For far too long, brokers have been selling their older clients complex investments known as structured products. These products are so risky, and so costly in fees, that some of them are almost sure money losers. They entered retirement portfolios like Trojan horses, and then destroyed people’s life savings. Yet the financial meltdown of 2008 has not chastened Wall Street. Brokers and banks continue to sell these high-risk investments to people who can’t afford major losses.
How Maine can use deposits of state tax revenue to tilt the economic playing field back toward Main Street businesses, our community banks, and long-term job growth.
A Hawaii Partnership Bank will generate new revenue for Hawaii, save local governments money, and make us less dependent on big offshore banks that are dramatically reshaping life for families and businesses in Hawaii.
This report makes the case that we should create jobs for the unemployed directly and immediately in public employment programs that produce useful goods and services for the public’s benefit.
On March 29th, 2011 Public Works hosted a webinar on ways to take advantage of tax season as an opportunity to communicate a different story about the role of taxes in our country. While it focuses on Tax Freedom Day, it includes universal examples for any situation. This guide provides strategies for creating a better conversation about taxes. It examines the most common anti-tax narratives, offer lessons on how to respond to hypothetical questions, and include tips on avoiding common communication pitfalls.
Available financial aid covers only a fraction of what community college students pay for their education. To finance their studies, many of them enroll in school only part time and/or work more than 20 hours per week, strategies that increase their likelihood of dropping out. To help address this problem, this report highlights strategies adopted by higher education institutions to increase the financial resources of their students. The practices outlined either help students access existing financial aid or provide students with new types of aid.
This guide includes strategies for defending public services and the revenues needed to support them. Produced during the anti-government, budget-slashing political climate of 2010-2011, this report advocates for affirming the role of public services, systems, and structures. It examines dominant narratives about public budget challenges, and offers lessons from success stories in several states. Ultimately, Americans must reconnect the dots between the shared goals and desires they have for their communities and the public tools and resources necessary to achieve them.
Putting our nation on a path of broad prosperity will require generating new jobs, investing in key areas, modernizing and restoring our revenue base, and greatly increasing the cost efficiency of the health care system. Achieving these goals, however, will require an informed and engaged public to help set national priorities.
From the standpoint of voter access and effective administration, the 2010 elections were in many ways a mixed bag. There were a number of troubling incidents that occurred including voter intimidation and threats of vote suppression, and the structural barriers to voting that keep participation rates down were as apparent as ever.
A picture of the current state of the private retirement system, why this picture bodes ill for the future of retirement in the country, and why that system needs reform.
Economic insecurity has become the “new normal” in America. Ten million Americans are out of work, and the vast majority of Americans have seen their incomes stagnate or decline over the past decade. Demos’ extensive research on credit card debt among middle- and low-income households has found that most indebted families go into debt to pay for basic expenses: groceries, utilities, child care, and health care. Simply put, Americans are borrowing to make ends meet.
For many years, health care costs have been steadily rising. As employers have moved into insurance coverage options with greater out-of-pocket expenses or have stopped providing health care coverage altogether, American families have struggled with the burden of health care costs.
How the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Actwill bring greater security to American consumers, investors and Main Street businesses.
"We've got to deal with the conflicts. If I hire S&P or Moody's to be my consultant and show me how I can do this and that to get an investment-grade rating or [an] even higher rating, they obviously have a conflict of interest there."
"That's right. I think the compensation model... where the issuer pays for the rating is really at the heart of the conflict problem..."