The removal of the barricades around Zuccotti Park could've just been the result of good legal work by civil liberties lawyers.

Or maybe something else was going on here as well.

Mayor Bloomberg on October 7, 2011 expressed concern that the Occupy Wall Street protests will...

The U.S. unemployment rate ("U3") declined slightly to 9.0 percent -- not much comfort.

But if we add the percentage of the labor force that is underemployed -- the involuntarily employed part-time, i.e., those working "part-time for economic reasons" -- the combined index of underemployment fell by two-tenths of...

The latest county job and wage numbers suggest that one place economic recovery starts is in counties that were already quite well off, like Manhattan. They also suggest that Santa Clara County, CA -- the heart of Silicon Valley -- is Manhattan's main competitor.

In the first quarter...

I'm reading about the arrest in London of Kweku Adoboli of the Swiss investment bank UBS. I'm at the Randolph Hotel in Oxford, overlooking Balliol College. I'm here for the Oxford University Reunion Weekend -- 49 years since I matriculated.

It seems that Mr. Adoboli, the young UBS trader, made...

A day after Hurricane Irene was downgraded to a tropical storm, 38 fatalities have been reported. Each of these deaths represents a great loss for their survivors. Fatalities are also a guide to the economic impact of the disaster.

The latest report of fatalities is 38...

The country is stuck in a liquidity paralysis. The Tea Party's debt exorcisers are pushing their case too hard at the wrong time. President Obama continues to have a big challenge to get the country moving again.

Yet there may be hope at the state and local level. The...

A year ago today I wrote about financial regulation . As the G20 meeting on April 2 approaches, the topic is more relevant than ever.

I argued last year that when the last piece of the Glass-Steagall wall between banking and non-bank financial institutions was torn down in 1999,...

When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and the Soviet Union disintegrated, many of us looked forward to a Peace Dividend, a reduction in military spending that would allow more U.S. Government spending on public needs like health care or education, or tax cuts, or a combination.

We got...

As the Democratic administration wrestles with huge U.S. economic problems, officials can take comfort in the fact that they have an easy act to follow. The numbers are in, and under Bush 43 only four U.S. states beat the average long-term growth rate. The four "winner" states that did better...

At dinner this week I had a chance to quiz Georg Kell about the UN's Global Compact. Georg is Executive Director of the UN Global Compact. What is his mission? He told...

Public concern is fully warranted over the high and rising 8.1 percent unemployment rate reported for February. In fact, the true pain is closer to double what is reported. The Bureau of Labor Statistics routinely provides the data to report the higher rate. The standard unemployment rate averaged 5.8 percent...

The U.S. financial meltdown has created a worldwide crisis. Ironically, worldwide scared money is still flowing into U.S. Treasury obligations as a safe haven. This permits more U.S. borrowing, but by drying up credit overseas creates financial crises in other countries.

I've been posting for several years on pieces...

The U.S. economy lost 651,000 more jobs (nonfarm payroll) in February, says the BLS, for a cumulative loss of 2.6 million in the past four months. The unemployment rate rose from 7.6 to 8.1 percent.

These numbers were anticipated by the stock market to some extent yesterday. The market is...

If you thought the inflation dragon was has been reliably slain (or at least temporarily exiled) by the St. George of reduced demand, consider that the record increase in unit labor costs in the fourth quarter of 2008 was revised up.

The BLS announced today revised...

Dennis Blair, Obama's director of national intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Friday that based on reports from the nation's 16 intelligence agencies, the global recession is now the country's top security concern.

Unrest overseas, he says, would be a threat worse than terrorism. He said:

The longer...

My San Francisco friend Michael Phillips advised me today by email that he is telling his colleagues to worry less about big powerful multinationals and more about despots of rogue states. ...

Four of HuffPost's staffers were on offer at Manhattan's 92nd Street Y February 5. This panel discussion is billed as giving the lowdown on "How they choose the stories that make the news" and "their insights into blogging, including what blogs they link to and why, what content gets blogs...

President Obama is committed to creating five million new green jobs via subsidizing energy alternatives and conservation with an estimated $100 billion of the stimulus bill. The same kind of commitment is occurring at the New York State and City levels. On January 26 New York's Governor David Paterson

BBC News is running a medical care story today that has implications for U.S. medical care. Residents who are put on a shorter 48 hour/week limit, in accordance with European Union regulations, made 33 percent fewer medical errors than those...