Peter S. Goodman

Not so long ago, the term "bleeding heart liberal" had currency in American politics as a way to accuse someone of costly naïveté. Here was a label that could be slapped on anyone who advocated policies that aimed for fairness and decency, pursuing feel-good outcomes at the supposed expense of...

Even as details trickle out about how JPMorgan Chase lost several billion dollars on derivatives trades, the essential unknowns continue to outweigh the knowns. This inevitable ignorance is worth keeping in mind as -- let us hope -- regulators focus on the latest fiasco as a teachable moment, and impose...

Just in case you had been suffering delusions that the Republicans have improved on basic arithmetic or responsible governance, House Speaker John Boehner and presidential aspirant Mitt Romney on Tuesday made sure to disabuse you of that notion. As both men pandered to the base on deficit reduction while foreswearing...

Not for the first time, Elizabeth Warren has spoken a simple truth, one that ought to be heeded: Jamie Dimon must surrender his seat on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

The seat in question is part of a body that has god-like...

Fun as it may be to beat up on the arrogant Jamie Dimon for the $2 billion-plus derivatives fiasco at JP Morgan Chase, this is like blaming the lion that ate the kid who got too close to its cage at the zoo, rather than going after the...

Perhaps inevitably, President Barack Obama's long-overdue declaration of support for gay marriage is mostly being parsed for signs of what it means for his personal political fortunes and the course of the 2012 campaign. We are a nation addicted to politics. Seemingly everything that happens -- a change in the...

Remember that unemployment problem we used to have? The one that politicians, pundits and policymakers used to talk about on a regular basis, debating how we might fix it? Well, forget about all that, because the problem is structural, meaning nothing can be done. So sayeth a loud slice of...

Peruse the press coverage of the presidential election, where the outcome supposedly hinges on the economy, and you get the sense that President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are huddled over a craps table waiting to see if the country is about to come up lucky sevens. If the economy...

In the popular imagination, the American foreclosure crisis is a morality play in which comeuppance has landed on greedy people who had it coming. Homeowners gorged on the wealth they took out of their properties like gluttons at a Vegas buffet, using exotic mortgages to fill living rooms with home...

Europe's economy is like a patient stuck in a hospital run by quack doctors who see sickness as a form of moral failing, and leeches as the preferable cure. The only hope now is that Europe either manages a miraculous recovery or develops a case of something so inarguably lethal...

SANTA ROSA, Calif. -- Every time she pulls away from her parent's house, leaving behind her 3-year-old daughter, Angelina, as she heads to work at a local hospital, Jenny Abundis wonders what will happen while she is gone.

She worries things will not go well.

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. -- After two years of bewildering futility, John and Linda DeCaro thought they had finally found a way to hang on to their home.

They could no longer afford their mortgage payments and had slipped into delinquency. They could not refinance to take advantage of low-interest rates because...

Listen to the conventional wisdom and President Barack Obama is powerless to arrest soaring gasoline prices, even as they imperil his political fortunes, the still-tepid economic recovery and the ability of ordinary Americans to pay their bills. Oil prices supposedly reflect the omniscient judgment of the market. What the market...

The single largest obstacle to meaningful economic recovery is a man who most Americans have probably never heard of, Edward J. DeMarco.

From his perch as acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, DeMarco oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-owned mortgage behemoths that collectively control about...

After years of incompetence, intransigence, malevolence and whatever else may explain how mortgage companies have managed to screw over millions of troubled American homeowners, a fix is finally at hand.

This is how the Obama administration invites us to view the broad, $25 billion state and federal...

Thank goodness for Republican resolve and tough talk. That's what prevented North Korea from becoming a nuclear-armed menace, and that's what eliminated Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, which Saddam Hussein surely would have used to obliterate Israel and the United States.

Now, if we could just get that flower...

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. -- The first time Michele arrived at the Maple Street homeless shelter three years ago, she was still driving her BMW 325xi, the final remnant of her Silicon Valley affluence.

Her paper wealth of more than $2 million had evaporated a decade earlier, she says, via a...

Linsanity may now be considered a bona fide cultural moment, if for no other reason than the response it has provoked: It has generated its very own backlash.

The boxer Floyd Mayweather caused a stir on Twitter on Monday when he dismissed Jeremy Lin, the sensational Knicks point...

DAVOS, Switzerland -- They came, they feasted on smoked sturgeon and black truffle risotto, drank liquor paid for by global banks, endured dozens of security checks, and tried not to fall down in the snow. They talked about the perilous state of the global economy and the future of capitalism....

DAVOS, Switzerland -- Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, is clearly tired of modern-day Luddites complaining about the job-destroying forces of technology.

"I assume that everybody here agrees that globalization is wonderful," he said here Friday, speaking during an afternoon panel at the World Economic Forum -- certainly among...