Elizabeth Warren posts on the The White House Blog on her new job: Over the past several weeks, the President and I have had extensive conversations about the vital importance of consumer financial protection. The President asked me, and I enthusiastically agreed, to serve as an Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the […]
by Dan Crawford Via Daily job cuts, this report highlights a problem: NewsFedEx 1Q profit doubles; will cut 1,700 jobs NEW YORK — FedEx says its fiscal first-quarter earnings doubled and the company will cut 1,700 jobs as it consolidates its trucking operations to save money. The company is also boosting its quarterly per share […]
by Linda Bealecrossposted with Ataxingmatter The hypocrisy of most deficit discussions Congress seems incapable of setting aside electioneering rhetoric and talking straight about taxes and deficits. The GOP claims that it thinks deficits are bad things while at the same time it proposes no spending cuts (except to important safety net programs) and does propose […]
by Dan Crawford Stormy asks in an e-mail: At one time, I thought America was supposed to lead the way in green technology, providing jobs for Americans…and sends this quote from the Washington Post. The last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the United States is closing this month… …What made the […]
The Project on student debt updates on student loans: Yesterday the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law took a stand for students and consumers by passing the Private Student Loan Bankruptcy Fairness Act of 2010 (H.R. 5043). The bill reverses the unfair and unjustified special protections for lenders of private student loans […]
Robert Waldmann The Census Bureau has released estimates of poverty in 2009. Coverage focused on the headline poverty rate which is horrible enough. Much worse, 6.3% of people in the USA suffered severe poverty, that is lived in households with income less than half the poverty line. This is the highest severe poverty rate on […]
There are a lot of interpretations about President Obama’s appointment of Elizabeth Warren as an ‘assistant to the President’ to oversee the creation and development of the Consumer Protection Agency. Yves Smith sees this as a way to neutralize her either as a head of an agency or as an outsider evaluating the work and […]
Robert Waldmann Matty Yglesias has an amazing catch. He says that competitive devaluations achieved via unsterilized interventions would be a good thing, becuase they would cause inflation. He notes that someone disagrees. The Economist’s Buttonwood “The result is like a game of deflationary pass the parcel…” Of course, Mr or Ms Buttonwood should have written […]
by Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt HEALTH CARE: Obama Administration Gets Tough With Insurers DHHS Secretary Sebelius has lambasted the private health insurance industry in a letter to the industry’s trade association (I’m not a big friend of health insurance companies, FWIW). From the letter: “There will be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and […]
Robert Waldmann This whole post is after the jump as my accounting is not ready for prime time. Scott Sumner thinks he is the first to note that the cost to the US government of bailing out the big banks is more likely to be a profit than a cost. Clearly he doesn’t read angry […]