David Paul
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David Paul (Yale BA 1977; Wharton MBA 1982; Penn Ed.D. 2004) is the President of the Fiscal Strategies Group, a financial advisory firm specializing in municipal and project finance. Previously he was a Managing Director of Public Financial Management, Inc., Vice Provost of Drexel University, and the co-founder of Mathforum.com, an e-learning company.

David Paul has worked for twenty-five years as a financial advisor to state and local governments on infrastructure and project financing, was well as on addressing issues of fiscal distress, and in international project finance as a member of the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank Group. His clients have included state governments such as New Mexico, Virginia, New Jersey and Florida, clients in the US Virgin Islands, higher educational clients across the country, and unique project finance clients such as Spaceport America. He works regularly with legislative bodies with respect to budget and financial matters, and has worked on several political campaigns.

David Paul is a member of the Board Trustees of Cumberland University, and has served on the boards of several educational organizations. He is the author of When the Pot Boils: The decline and turnaround of Drexel University (SUNY Press, 2008), as well as of the screenplay Breakpoint (1997). He has published online commentaries for several years at http://appalled.blogspot.com/.

Blog Entries by David Paul

Pension Bankruptcy in Tiny U.S. Territory Is a Warning of What May Lie Ahead

(209) Comments | Posted May 24, 2012 | 8:47 PM

Last month, the territory of the Northern Mariana Islands became the first U.S. public pension fund to declare bankruptcy. Like many public pension plans across the country, the financial condition of the Northern Mariana's pension fund deteriorated significantly over the past five years. With $256 million of pension...

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Why Are Our Political Leaders Jumping to Jamie Dimon's Defense?

(37) Comments | Posted May 20, 2012 | 3:00 PM

As I write this, Bruno Iksil is still riding the Bongo Board. We have all done it, at least those of us of a certain age. We got up on the Bongo Board and we thought we could stay up forever.

One can only imagine the endorphins pumping across the...

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Aung San Suu Kyi's Triumph and the Prospects for a New Grand Bargain

(3) Comments | Posted April 3, 2012 | 8:53 PM

The election of Aung San Suu Kyi is a useful reminder that change and progress is possible even in the most apparently sclerotic societies. Whatever the combination of external pressure and internal dynamics, the notion that there is a parliament in the country formerly known as Burma, that...

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Cry the Beloved Country: Why the Supreme Court Should Leave Obamacare Alone

(47) Comments | Posted March 29, 2012 | 11:23 AM

I believe that the Supreme Court will uphold the individual mandate that is at the core of Obamacare by a vote of 6-3. Based on no legal theory whatsoever, I expect Chief Justice Roberts and perennial swing vote Justice Kennedy to vote with the liberal wing to uphold the act...

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Forget Etch A Sketch and Vaginas, Obama Faces a Real Race in the Fall

(205) Comments | Posted March 24, 2012 | 5:06 PM

It is now over, perhaps someone will tell Rick and Calista.

This week, Jeb Bush quietly endorsed Mitt Romney -- silencing the quiet yearning of Republicans who for months have hoped that Bush might yet emerge through a brokered convention -- and Tea Party leader Jim DeMint urged Republicans to...

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Jamie Dimon Beware: The Wall Street Journal Says It Is Time to Break Up the Big Banks

(95) Comments | Posted February 19, 2012 | 6:08 PM

This week, four years after the collapse of Bear Stearns, the two hedge fund managers who helped bring about its demise, Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin, agreed to pay $1 million to settle a civil suit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission. No doubt Cioffi and Tannin...

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Can Manufacturing Jobs Come Back? What We Should Learn From Apple and Foxconn

(151) Comments | Posted February 13, 2012 | 7:30 AM

Apple aficionados suffered a blow a couple of weeks ago. All of those beautiful products, it turns out, are the product of an industrial complex that is nothing if not one step removed from slave labor.

But of course there is nothing new here. Walmart has long prospered...

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Back to the Drachma: Time to Let Greece Be Greece

(171) Comments | Posted February 5, 2012 | 7:41 PM

"The pace and composition of the deleveraging process needs to be consistent with the macroeconomic scenario of the adjustment program and should not jeopardize the provision of adequate levels of credit to the economy."

Thus spoke one European finance official this weekend, as one more confab of ministers from the...

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Even as Romney Recovers, Newt's Attacks Are Killing His Chances In the Fall

(187) Comments | Posted January 29, 2012 | 4:21 PM

Mitt Romney was a good governor of Massachusetts.

