Media

The job market has been tough for older workers, but did you ever imagine that you wouldn’t land a job because of your credit report?

It’s possible.

As I wrote about in my Forbes blog, Bad Credit Can Cost You a Job, if you’re looking to change careers, find a new job, get promoted, or just hang onto the one you have, a messy credit report can trip you up.

Last night, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a searing 300-page report on JP Morgan Chase’s London Whale episode. The bank lost at least $6.2 billion through trading credit derivatives in a business unit tasked with reducing firm-wide risk, the Chief Investment Office.

When Barack Obama won a second term in the White House in November 2012, many observers concluded that new voting ID laws hadn't had much effect on turnout. After all, the election had swung in Democrats’ favor, and young and minority voters comprised a larger share of the electorate than four years earlier. So identification requirements aren’t the threat to voting rights that many feared, right?

New York City is often ahead of the national game in areas ranging from finance to art and culture, but unfortunately, according a report for the Coalition for the Homeless, it's also leading a national rise in homelessness. The number of people sleeping each night in shelters rose to 50,000 in 2012 the highest in nearly 30 years, and a 19% jump from the previous year. Twenty one thousand of them are children. That's a 22% jump for the children's numbers from 2011. 

What's all the fuss down there in Washington? Reading the news, you might think there's a huge ideological divide between Democrats and Republicans over taxes and the size of government. 

Unfortunately, that's not the case. Mainstream congressional leaders in both parties agree that taxes should be kept near historic lows while government is steadily downsized. 

Consider the new budget plan just released by Senator Patty Murray -- the supposed great Democratic alternative to Paul Ryan's plan. 

In the discussion around our energy future, fossil fuel advocates continually claim that renewables will never be able to meet our power needs. This assertion is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more we choose to invest in fossil fuels over renewable energy, the longer we delay our inevitable transition to a clean energy economy.

Retails sales surged by a solid 1.1 percent last month, and that's being hailed as great news. But great news for who, exactly? 

Given the weak labor market, with millions still unemployed, it is unlikely that higher retail sales and profits will translate into higher wages for retail workers, who make up a growing slice of America's workforce. Instead, those gains are more likely to be reflected in bigger bonuses for executives and higher share values.

The affluent tend to hold a different vision of a just society than the public at large, and it is that vision which tops the political agenda in Washington and in state houses across the country.

As grim as the GOP's long term prospects are demographically, things could still get worse. Like, for instance, Republicans could alienate the one last slice of the population that remains firmly in their camp: old people.