Economy and Business
The Parched Truth about American Jobs
At last, some excellent economic news for folks long-mired in the stagnant labor market. "Jobs Spring Back," exclaimed a typical headline on recent reports that 165,000 private-sector jobs were added in April. Wow — the thunderous, three-year boom of prosperity that...
How We Pay for CEO ‘Performance’
Federal unemployment benefits for 400,000 Californians out of work since last fall recently dropped 18 percent, a $52 cut out of weekly checks that average $297. Similar cuts are rolling out in other states. In all, long-term unemployed Americans will on average lose...
Fashion Victims
You see it in stores across our country and around the world: colorful and stylish clothing with happy-sounding brand names like Children's Place, Papaya, Joe Fresh, and Mango. But you don't see the factories where these cheerful garments are made. Nor are we shown...
Made in Bangladesh
The Internet Racket
Is your Internet bill too high? You can thank the phone and cable companies for that. Today, high-speed broadband services offered by these national carriers cost more than $500 a year and even more when customers are forced to bundle Internet access with cable or...
Banking on the Poor
What's a fair interest rate to pay on a loan? If you think a 300 percent annual percentage rate (APR) is no big deal, you can stop reading. But if you'd be outraged to learn that some of the country's biggest banks — like Wells Fargo, Regions , US Bank, and Fifth...
Flying Over an Act of Monumental Stupidity
I knew that Congress would come to its senses eventually, that it would realize that the ham-handed budget cuts ordered by the so-called "sequester" weren't going to work, that some government functions were too important to be cut. And I was right, kind of. Last week...
Austerity Will Leave Us Crying ’96 Tears’
Aging baby boomers may remember a 1960s rock band that sported an all-time great name. That band — Question Mark and the Mysterians — may now have a worthy rival on the name front. Make way for Reinhart-Rogoff and the Austerians. Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and...
Useless Baggage
They've hit a new low. Citing significant concerns about long lines at airports and flight delays caused by the furlough of air-traffic controllers, Congress let the Federal Aviation Administration override strict sequestration rules and redirect funds within its...
Tracking CEO Pay
Under current U.S. law, all our publicly traded corporations must annually disclose exactly what they pay their top executives. So why do all those CEO pay scorecards we see every spring show such different results? USA Today found an 8 percent hike in 2012 CEO pay...
