a national priority. The headline? From 2010 to 2011 official poverty rate remained flat at 15%. That's better than many analysts expected, but it's still a pressing problem.
If insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, the House GOP is insane. Last February, an article in Bloomberg Businessweekhighlighted that since the Solyndra bankruptcy last year: