Everyone from the Government Accountability Office to the Postmaster General has argued that the Postal Service may need to cut six-day mail delivery back to five. The move would save the Postal Service some $2 billion to $3 billion a year. That’s a big deal for an organization that is saying it might be insolvent [...]
It’s a tough nut to crack: how should the U.S. reconfigure its housing finance system, including lumbering giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, in the wake of the greatest housing-finance meltdown since the Great Depression? In fact, it’s so difficult a question to answer that the Obama Administration is turning for advice to… well, you.
There was a nice moment in today’s House hearing on reasons lenders aren’t more readily reducing principal as a part of loan modifications (despite evidence that principal reduction has the most shot of keeping homeowners current on their mortgage payments). CitiMortgage CEO Sanjiv Das basically thanked the government for inserting itself into the debate. “The government’s [...]
This morning the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) released its latest proclamation on the state of the U.S. economy: the recession isn’t over yet. That might sound gloomy, but keep in mind that NBER decision-making on recession end dates is perhaps the most lagging of all the lagging [...]
This is not a good sign. (Click on the chart to make it larger.)
For a while now, it’s been a good time to be a renter. The cost of renting of an apartment has been falling around the nation, and landlords have been quick to throw concessions at potential tenants. One to-remain-nameless Manhattanite even negotiated down the rent on her Greenwich Village apartment—a stunning victory in one of [...]
I’ve got a story up on Time.com that’s proving pretty popular, so I thought I’d mention it here, too. It begins: For years, researchers have struggled to understand why so many women leave careers in science and engineering. Theories run the gamut, from family-unfriendly work schedules to innate differences between the genders. A new paper [...]
Here’s a bit of unhappy news for tax season. The folks over at LowCards.com point out that even if your credit card company has forgiven the debt you owe them, there’s still a good chance you have to pay tax on the amount. That caveat is going to catch a lot of people this year [...]
For the past three years, New York City has been paying members of some 2,400 poor families to do things like get dental check-ups, open savings accounts, hold down jobs, show up for school and carry health insurance. The cash incentives—typically ranging from $20 to $150 per desired behavior—are meant to get people with complicated, [...]
