I’ve been pretty critical of a lot of the ideas coming out of Washington about how to encourage job creation, so I thought I’d take a breather and do a more glass-half-full post. As it turns out, I’ve been out in America this week doing some reporting on the topic, speaking with a lot of [...]
I am thrilled, as are many others, that Congress has found a way to actually move forward on an issue. I refer to the apparent progress of the $15-billion job-creation bill. Unfortunately, as I’ve explained before, I’m pretty sure the legislation won’t have as much of an impact as we’re hoping for. I saw another [...]
The Curious Capitalist family is getting bigger! Michael Schuman, Time‘s Asia correspondent extraordinaire, will be joining the blogging ranks as early as tomorrow (or today for those of you, like Michael, who are reading this from Hong Kong). Michael has his own Wikipedia entry, which covers a lot of ground but fails to mention what [...]
My colleague Michael Grunwald has a piece on Time.com making the case for a Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA), since it seems the Senate Banking Committee may soon deliver the whole idea to the trash heap. I’ve said in the past why I think a stand-alone agency is a great idea; Ezra Klein more recently summed up the [...]
Easy money is about to get a little less easy. Emphasis on the little. Today the Federal Reserve announced that it would raise the interest rate it charges banks on emergency loans from 0.5% to 0.75%, effective tomorrow. In addition, on March 18, the Fed will shorten the length of time banks can borrow from [...]
Housing starts in January hit their highest level in half a year, the Commerce Department reported (PDF) this morning—seemingly good news for those banking on a real-estate rebound. More specifically: Privately-owned housing starts in January were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 591,000. This is 2.8 percent (±11.5%)* above the revised December estimate of 575,000 [...]
Debate is heating up about whether stock brokers and insurance salesman should have a fiduciary duty to their clients—that is, whether they should be required to always act in a client’s best interest or whether they must simply recommend investments that are “suitable” (the current, lower threshold). The financial regulatory reform bill that the House [...]
I sat down to do my taxes over the weekend and I realized I was missing a 1099 from a bank where I have an interest savings account. I called up the bank and after some rooting around, the phone rep realized I didn’t get a form because the bank doesn’t mail one out if interest earned over the course [...]
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is already catching heat for saying: We feel the American people need a message. The message that they need is that we’re doing something about jobs. This comment comes on the heels of news that a bi-partisan jobs bills has fallen through, and Reid is now plowing ahead with a [...]
Back in August, I wondered if the credit card companies might be getting their groove back because it seemed like after a precipitous fall-off, the number of solicitations they send to our mailboxes was beginning to level off. Well, I was wrong, and credit card mail volume, as tracked by the research firm Synovate, resumed [...]
