Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s proposal for derivatives reform is apparently so extreme that even the Treasury Department thinks it goes too far. And yet, increasingly, it looks like it might survive. The FT is now reporting that Paul Volcker might be onboard. So are two Federal Reserve bank presidents. The shift, it seems, has at least [...]
The political back-and-forth over whether or not BP should pay out a second-quarter dividend has been a sight to behold. Considering how the most recent two American presidents have been in a position to tell CEOs of the some of the largest U.S. finance and auto companies what to do—take this TARP money, get rid [...]
Bill is busy blogging about soccer for the next few weeks, so let me step in to be the one outraged by the way airlines are treating us now. As my colleagues Richard Zoglin and Christine Lim report: One category of flyer is still getting the shaft this summer: the estimated 120 million U.S. travelers [...]
UPDATE: My colleague Austin Ramzy has written a story on this topic. You can read it here. This morning the New York Times is the latest to ring in with an article about rising wages in China: The salaries of factory workers in China are still low compared to those in the United States and [...]
Commenters here had a number of things to say in response to Chicago economist Raghu Rajan’s thoughts about the (ongoing) causes of financial and economic strain in the global economy. So folks might also be interested to know that Rajan himself is now blogging. You can read his blog here, presumably for at least as long [...]
The U.S. gained 431,000 jobs in May, according to this morning’s release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). That sounds great—until you take into account that 411,000 of those positions were for temporary Census workers. The private sector added only 41,000 jobs, which is a drop in the bucket. The employment rate edged down to [...]
Oops. I forgot to link to this Q&A with University of Chicago economist Raghuram Rajan on Time.com when it went up. Here is it now. Rajan made a big splash at Jackson Hole back in 2005 when he stood up in front of a room full of prominent economic policy makers and gave a speech [...]
In April, the personal savings rate—the percentage of disposable income that people don’t spend—went up to 3.6%. That’s higher than it was in March (3.1%), but still far lower than many economist types were predicting this time last year. Back in early 2009, there was talk that thanks to the Great Recession Americans were embarking [...]
