Media

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.

It seems there is little real relief on the horizon.

“If you’re coming out of college with an average number of $20,000 to $25,000 in debt and there’s no job out there, you’ve got a real problem,” said John Quinterno, a researcher who has studied the consequences of student debt.

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: 

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. 

Cynics on the left and anti-government ideologues on the right often pound on legislators and bureaucrats for being ineffectual, biased and generally useless. But every so often a real hero emerges that refutes the dangerous and widespread belief that government does not work.

One of the strongest arguments against implementing a cap-and-trade scheme is that it is difficult to structure a program in a way that will meaningfully decrease greenhouse gas emissions due to pushback from entrenched interests. For instance, greenhouse gase emitters want the cap on gas emissions to be high and many credits to be given away, which doesn’t really do anything to decrease emissions but keeps credits fairly cheap to purchase and decreases costs to emitters.

One of the most shocking aspects of the foreclosure mess has been the rogue behavior of mortgage servicers. In case you're new to this sorry story, mortgage servicers are the middlemen who handle, well, the servicing of mortgages once money has been lent to a homeowner by a bank. In effect, banks have outsourced the persnickety business of collecting mortgage payments, managing property tax escrow accounts, making sure that homes are insured, and all the rest.

Oh, and if a homeowner can't make payments any longer, mortgage servicers handle the foreclosure process.

A group responsible for development of the Willets Point space next to Citi Field said Walmart wouldn’t be a part of its conception.

Late last week, the Daily News reported that Walmart quietly lobbied city officials to include them in the development of the area near Citi Field that currently houses auto body shops. Regardless, according to the group responsible for the development project, Walmart’s lobbying efforts are news to them.