Suddenly, and finally, everywhere we turn somebody is talking about the student debt disaster. Headlines scream it. The presidential campaigns are beginning to seriously talk about it. Congress is starting to focus on it, well....as only Congress does. Last week, once again demonstrating its ability to turn a simple box...
(3) Comments | Posted May 24, 2012 | 11:00 AM
Over the past few months, in preparation for and in reflection of the commencement address I had the privilege of giving at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University on May 12, I watched scores of them on YouTube and read literally hundreds of them as well...
(2) Comments | Posted May 18, 2012 | 12:34 PM
For the record, I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the Hitler Youth. I point this out because based on the comments to my last few
(38) Comments | Posted May 11, 2012 | 4:35 PM
If you're worried about student loan debt, what it means for graduating seniors and for the future of our nation, congratulations. That means you're paying attention. Now that Americans owe over $1 trillion in student debt, more than they owe...
(10) Comments | Posted May 3, 2012 | 1:11 PM
If you haven't taken the time to watch Obama slow jam the news on Late Night from last week, take the time. It was a political masterstroke that so infuriated conservatives (because they're incapable of approaching that level of coolness), that they actually tried to make being...
(40) Comments | Posted April 27, 2012 | 3:04 PM
President Obama, Governor Romney and their backers may be spending hundreds of millions of dollars to live in the most expensive and exclusive house in the nation, but they aren't saying enough about the fact that housing in America is broken....
(38) Comments | Posted April 20, 2012 | 3:22 PM
Maybe you're reading about it less and less. It doesn't seem to be the lead story on many national news broadcasts anymore. But it's still there, festering away like an untreated wound.
The foreclosure crisis and the morass...
(1) Comments | Posted April 13, 2012 | 10:25 AM
No doubt you've seen the studies that show how social networking sites hurt productivity, and I am pretty sure you've read, heard or watched countless stories about how companies have tried to solve that problem. And you would have to be living in a cave in Bora Bora -- specifically...
(8) Comments | Posted April 5, 2012 | 1:13 PM
For those of us who care about privacy, these past seven days have truly sucked.
With relatively little fanfare in the midst of a cacophonous (that means "noisy," Senator Santorum) parade of news, three significant events seriously undermined...
(169) Comments | Posted March 23, 2012 | 1:24 PM
At $1 trillion dollars, student loan debt has eclipsed credit card debt for the first time in American history. To make matters worse, come July 1 the interest rate on federally subsidized Stafford student loans will automatically double, from 3.4% to...
(27) Comments | Posted March 16, 2012 | 9:00 AM
I've always been a political junkie. Since my earliest days as an observer and later as a participant in all things electoral, the golden rule has not changed: love thy neighbor's wallet as though it were your own. Americans "vote their pocketbooks." I have always accepted it as a truism...
(2) Comments | Posted March 14, 2012 | 4:07 PM
Even the farsighted Founding Fathers could not have foreseen this -- the Fed is now on Twitter! Just think of the possibilities -- one fine Friday any Fed functionary could foment a world crisis in 140 characters or less! It could...
(9) Comments | Posted March 7, 2012 | 6:06 PM
Once again National Consumer Protection Week falls smack in the middle of Lent. Is this yet another coincidence, or rather a celestial reminder of the benefits of occasional restraint?
This year, in particular, no one really wants a restrained consumer,...
(16) Comments | Posted March 1, 2012 | 4:48 PM
Earlier this week, the New York Post shouted the headline "US Credit Card Debt Nearing Toxic Levels." The article was referring to the latest report from the Fed that in December, total consumer debt, which is the sum of both non-revolving and revolving debt, increased by 9.3 percent to...
(3) Comments | Posted February 23, 2012 | 5:00 PM
Opening my e-mail reminds me of walking through the bazaar of a third world open air market -- the pickpockets are everywhere. In the last 30 days I have received spam purporting to be from the Better Business Bureau, the Internal Revenue Service,...
(25) Comments | Posted February 16, 2012 | 12:44 PM
Seven days, three seemingly disconnected announcements, and one subtle theme: what we have here is a failure to communicate... or more to the point, a failure to educate. America and much of the world is in the midst of financial...
(33) Comments | Posted February 9, 2012 | 1:26 PM
I am a New Yorker. I am a Giants fan. They made my day last Sunday. Sorry, Gisele.
Like over 100 million of you, I saw the Chrysler commercial and, for the record, Clint Eastwood made my day.
Now, in the interest of full disclosure -- my college flame was...
(2) Comments | Posted February 2, 2012 | 12:20 PM
Last week was a pretty good one for the notion of privacy in America, which has increasingly become forlorn and tattered as a result of the advancement of digital technology. First, the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Jones that warrantless GPS tracking of a criminal suspect by the...
(11) Comments | Posted January 24, 2012 | 4:33 PM
The Stop Online Piracy Act, and its sister legislation in the Senate, the Protect Intellectual Property Act caused quite a stir in Silicon Valley, Hollywood and Washington. The two bills were intended to put a hard stop on theft of intellectual property on the Internet, by means that are...
(16) Comments | Posted January 15, 2012 | 4:23 PM
In keeping with a tradition firmly established in the 20th century, Europe suffered a late-night bombing raid on Friday evening. This time the attacker was Standard & Poor's, everybody's favorite rating agency, which announced well after the markets closed in New York it was downgrading the debt of no...

(64) Comments | Posted May 31, 2012 | 11:51 AM