Media

Oil companies are doubling down on fighting a transparency provision in Dodd-Frank that would require the disclosure of payments made to foreign governments in connection with energy projects in their country. The provision requires information on payments for production licenses, taxes, royalties and other aspects of energy and mineral projects to be disclosed by oil and mineral companies to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The revelation that Apple chief Tim Cook pulled in $378 million in compensation in 2011, more than any other CEO, has sparked the usual debate about how much CEOs are worth. Cook made $300 million more than the next highest paid exec in America, Oracle's Larry Ellison, leading some to wonder whether he's really that much better than his peers (especially since the late Steve Jobs is widely seen as the genius behind Apple's current success.)

The Credit CARD Act is helping households pay down balances faster, with a third of low- and middle-income households that carry credit card debt reporting that new disclosures have caused them to pay down their balances faster.

David Brooks offers up a spirited defense of private equity today in the Times, and many of his points make perfect sense: In fact, many private equity firms don't set out to laden the firms they buy with debt and cash out before the company goes bankrupt.

Big paydays for founders like Mark Zuckerberg have less and less to do with the creation of middle-class jobs for everyone else.

Staring back at me from the front page of Sunday’s New York Times was a headline that promised an answer to a puzzle that had endured for more than a month, and which I have explored here and here. The blame for the multi-billion dollar JP Morgan credit default swap fiasco had been discovered.

Cory Booker didn't distinguish himself as a particularly adept politician when, yesterday on Meet the Press, he undercut the Obama campaign's message by criticizing its attacks on Bain Capital. Booker is a surrogate for the campaign after all, and if there's one thing that's expected of surrogates it's that they stay on message.

It's no secret that Facebook's IPO will feed one of the most troubling trends in America today: the extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny elite.

Leaders in the House of Representatives introduced The Voter Empowerment Act of 2012 to protect and promote our freedom to vote. This bill seeks to provide more access to the ballot, more efficiency in our election systems, and more accountability in our elections.