Media

NEW YORK -- In response to the final, approved version of the Volcker Rule, Demos Senior Fellow Wallace Turbeville, a former investment banker and the author of Demos' recent Volcker Rule explainer and The Detroit Bankruptcy report, released the following statement: 

In November, Congress failed to renew the 2009 stimulus provision allocating additional funds to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).  This removed a much-needed $5 billion from an already underfunded public program tasked with keeping 47 million Americans from going hungry. 

Here’s a policy idea that should be as uncontroversial as they get: America should stop doing business with chronic lawbreakers. If a company repeatedly exposes their employees to dangerous working conditions that have triggered serious OSHA penalties, we should think twice before signing another contract with that company to do work for the federal government. If a contractor can’t bother to pay the minimum wage and follow other basic employment laws, we can surely find someone else to run government call centers and carry out public construction projects.

President Obama calling economic inequality the premier challenge of our time is notable for two reasons: first, he is acknowledging the weakening of the America middle class as one of the greatest threats to America's future. But perhaps more telling, he is making this declaration at THEARC - a community center in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Washington, D.C.

The much-anticipated final regulations implementing the Volcker Rule will be released today and, almost miraculously, it seems to be significantly stronger than the proposed text publicized more than a year ago. We will all have to await the actual wording since this is an area in which the devil is truly in the details.

But the all-important limitation on insured banks betting on the trading markets with depositors’ money is rumored to do a few key things:

There's a lot of speculation about how the Affordable Care Act is likely to play out in coming months and years. But lately few voices are pushing the point that Obamacare is likely to spur the economy -- both in the near and long term. 

In earlier times, before the dawn of modern American prosperity, it was common for hard pressed families to take in boarders. Watch some old movies if that era has slipped your mind. Then good times arrived, and renting out rooms to survive was no longer a widespread imperative. Images of the quirky boarding house were supplanted in the media by the sprawling suburban home or spacious urban apartment. 

If anyone still suspects that National Public Radio has a consistently liberal bias, listen to Robert Siegel's interview with Brigid Flaherty, organizing director for the Alliance for a Greater New York, a labor advocacy group, on Wednesday's All Things Considered.