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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.

New evidence from the New York Fed suggests that New York’s middle class has continued its slow and seemingly inexorable decline. Coauthors Jason Bram and the James Orr unwittingly reach this conclusion in their exploration of the tension between New York’s record number of jobs and its record unemployment rate. In their exploration, they reveal the inadequacy of our economic measures of well-being and expose the problem beneath the surface.

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. 

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.

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.

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.