The Feed

Jacob J Lew, the president’s nominee for Treasury secretary, and Mary Jo White, the nominee for chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, are making financial reformers nervous. The issue is not so much their track record, because neither has worked directly on financial-sector policy issues; it is much more about whom they know. Specifically, ...

The Conference Board reported Tuesday that the preliminary January figure for consumer confidence in the United States fell to its lowest level in more than a year. The last time consumers were this bummed out was October 2011, when there was widespread talk of a double-dip recession. But this time business news is buoyant. The stock market ...

Richard Hasen introduces this symposium by asserting the “smart money is on the [US Supreme] court striking down” Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. But I disagree with his framing. The next Voting Rights Act needs both Section 5 and additional voting rights protections. Unfortunately, Hasen is helping opponents of Section 5. He gives ...

Two weeks after President Obama announced his plan to reduce gun violence—and a month and a half after the horrible tragedy that inspired it—the latest headline about Obama and guns centers on his own relationship with them. In a recent interview with The New Republic, the president expressed “profound respect” for hunting and even offered that he ...

If the Supreme Court strikes down the Voting Rights Act, many will argue that we should abandon the civil rights model of elections and opt for a national law setting uniform election standards that would protect every voter. I’m all for protecting every voter. But I would hate to lose what Section 5 provides – ...

Statement of Professors of Constitutional Law: The Second Amendment and the Constitutionality of the Proposed Gun Violence Prevention Legislation Several proposed reforms to the nation’s gun laws, including universal background checks and restrictions on high-capacity ammunition magazines and assault weapons, are now pending before Congress. Concerns have been raised that these measures might violate the ...

The first months of President Barack Obama’s second term promise to be full of big political fights on issues ranging from comprehensive immigration reform to the problem of gun violence to addressing America’s fiscal woes. Last week’s decision on recess appointments by three Republican-appointed judges on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, however, proves there’s ...

Shakespeare’s Polonius offered this classic advice to his son: “neither a borrower nor a lender be.”  Many of our nation’s Founding Fathers emphatically saw it otherwise.  They often lived by the maxim: always a borrower, never a lender be.  As tobacco and rice planters, slave traders, and merchants, as well as land and currency speculators, ...

We have just come off an election with surprisingly low voter turnout. Turnout fell more or less steadily from 1960 until 1996, when slightly less than half of the voting-age population went to the polls. But then it ticked up: 51 percent in 2000, 54 percent in 2004, and 58 percent in 2008. In 2012 ...

Testimony by CEPR Co-Director Dean Baker before a joint session of the New Mexico State Legislature labor and education committees on public pension funds.  ———————————————————————————————————– Thank you for inviting me to discuss the return assumptions used by the state pension plans in assessing their funding situation. I recognize that this is an important issue that ...