Media

If you've got debt and die tomorrow, don't assume it will disappear. Chances are, it will eat into the assets you may be planning to leave your heirs and may even wipe out your estate.

You may have seen a big outbreak in the academic literature and business media of defenses of liquidity for liquidity’s sake, evidently prompted by increased interest in and in the EU, implementation of transaction taxes as a way to tame speculation and secondarily raise revenues.

Demos released a new report showing how the rise of high frequency trading (HFT) comes at a massive cost to the real economy, despite Wall Street’s claims to the contrary.

Another monthly jobs report is in, and the results are better than most people expected: 236,000 new jobs were created last month. That's the best economic news we've heard in a while.  

Attorney General Eric Holder made it official in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee: Some banks are so big that criminal prosecution poses an unacceptable danger to the U.S. and world economies. This is not Holder's opinion alone. In the past, the Justice Department has consulted with the Federal Reserve, the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to assess the consequences of criminal prosecution. This is a government-wide problem.

While recent CBS and Gallup polls show that most Americans remain divided over whether or not the recent sequestration cuts are in fact negative, many low-income families are already bracing for their impact. SNAP benefits and the Children's Health Insurance Program may be safe, but WIC benefits and certain housing vouchers are scheduled to take a blow, leaving many families without resources to fall back on. 

During an appearance on CNBC yesterday, Charlie Munger, deputy to billionaire investor Warren Buffett, had some harsh words for high-frequency trading, the practice used by huge financial firms to trade stocks in milliseconds. “Take the rapid trading by the computer geniuses with the computer algorithms,” said Munger. “Those people have all the social utility of a bunch of rats admitted to a granary.”

New Jersey was ready when Hurricane Sandy rushed ashore the evening of October 29, 2012. Teams from FEMA and the National Guard had been activated, nuclear reactors had been shut down, and the Red Cross had prepared meals and shelters.

The carefully laid plans didn’t prevent the storm from wreaking record-setting devastation – including 37 deaths in New Jersey alone.

At least one CEO at a big retail company wants to see the minimum wage increased. In fact, he’d like the minimum wage to go even higher than President Obama has proposed.