Subject: Policies
Author and columnist Tom Friedman described the nation’s current predicament as when Roy Scheider’s character from Jaws gets his first glimpse at the shark, goes to the captain’s cabin and declares: “We’re going to need a bigger boat.” Policy makers…
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As forecasters offer their new years predictions of a struggling economy, it is past time to be asking how a federal bailout of our financial institutions can equal no relief for consumers in accessing credit. The front page of the…
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Shaun Donovan, President-elect Barack Obama’s pick to head HUD, appears to be an indication that this could be the urban policy president we’ve been hoping for. It’s no secret that for far too long, the department of Housing and Urban…
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Through Change.gov, the public is being offered a first-ever opportunity to peek inside and offer opinion on nearly the entire transition process. A large team of academics, former bureacrats, and leading advocates have been appointed by President-Elect Obama to vet…
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Deja vu: the sensation that you are doing something that you have done before. In an eerily familiar Web-only piece, Laura Brunts and Theodore Kahn of The Atlantic recap vintage coverage of America’s appraisal of its financial misdeeds in the…
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My son downloaded “The Ghost of Tom Joad” by Bruce Springsteen with Tom Morello on my iPod a couple of months ago. During this past Thanksgiving week, we went together to see Morello perform as The Nightwatchman. With all due…
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A few months back I wrote about two pieces of vacant property legislation making their way through the Pennsylvania General Assembly. I’m happy to report today that one of these bills has passed, with exciting implications for the commonwealth’s dozens…
What a great attention-grabber. Dated July 4, 2009, the lead story in the edition of The New York Times handed out to commuters in New York City yesterday morning trumpeted in giant type “IRAQ WAR ENDS”—alongside the other above-the-fold headline,…
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The House Financial Services Committee met this morning to begin, ever so tentatively, to redraw the regulatory landscape for the financial services industry in the wake of the nation’s economic earthquake. The question is, has the Washington status quo that…
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At week’s end, there’s not much good news, but instead a world of pain to report. As of today, Americans have a “rescue plan” that doesn’t rescue millions of people sinking under the waves of a turbulent economy. Today’s announcement…
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Everyone should be outraged that the proposed economic bailout package passed by the Senate on Wednesday night and being debated in the House this morning does virtually nothing to assist troubled borrowers. The House and the Senate bills abandoned help…
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Today’s New York Times editorial titled “Show Us the Hope” slams the inadequacies of both the Bush administration’s and Congress’s attention to the plight of homeowners caught in the foreclosure crisis that is behind the current economic turmoil. The editorialist…
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It is true that the economic well-being of our nation is in jeopardy and that consumer confidence and liquidity is badly needed in order to have any hope of reversing this downward economic slide. The Emergency Economic Recovery Act of…
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Between the recent string of bank failures and shotgun weddings, Citigroup’s FDIC-brokered purchase of troubled Wachovia this morning, and talk of handing off a heaping helping of toxic mortgage debt to taxpayers in order to avert economic catastrophe, it’s clear…
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In last week’s media blitz of trying to explain our financial crisis, the clearest description I saw was a Chattanooga Times Free Press cartoon, which the Chicago Tribune ran on its editorial page on Sept. 25. Titled The Rescue Plan,…
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On my way to work, I’ve gotten into the habit of tuning in to Democracy Now! on Carnegie Mellon University’s radio station WRCT. A little muckraking early in the day is usually enough to take my mind off the sheer…
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Listening to Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson testify before the Senate Banking Committee, I’m marveling at his insistence to Republican Sen. Mel Martinez, former HUD secretary, that “I welcome oversight.” Martinez is leading Paulson through a kind of call-and-response…
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Robert Shiller in an article in The New York Times proposed a more flexible home mortgage that he argues would help prevent crises like the current subprime mortgage crisis. Shiller, an economics professor at Yale and author of The Subprime…
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From AFP today: The 700-billion dollar Wall Street bailout plan, put together last week by the U.S. administration, would allow the U.S .Treasury to sell new debt to buy vast amounts of mortgage securities and other “toxic” assets that have…
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Just finished watching ServiceNation’s presidential forum on national service, and I’m here to give credit where it’s due: Judy Woodruff asked John McCain to explain his running-mate’s disparaging taunts about community organizers vs. those—specifically small-town mayors—with “real responsibilities.” On Monday,…
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National Housing Institute
