Media

Warren Buffett warned investors that bankers were still up to their old tricks in his recent investor letter. Vanguard founder Jack Bogle is writing about how high fee mutual funds are ripping off investors and endangering retirement security. And Fed Chair Janet Yellen is touting new, tougher capital rules for “Too Big to Fail” banks.

Fifty years after Bloody Sunday, I marched to the top of the Edmund Pettus Bridge with Mrs. Amelia Boynton Robinson, Congressman John Lewis, President Barack Obama, and many others.

In America, there is a strongly held conviction that with hard work, anyone can make it into the middle class. Pew recently found that Americans are far more likely than people in other countries to believe that work determines success, as opposed to other factors beyond an individual’s control. But this positivity comes with a negative side — a tendency to pathologize those living in poverty.

Most people want to believe that their place in the world is something they earned, either through hard work, preparation, or both. I understand this sentiment. As a native of a country that reveres Horatio Alger-inspired tales of upward mobility, the idea that our status might be attributed to something we can’t control seems unfathomable.

When Congress narrowly missed another government shutdown in December by passing the “cromnibus” bill, much of the press coverage focused on Capitol Hill’s ongoing dysfunction. However, buried inside the bill was yet another blow to campaign finance regulations, dramatically increasing the amount of money donors can give to political parties. A single couple can now give up to $3.1 million to a political party over a two-year election cycle, a six-fold increase.

The U.S. economy has finally slugged its way out of the ditches.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Department of Labor job numbers indicate that the labor market improved in all 50 states, Puerto Rico and Washington D.C. in 2014.

There’s a lot going down with policing these days. The flurry of action this week included an interim report from the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. It bears both good and bad news. 

One weakness in the report is overarching and unavoidable: the federal government is limited in the actions it can take to address policing because policing is largely within the control of the states; much of what is recommended is ultimately up to the discretion of local law enforcement agencies. 

The talk around Wall Street is that profits at the trading desks of the big banks are down and that regulations are to blame.

There may be some truth to that, at least to the extent that transparency rules have deterred some price gouging. We should be careful about reading too much into the effects of regulation, though. The banks want to spin a story that regulations have forced them to tighten belts and avoid risks. They certainly do not want further regulation and would love nothing better than to roll back regulations that exist.