Just imagine how angry the American public would be if they knew the whole story.

For months, we have listened to the whining from Wall Street. U.S. banks are having a record year, and they want to be paid a lot of money. Billions and billions of dollars.

Public indignation...

With the announcement of record Wall Street bonus pools and rising credit card fees, it is time to sit back and see where we go from here.

In the wake of the near collapse of the US financial sector one year ago, Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke took extraordinary measures...

Thirty years ago, Salomon Brothers and Goldman Sachs were two of the "bulge bracket" underwriting firms that dominated Wall Street. Both firms with partnerships with trading cultures that characterized their organizations. It was a time when Wall Street firms were looking far and wide for ways to increase their access...

It is not clear how foreign policy strategy is being set in the Obama administration. But the execution has the appearances of a well-considered and tightly orchestrated dance. And when the music stopped this week, standing together on the stage, united in common purpose, were the Big Four of wars...

Most of us have lived through, or will live through, the painful years of watching our parents' health decline. Behind the ugly partisan rancor of the town halls and the health care debates is the simple truth of that common experience.

Whether our parents have cancer or Alzheimer's or dementia,...

A specter is haunting America--the specter of debt.

Birthed in the dying years of the Cold War, the American polity lost its way. Public policy, as encapsulated in the federal budget, was always about making hard choices among competing priorities and constituencies. The notion that resources were limited was a...

The US economic turnaround may not be complete. The AIG turnaround may not be complete. The GM turnaround may not be complete. But Goldman Sachs is back.

"A Swift Return to Lofty Profits" proclaimed in the New York Times, as Goldman Sachs reported that it earned $3.44 billion in the...

We have yet to see what the Iranian regime will be prepared to do in the face of real opposition. After all, the leaders of the opposition questioning the election results--Mir Hussein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi and Hashemi Rafsanjani, and others who have emerged as fellow travelers, including Ali Larijani and...

Even as the Obama administration may be consumed by efforts to stem the depth and duration of the recession, we appear to be at a tipping point in foreign affairs that can lead to positive new directions or a new downward spiral in regional conflicts.

The opportunities at hand...

This Sunday, the New York Times asked a panel of economists, "When Will the Recession Be Over?" A few panelists offered hopeful words, 'Perhaps later this year... if there are no more surprises.' The eternally pessimistic Nuriel Roubini suggested three years... or more. One sage observer offered the wisdom of...

Why tax people?

Really. We now know that no one likes paying taxes. The presumption was that Democrats liked taxes and that Republicans were opposed to them. But clearly that hypothesis was proven wrong. First, when the man who now sits atop the IRS, Tim Geithner, was nominated to be...

Twenty years or so ago, when my I was planning a move to California for a new job position, I listened to an interview regarding a study of the psychological affects of recessions on individuals and communities. Specifically, the study compared the incidence of mental illness, depression and suicide in...

This week, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation took over Silver Falls Bank in Silverton, Oregon. Silver Falls Bank was the 14th bank taken over by the FDIC this year. This compares with 25 banks that failed in 2008 and 3 in 2007. Bank failure is not unheard of. And up...

It needs to be said: The Congress of the United States has no business setting the terms of executive compensation. That is not how capitalism is supposed to work.

But then again, the US Government has no business giving tens of billions of dollars to corporations, and getting nothing...

I think of my grandmother around Thanksgiving. She was born Uman, Ukraine in 1900 or so, back when it was Russia. As she cooked for us, she would talk about her life and her journey to the warmer climes of Buffalo, New York.

She told a story about a...

Barack Obama has time to consider how his administration will minister to the ailing auto companies, as their demise will be protracted. In the real economy, failure takes time. Sixty days from now GM will still be there.

But the same cannot be said of Citibank.

Today, after...

The debate over the bailout rages on.

On the one hand, the companies involved have only themselves to blame. No one denies that they brought this on themselves. The nation watches incredulous as the wealthy CEOs fly into the nation's capital on their private jets and claim that it was...

Faced with a choice for Secretary of State between Hillary Clinton, Chuck Hagel and Bill Richardson, President-elect Obama's choice should be clear. While all of them have strengths to serve the new president well, only Governor Richardson brings both a depth of experience and a philosophical commitment to Barack Obama's...

The longer this goes on, the more absurd it is becoming.

Hank Paulson may know what he is doing. He may have insight that is lost on the rest of us. But then again, he might not.

It is not easy to suggest that a man with the pedigree and...

"The prospect of hanging concentrates the mind." Samuel Johnson.

After decades of fretting over the low American savings rate, Americans are putting away their credit cards and hunkering down for a long, cold winter. And the rest of the world is trembling at the thought.

The anticipation phase of this...