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Investors who were paying attention got a cold slap of reality this spring when the progressive think tank Demos released a study showing that the median household could expect to pay more than $150,000 in 401(k) fees over the course of a working lifetime, or about a third of potential investment returns. What's more, about two-thirds of 401(k) investors had no idea that they were paying such fees.

Summertime in an election year in Colorado always has a certain excitement. Candidates marching in parades, petitioners gathering signatures at festivals ... some years we even get regular visits from the presidential candidates. Coloradans experience democracy in action well before Election Day.

Things that you can blame President Obama and his administration for: not implementing stronger ozone rules, an overall attack on regulations, and promoting natural gas development while ignoring the extreme economic and environmental damage caused by fracking.

Here's one explanation for a yo-yoing stock market that leaves millions of 401(k) holders biting their nails on a regular basis: The cost for an investor to buy and then sell a stock has fallen by half in the past decade, to 3.5 cents, as the New York Times notes today. 

With costs this low, old fashioned speculation makes more sense than ever -- and so does new fangled high-frequency trading by powerful computers.

Social Security turned 77 today. Unfortunately, it's not a happy day for the historic program: new data compiled by the U.S. Treasury Department for Smart Money reports: 

Washington, DC - The United States Student Association (“USSA”), the nation’s oldest and largest student-run, student-led organization, yesterday filed a brief amicus curiae supporting the constitutionality of the University of Texas’ undergraduate admissions program, which is being challenged before the U.S. Supreme Court in Fisher v. University of Texas, No. 11-345.  USSA is comprised of more than four million students with diverse backgrounds who are currently enrolled in American colleges and universities.

More evidence this morning that the rich are doing swell.

Well, that was quick.

One day Standard Chartered bank and its powerful allies are complaining that New York's bank regulator, Benjamin Lawsky, has overreached and saying that, at most, they had laundered only $14 million for Iran. The next day -- as in today -- Standard Chartered is agreeing to pay a $340 million civil penalty to settle Lawsky's suit and agreeing, explicitly, that Lawsky's original figure of laundered funds -- a whopping $250 billion -- was correct. 

When I was a student, my English-major friends warned me that economists were people who didn’t have enough personality to become accountants. It seemed like a terrible accusation at the time. Today, I worry less about the personality than the efficacy of both professions.