As Congress Takes Up Sweeping Financial Reform, Report Urges Fundamental Change of Ratings Agency Model
Washington, DC — With the House of Representatives and a key Senate committee poised to vote on sweeping financial industry reforms, a new report by Demos finds that the proposed remedies fail to fully address the problems that led the credit rating agencies to become key enablers of the housing bubble and Wall Street meltdown.
"The percent of low-income students borrowing for a bachelor’s degree is unconscionably high, particularly if you consider their debt loads as a percent of their family income and wealth. Even if low-income students and high-income students were borrowing the exact same amount for college, that debt is a far greater burden relative to their family wealth.”
"In today’s competitive economy, nothing is more important than getting a college education. Yet college tuition costs in the U.S. have been increasing at a breakneck pace, making college unaffordable for millions of Americans.”
"Income is actually a somewhat imperfect way to judge whether or not a family is financially secure. The typical black family making $100,000 has a lot less wealth than the typical white family making $100,000."
Washington, DC — Today, thousands of Americans are gathering on the streets of Chicago to march against financial service industry excess that has cost the American taxpayers trillions of dollars, destabilized the economy and undermined the stability of millions of US households.
In response to the public outcry against excesses in the financial services industries, dubbed "The Showdown in Chicago", the following statement was issued from Heather McGhee, director of the Washington DC, Office for the public policy and research center Demos:
Bloomberg has quietly begun to roll out a series of policy proposals, and this week, it was higher education’s turn. His plan says a lot about where consensus currently is—and is not.
New York, NY —A growing number of young students are turning to more affordable community colleges for their higher education, but only an alarming two out of five finish a degree within six years of enrollment, according to a new report published today.
It’s crucial that the U.S. Congress and the Department of Education act swiftly and aggressively and provide states and institutions with much-needed support before it’s too late.
Washington, DC — As the United States Congress considers the Surface Transportation Authorization Act of 2009, which aims to establish national regulatory reforms for American ground transportation, a newly published study details the widespread failures of port trucking deregulation. Port Trucking Down the Low Road: A Sad Story of Deregulation, published by Demos, a national public policy research center
“We think of education funding, particularly at the state level, as a spending issue, but it’s myopic,” said Mark Huelsman, a senior policy analyst at Demos, a left-leaning think tank. “There are all kinds of second order effects to investing in education — homeownership or wealth building is certainly one of them. If you don’t spend the money on students now and that means that they’re less likely to go to college or they’re more likely to take on debt, that is going to impact their future economic activity.” [...]
