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Here’s the wrong way to try to lower the price of gas: blocking loans that would help develop more efficient cars. American companies looking to develop cleaner cars are not receiving the loan support they need. The short-term consequence is the shutting down of factories and the loss of jobs.

Four years after America’s “bigger is better” banking model collapsed under its own weight, there are signs of a shift towards more local, accountable, and borrower-friendly banking across the country.

In Maryland, a Lend Local bill under consideration would require the state to move more of its public deposits out of large out-of-state Wall Street banks into community banks, who lend more, per dollar of bank assets, to in-state businesses. As our colleague Jason Judd wrote in an op-ed published Monday in the Baltimore Sun:

Taken on a state by state basis, the losses incurred to the U.S. from the loss of out-of-state sales taxes are staggering.

Taken on a state by state basis, the losses incurred to the U.S. from the loss of out-of-state sales taxes are staggering.

How Citizens Union decision has given an even greater voice to the wealthy who do not always have the same priorities as the rest of America.

The progressive policy world does a great job of spotlighting the economic hardships of low- and moderate-income Americans, but I've long noticed a big gap in all this work: An appreciation of how much the volatility in energy prices impacts these struggling households.

The opening sentence of "Reducing the Deficit by Increasing Individual Income Tax Rates", a paper [pdf] jointly authored by the Pew Charitable Trust and Tax Policy Center, is worth noting: "Current federal budget policies are unsustainable." (A month before publication, the US debt-to-GDP ratio broke 100 percent.)