Media

Extreme market forces are corrupting us as individuals – morally and ethically.

Pennsylvania has been trying for almost two years now to download a voter ID law Republican legislators passed into something workable on the ground. They’ve failed at every turn because grassroots organizers have consistently exposed the burdens the law imposes on voters, which courts have taken seriously, and because the state has yet to find a way to administer the law without disenfranchisement being a certified outcome.

When it comes to boosting economic opportunity, President Obama isn’t going to wait for Congress anymore.  

In his State of the Union Address last night, the President made a powerful statement about employers’ obligation to reward work -- starting with his own obligation as the executive in charge of millions of federal contracts. 

In his State of the Union Address, President Obama announced a “Good Jobs” Executive Order requiring government contractors to raise the minimum wage for their lowest-paid workers to $10.10 fo

Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday applauded low-wage federal contract workers, saying their months of protest had paved the way for President Barack Obama’s upcoming executive order to raise the minimum wage for new contractors.

A compelling vision of free, high-quality preschool for every child in New York City helped to propel Bill de Blasio into the mayor’s office.

As long as there have been markets, people have been driven by greed to make irrational investment decisions. When enough people get in on the action, valuations -- the prices of securities -- go haywire, soaring to obscene heights and then crashing in a shower of crushed dreams.

Chasing performance, taking on excessive risk and selling at inopportune times are all as old as capital markets themselves. What is new is the modern regulatory environment and financial innovations such as high-frequency trading. Is today's stock market the same beast it was 20 or 30 years ago? [...]

The “Procurement Act" allows President Obama to pass an executive order to raise the pay for federal contract workers.

Details are sketchy about the new retirement plan that President Obama proposed in the State of the Union Address last night, so it's too early to offer any verdict. What causes concern, though, is that the Obama administration has previously floated retirement schemes that would double down on America's failed experiment with individual private accounts that are the cornerstone of the 401(k).