Media

Four years ago today, Lehman Brothers collapsed as Hank Paulson and his colleagues made the fateful decision that free market principles demanded that at least one bank crippled by the deteriorating financial system had to be sacrificed at the altar of moral hazard. These “deciders” had no idea of the firestorm they were igniting. They did not foresee that the financial system that had evolved during 30 years of deregulation (based on specious economic theory and ideology) was so interconnected that it would collapse like a house of cards. Within a few weeks, the U.S.

For the magazine’s 20th Anniversary, the September issue of SmartMoney has a long section recapping changes in American personal finance -- and on what they got right and wrong -- over the last two decades. 

Their historical review starts with the blunt question:

Who’s responsible for your retirement? You are.

It’s time we change how we think about poverty. The newly released Census report on poverty received a lot of attention from the chattering class. But was it really deserved? 

There are many ways in which the rate understates poverty. The poverty line, individuals making $11,484 a year, has been used since 1964. A CBS report explores its inadequacy: 

How a Facebook get-out-the-vote campaign can have a tangible impact on voter turnout—but only when there’s a certain sort of social component to it.

Iowa’s Democratic attorney general and Republican secretary of state made a show of solidarity last month in announcing they were fighting a lawsuit that challenges the emergency powers the secretary of state has given himself to purge registered voters he isn’t convinced are U.S. citizens.

“We’re working together here to make sure that people who are not eligible to vote don’t vote,” said Attorney General Tom Miller.

Here’s one especially for the folks who, while vehemently attacking the Chicago teachers’ strike, insist that they generally love and support organized labor.  Warehouse employees in southern California would greatly benefit from your outpouring of solidarity.

A common perception of the upcoming presidential election is that it will pivot on whether voters credit the recent uptick in employment as indicative of an economic turnaround, and thus support the President. Or whether they view record unemployment as a sign that a new approach to the economy is called for, even if the downward trend has been arrested.

This is consistent with academic models of presidential elections in which high unemployment at election-time, at least in the past, has predicted defeat for the party in power.

A new report from the World Business Council for Sustainable Business details the importance of environmental accounting. As the report highlights that while every business depends on ecosystems, these resources are being rapidly depleted. The impact that resources depletion has on businesses is multi-layered:

Accurately described as "One of the Worst Ideas from Congress in Decades," plans to advance the Independent Regulatory Analysis Act were this week delayed until November by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.