David Paul

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

"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...

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.

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"...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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.

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...