That alone should disqualify him from being the Republican nominee. Like Bill Weld and Frank Sargent before him, he was part of the cyclical antidote to the deeply rooted Democrat machine politics of the state, the periodic salve to the status quo.

...
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Politicians Seeking Upper Hand Over Hedge Funds in Greek Bailout

(10) Comments | Posted January 22, 2012 | 9:33 PM

Negotiations to avert a default by Greece continue to move haltingly. The closer the parties get to a resolution--presumably replacing existing short-term debt with new, long-term bonds with a reduced coupon--the clearer it is becoming that a solution may require 100% participation of bondholders while sustaining the illusion of "voluntary"...

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Before They Left Town, Did House Republicans Change the Rules of the Tax-cutting Game?

(394) Comments | Posted December 24, 2011 | 5:33 PM

House Republicans, just days after standing their ground, decided instead to head home for Christmas dinner.

So much for the principles that brought them to power in 2010. So much for ending business as usual in the nation's capital.

But their language changed by the end. Gone was the moral...

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Iraq, Free Trade and America's Efforts to Remake the World

(11) Comments | Posted December 18, 2011 | 4:55 PM

With the end of the war in Iraq, one chapter of the Neoconservative history is ended. Its outcome will not be known for decades to come.

In his famous 2003 interview in Vanity Fair magazine, then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was forthright in explaining that while their public case...

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Occupy Wall Street Needs Voice From Main Street

(97) Comments | Posted October 9, 2011 | 5:01 PM

Whatever one's view of Occupy Wall Street -- and how quickly those on the right and those on the left have gone to their respective corners and hammered out their talking points -- it is a positive step that there might be some thought given to where we are and...

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No News Here: Wall Street Traders Threaten the Future of the Industrial World

(59) Comments | Posted October 5, 2011 | 6:13 PM

Three years ago, it all fell apart. A decade of borrowing and greed finally culminated in the collapse of Wall Street, and it has taken three years for any visible protests to bubble to the surface. Occupy Wall Street, as they call themselves, is just now making it onto the...

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Peter Terpeluk, Republican Titan, Man of Joy

(46) Comments | Posted August 30, 2011 | 5:37 PM

Peter Terpeluk was my friend. And he died last week.

Like gay lovers in an earlier era, Peter and I kept our relationship quiet. He was a big Republican muckety-muck, fundraiser and lobbyist extraordinaire, former Republican National Committee finance chairman. I was, he liked to tell me, his favorite Liberal.

...
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Rick Perry Looks to Leave Mitt Romney and Karl Rove in the Dust

(249) Comments | Posted August 18, 2011 | 6:22 PM

I watched Texas Governor Rick Perry over the weekend. Gotta say, great start. Perry should rip Mitt Romney apart. He delivers a great vision speech. And the primaries lay out well for him. Iowa and South Carolina should be easy, and New Hampshire will be discounted, because even if Romney...

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S&P Downgrade Reflects Political Divisions That May Be Our Greatest Source of Risk

(2) Comments | Posted August 15, 2011 | 2:54 PM

One week after the downgrade of the United States bond rating, the markets have returned a verdict of sorts. In a week of staggering volatility, stocks declined by 2% while money flooded into the downgraded U.S. Treasury market, reducing yields on the 10-year by 0.30%. While the S&P action certainly...

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At a Moment of Historic Opportunity, House Republicans Were Sold Down the River By Their Leadership

(22) Comments | Posted July 31, 2011 | 11:46 PM

Granted, the tea party came to Washington and changed the nature of the debate. Last December, two debt commissions reported out long-term solutions to the issue of chronic budgetary reliance on debt. Both commission reports recommended a balance of actions affecting expenditure and revenues. Both commissions projected long-term moderation in...

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Debt Ceiling Battle Offers House Republicans Untold Leverage

(66) Comments | Posted July 17, 2011 | 4:58 PM

Everyone wants in on this act. Particularly the bond rating agencies. Having been caught asleep at the switch in the run-up to crises past, Moody's and Standard & Poor's are loath to let it happen again. Going back to the Drexel Burham/Michael Milken affair, they affirmed the strong ratings on...

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Jerry Brown's Radical Proposal That Voters Make Choices and Accept Consequences

(193) Comments | Posted June 19, 2011 | 9:49 PM

On the streets of Greece and in the legislative chambers of Sacramento, people are grappling with the same issues: Are we willing to pay for those things that we want? And what are the consequences if we don't?

This week, Governor Jerry Brown vetoed the budget sent to...

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