While the attention of Connecticut's legislature has been occupied by the recent budget battles, an even larger crisis has been brewing: retirement security.
We are seeing the results of a radical shift in employer-provided retirement benefits. In the past decade, the percentage of private-sector Connecticut workers whose employer offers a retirement plan has fallen from 68 percent in 2001 to 58 percent today, effectively shutting nearly 650,000 workers out of any workplace retirement plan to supplement Social Security.
And while the quantity of benefits was declining, the quality of those benefits was deteriorating as well.
State governments are in for a rough year, according to a recent report from Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "For fiscal year 2013, the fiscal year that begins July 1, 2012, 29 states have projected or have addressed shortfalls totaling $47 billion."
Warren Buffett once referred to derivatives as "financial weapons of mass destruction" created by "madmen." Real WMD have rarely been used. However, derivatives are used quite a lot, a $600 trillion per year market dominated by a narrow oligopoly of mega-banks. It appears that Italy got hit by the derivatives WMD in January.
Sounding the alarm about climate change has long been an uphill battle because its effects can seem remote or too far in the future. Even if the planet is warming, skeptics say, how do we know that human activity is the cause and why should we care?
Every year, though, comes more concrete evidence of why we should care as the very real costs of climate change start to kick in.
The International Monetary Fund’s former chief economist recently described one of the world’s leading economies as fundamentally unsound because the political process is captured by financial firms. But he wasn’t talking about just any banana republic. He was talking about the U.S.A.
Progressives are endlessly disappointed by opinion polls that show that a large majority of Americans don't trust government. Indeed, public trust in government is now at a historic low.
TheWall Street Journal ran a disingenuous and misleading opinion piece on Sunday evening titled "The Corporate Disclosure Assault," arguing that “[u]nions and liberal activists are using proxy rules to attack business political speech.” The piece—exactly like the undisclosed corporate money it’s pandering to—doesn’t even have an author listed.
Cuomo has made the politically expedient shortcut routine for major bills, just months after a judge chastised the practice. Even good-government groups that howled when previous governors used the measure far less frequently accepted it last week, which also happened to be the annual Sunshine Week dedicated to openness in government.
The decision by a governor overrides a committee system in the Senate and Assembly as well as the joint conference committees created under a reform that attempted to force at least some public debate on major policy issues.
The uproar over Greg Smith’s parting shot op-ed as he walked from Goldman Sachs is remarkable. Strongly held opinions will be shared in many cocktail party conversations in Manhattan and the Hamptons this weekend. Some will say that Smith must have an ax to grind over a dead-end posting to the London derivatives desk. Many will complain of his ingratitude for more than a decade of assumed generosity on each bonus day.
It was just a few days ago that Goldman Sachs insider Greg Smith reminded us of an essential truth about today's financial services sector: It puts its own interests above those of its clients and, as a result, routinely misleads and exploits those who entrust investment firms and advisors with their financial future.
One of few clear-cut ways to decrease gas prices is to reel in Wall Street speculation. Wall Street speculation drives up oil prices because it distorts the perception of oil supply. In response to increasing tensions in the Middle East, Wall Street speculators are hoarding crude oil contracts, expecting that they will increase in price when (or if) the oil supply is disrupted and can be sold at a later time for profit.
One of few clear-cut ways to decrease gas prices is to reel in Wall Street speculation. Wall Street speculation drives up oil prices because it distorts the perception of oil supply. In response to increasing tensions in the Middle East, Wall Street speculators are hoarding crude oil contracts, expecting that they will increase in price when (or if) the oil supply is disrupted and can be sold at a later time for profit.
The conventional wisdom in some quarters is that Hollywood movie stars who get involved in politics are light-weights and dilettantes who have no business holding forth on public affairs. Today's arrest of George Clooney at the Sudanese embassy, in a protest about Darfur, no doubt, is inciting some of the usual tongue clucking.
The law, known as Part XX, was passed in 2010 to increase fairness in redistricting by counting incarcerated people as residents of their home districts. The previous practice, often called prison-based gerrymandering, gave extra political influence to districts containing prisons, diluting the votes of every resident of a district with no (or fewer) prisons.
As anticipation rises about how the Supreme Court will rule on the individual mandate, a key element of Obama's healthcare reform, it is worth reflecting on how ironic it is that the individual mandate has emerged as such a polarizing issue. At least four ironies come to mind.
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.
