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Student Loan Interest Rates Just the Tip of College Cost Iceberg
Tweet Share on Facebook April 26, 2012 Comment (7)David Brodwin is a cofounder and board member of American Sustainable Business Council.
Congress and the presidential candidates are debating whether to let the rates on student loans double to 6.8 percent. This issue has grabbed headlines, but it's little more than a sideshow. Even if rates are kept down, the student loan program doesn't come close to meeting the challenge of soaring tuition. It doesn't allow America's youth to acquire the skills they need to compete in a tough global marketplace.
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What the CBO Really Said About Obama's Budget
Tweet Share on Facebook April 25, 2012 Comment (2)Chad Stone is chief economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
The Congressional Budget Office issued its analysis of the economic impact of the president's 2013 budget last Friday, generating headlines and press releases that the president's budget would hurt the economy. Unfortunately, too few people asked the critical question, "Compared to what?"
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America's Upcoming Economic Train Wrecks: Tax Hikes, Budget Cuts
Tweet Share on Facebook April 24, 2012 Comment (7)David Sampson is the president and CEO of the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America. He served in the George W. Bush administration as the deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce and as assistant secretary of Commerce for Economic Development.
As property casualty insurers, evaluating risk is our core competency. For instance, auto insurers know from statistical evidence that there will be almost 30,000 car accidents each day.
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Eric Cantor's Temporary Tax Cuts Are Bad Economics
Tweet Share on Facebook April 24, 2012 Comment (4)Veronique de Rugy is a professor and a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
In January 2013, the 22 million small business owners who pay their taxes through the personal income tax will see their top marginal tax rate increase to 41 percent.
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The Hidden Role of Gold at the IMF
Tweet Share on Facebook April 23, 2012 Comment (3)James Rickards is a hedge fund manager in New York City and the author of Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis from Portfolio/Penguin. Follow him on Twitter: @JamesGRickards.
The International Monetary Fund completed their spring meetings last weekend amid communiqués and good feelings about what had been accomplished. There was optimism about improvement in the global economy albeit tempered by warnings that risks remained. Christine Lagarde, the organization's managing director, was upbeat about new financing pledges to help build an IMF firewall to prevent contagion from countries in financial distress.
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Citigroup's Shareholders Stand Up for the 99.9 Percent
Tweet Share on Facebook April 20, 2012 Comment (1)Eileen Appelbaum is a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research
In a wake-up call to corporate boards across the United States, Citigroup's shareholders recently took advantage of the new "say-on-pay" provisions of the Dodd-Frank law to vote down CEO Vikram Pandit's $15 million pay package. Shareholders have been surprisingly quiet as corporate executives, investment bankers, and investment fund managers have captured a huge and rapidly growing slice of corporate profits. The massive increase in inequality in the United States over the past three decades as the nation's gains in productivity have gone to further enrich the top 1 percent has been well-documented. Less well known is that the lion's share of those income gains have gone to the 0.1 percent at the tippy top. The shareholders at Citigroup have said, "Enough!"
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The Advantages of a Traditional On-Campus MBA Experience
Tweet Share on Facebook April 20, 2012 CommentPaul Danos is dean of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.
The great business schools of the world have long traditions of putting groups of smart students together on campus with thought-leading professors and fostering a concentrated and intense period of learning. The campus and all of its trimmings is very important for that special chemistry to occur: One gets knowledge from a master, a new network of outstanding leaders, new inspiration and values, and takes deep dives into the inner-workings of a field with an expert. The prime example of that kind of learning experience is the classic two-year, full-time MBA program at a top business school.
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The Pain of Tax Day Is Only Getting Worse
Tweet Share on Facebook April 20, 2012 Comment (4)Mike Whalen is the president and CEO of Heart of America Group and a member of the Job Creators Alliance.
This week, millions of Americans were painfully reminded of just how much of their hard-earned money goes to fund Uncle Sam's spending addiction. Tax Day was on Tuesday, April 17, the deadline for filing taxes for 2012. As the Heritage Foundation points out, April 17 was also Tax Freedom Day: the day when Americans finally earn enough income to pay off the bill for all federal, state, and local taxes for the year. It was four days later than last year, due to higher taxes, according to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation.
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Lessons from Latin America: Antipoverty Efforts Can Promote Growth
Tweet Share on Facebook April 20, 2012 CommentRobert Hahn is director of economics at Oxford's Smith School, chief economist at the Legatum Institute, and a senior fellow at the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy. Peter Passell is a senior fellow at the Milken Institute in Santa Monica and economics adviser to the Legatum Institute. They co-founded Regulation2point0.org, a web portal on economic regulation.
Everybody enjoys a feel-good story. And for economists, anyway, the latest data on income inequality in Latin America fits that description very well. After decades in which the income divide in this most divided of regions only seemed to grow wider, the process has abruptly reversed. What's more, the reasons for the reversal, as explained by Giovanni Cornia of the University of Florence and the United Nations University, suggest that governments in other rapidly developing regions aren't quite as powerless to lean against the global winds of inequality as the conventional wisdom suggests.
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Government Economic Intervention Made America Great
Tweet Share on Facebook April 19, 2012 CommentThis week, the "Rebuild America Act" was introduced by Sen. Tom Harkin. This comprehensive bill aims to help American manufacturers compete and help young people get the education they need. It calls for rebuilding roads and bridges, improving schools and job training, and protecting U.S. companies from predatory trade practices.
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