Americans have climbed a historic peak of pain and uncertainty in the past decade, as the economic insecurity of the American families is greater than at any time on record. One in five Americans, a new report for the Rockefeller Foundation found, has experienced a decline of 25 percent or more in available household income. [...]
Tags: Economic Insecurity, Insecurity
Posted July 23, 2010 by Hanna Silver under Financial News
Casey B. Mulligan is an economics professor at the University of Chicago. Deflation has returned this summer, but it’s still nothing like what happened in the Great Depression years of 1929-33. During most of our lifetimes, the prices of things we buy have generally increased over time. We can name some exceptions, but otherwise most [...]
Tags: Deflation, Deflation 1931
Posted July 20, 2010 by Hanna Silver under Financial News
CARD Act benefits targeted at consumer protection The CARD Act (Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act) of 2009 attempts to eliminate some deceptive policies (albeit legal prior to this legislation) formerly used by many credit card companies to increase their income. Consumers have been subject to a variety of unpleasant increases in costs, including [...]
Tags: Act, Card Act
Posted July 20, 2010 by John Wane under Financial News
Federal tax revenue on the sales of firearms and ammunition rose 45 percent in the last fiscal year. That is the highest annual increase on record, according to a new report from the Treasury Department’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. By comparison, the annual average increase for fiscal years 1993 to 2008 was [...]
Posted July 17, 2010 by Hanna Silver under Financial News
Pulse Insurance has announced that it is to offer life cover to individuals who are HIV positive. Many life insurance providers are reticent to provide cover to people with diagnosed conditions or viruses, but the insurance provider has announced it is to offer a policy which offers up to 200,000 of accidental death cover and [...]
Tags: Hiv, Life Insurance
Posted July 16, 2010 by John Wane under Financial News
Difficulty with mortgage rate predictions Predicting mortgage rates is difficult, even for well-informed and experienced observers. The primary problem is the diversity of the components that influence mortgage and refinance rates. Unlike some other important interest rates, e.g. prime rate, home equity, auto, and personal loans, national and local mortgage rates fluctuate more akin to [...]
Tags: Mortgage Rates, Rates
Posted July 14, 2010 by John Wane under Financial News
7:36 p.m. | Updated Casey B. Mulligan is an economics professor at the University of Chicago. The tax cuts and public spending increases from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 are coming to an end, and economists and politicians disagree as to whether the federal government’s “stimulus” should continue. But the conclusion of [...]
Posted July 13, 2010 by Hanna Silver under Financial News
When it comes to part-time work, the gender wage gap goes the other way: Women generally out-earn men. In the last week, we’ve been plucking choice items from the Labor Department’s latest report on women’s earnings, including one post on the evolving gap between pay for women and men. The numbers in that post were [...]
Tags: Men
Posted July 11, 2010 by Hanna Silver under Financial News