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Obama Must Change His Course on Energy, Housing to Revive Economy
Tweet Share on Facebook January 24, 2012 CommentJoseph Mason is the Moyse/LBA Chair of Banking at the Ourso School of Business at Louisiana State University and a senior fellow at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Together, America's housing and energy sectors account for nearly a quarter of our economy. In light of that reality, any plan aimed at spurring growth would be well served to bolster those two industries—a fact worth considering when tuning into President Obama's State of the Union address.
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The U.S. Economy's Recovery Is Stronger Than People Think
Tweet Share on Facebook January 24, 2012 Comment (3)Heidi Shierholz is an economist at the Economic Policy Institute and a regular contributor to its blog, Working Economics.
It's been two and a half years since the official end of the Great Recession, but over 13 million people remain unemployed—more than 40 percent of them for over six months—and when you add in the underemployed, the number reaches nearly 24 million.
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Two Fundamental Flaws With Obama's State of the Union Message
Tweet Share on Facebook January 23, 2012 Comment (4)David M. Primo is a senior scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and an associate professor of political science and business administration at the University of Rochester.
President Obama plans to use Tuesday night's State of the Union address to lay out a "blueprint for an economy that's built to last," and he'll no doubt spend some of his time maligning the so-called gridlock in Washington. There are two faulty premises at work here, yet I predict that these assumptions will go relatively unchallenged in coverage of the speech.
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Why Carried Interest Should Not Be Taxed at the Capital Gains Rate
Tweet Share on Facebook January 23, 2012 CommentEileen Appelbaum is a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research
Private equity firms recruit investors—pension funds, endowments, sovereign wealth funds, hedge funds, wealthy individuals—for an investment fund. The private equity fund is structured as a partnership in which the sponsoring private equity company is the general partner and the investors in the fund are limited partners. The investment fund acquires a portfolio of operating companies with the expectation that the fund will make a profitable exit from the investments in a few years. The general partner (the private equity firm) makes the decisions about which companies to buy, how they should be managed, and when they should be sold. The limited partners share in any gains (or losses), but do not have a say in decision-making. The private equity firm typically sponsors multiple special purpose private equity investment funds, each of which is structured as a separate partnership.
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MBA Employment Figures Give Reason for Economic Optimism
Tweet Share on Facebook January 23, 2012 CommentPaul Danos is dean of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.
When I view the economic prospects through my business school lens, I am encouraged, as opposed to the pessimism engendered by the reading of most professional economists' forecasts. If one believes in rational employment markets, last summer's strong demand for top MBA graduates should be an occasion for optimism. Last summer 97 percent of Tuck's 2011 graduates had firm employment offers within three months of graduation and total compensation increased 7 percent over 2010. As an indication of next summer's demand 85 percent of the class of 2012 had job offers coming from their 2011 summer internships.
