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It was just a few days ago that Goldman Sachs insider Greg Smith reminded us of an essential truth about today's financial services sector: It puts its own interests above those of its clients and, as a result, routinely misleads and exploits those who entrust investment firms and advisors with their financial future.

One of few clear-cut ways to decrease gas prices is to reel in Wall Street speculation. Wall Street speculation drives up oil prices because it distorts the perception of oil supply. In response to increasing tensions in the Middle East, Wall Street speculators are hoarding crude oil contracts, expecting that they will increase in price when (or if) the oil supply is disrupted and can be sold at a later time for profit.

One of few clear-cut ways to decrease gas prices is to reel in Wall Street speculation. Wall Street speculation drives up oil prices because it distorts the perception of oil supply. In response to increasing tensions in the Middle East, Wall Street speculators are hoarding crude oil contracts, expecting that they will increase in price when (or if) the oil supply is disrupted and can be sold at a later time for profit.

The conventional wisdom in some quarters is that Hollywood movie stars who get involved in politics are light-weights and dilettantes who have no business holding forth on public affairs. Today's arrest of George Clooney at the Sudanese embassy, in a protest about Darfur, no doubt, is inciting some of the usual tongue clucking.

The law, known as Part XX, was passed in 2010 to increase fairness in redistricting by counting incarcerated people as residents of their home districts. The previous practice, often called prison-based gerrymandering, gave extra political influence to districts containing prisons, diluting the votes of every resident of a district with no (or fewer) prisons. 

As anticipation rises about how the Supreme Court will rule on the individual mandate, a key element of Obama's healthcare reform, it is worth reflecting on how ironic it is that the individual mandate has emerged as such a polarizing issue. At least four ironies come to mind.

Here’s the wrong way to try to lower the price of gas: blocking loans that would help develop more efficient cars. American companies looking to develop cleaner cars are not receiving the loan support they need. The short-term consequence is the shutting down of factories and the loss of jobs.

Four years after America’s “bigger is better” banking model collapsed under its own weight, there are signs of a shift towards more local, accountable, and borrower-friendly banking across the country.

In Maryland, a Lend Local bill under consideration would require the state to move more of its public deposits out of large out-of-state Wall Street banks into community banks, who lend more, per dollar of bank assets, to in-state businesses. As our colleague Jason Judd wrote in an op-ed published Monday in the Baltimore Sun: