As hedge funds, private equity firms, and other asset managers that make up the shadow banking system gradually take over the role of lending, their risks—and the borrowed money they use to make them—are largely shielded from view.
Thanks to decades of stagnant wages and the Great Recession, more than half of American working-class households are at risk of being unable to sustain their standard of living past retirement. Duncan Black is trying to change that.
Rising rates will obviously send monthly payments higher, but they'll also affect the market in a more unusual way: They're going to hurt all-cash investor purchases of housing, which have been a boon to the most distressed markets.
Jerry Brown’s education plan asks, “Why not just give poor schools more state money—and authority over how to spend it?” His idea mirrors some of the most promising new theories of global development.
The Obama administration wants the sequester to hurt immediately so the public will clamor for its reversal. But will this gambit work? Probably not.
How to save the Postal Service—and protect ordinary Americans from financial predators—in one easy step: bring back postal banking!
