We remain stuck in the same Ground Hog Day rut that has bedeviled tax reform—individual or corporate—throughout the Obama Administration. Obama and the Democrats won’t support reform unless it produces revenue to fund new spending and/or deficit reduction. Republicans won’t support it if it does increase revenue. So there we are.

The financial press has narrowed down the race for the next Fed Chair to Larry Summers and Janet Yellen. Though there are other candidates with Democratic credentials,  most stories are about a pairwise comparison: Between Summers and Yellen, who is closer to Barack Obama, more able to get along with Wall Street, more dovish, or better able to intervene in a serious financial crisis? But the most important question is... More

Reports of renewed growth in China have sparked questions about the impact on the United States of a healthier Chinese economy. Specifically, if China does better, do we in the U.S. do worse? I don’t think so.

Given the financial pressures on state and local budgets, shorting the pension system — while assuming the existing assets will earn 8% per annum — is a convenient way to avoid raising taxes or cutting preferred programs. It's even more convenient when it allows politicians to claim that they're "balancing" the current year's budget as they eye the next election season.

10 things the president got wrong.

Every year, the Hornes plant seeds, tie vines, harvest fruit, and place grapes in paper trays to create sun-dried raisins. And every year, the federal government prevents them from bringing their full harvest to market.

To make up the shortfalls, governments are soon going to see pension contributions eating up an increasing share of their budgets and crowding out essential public services, just like what happens when governments have to pay down other debts. That crowd-out is already happening around the country. Look at cities like San Diego or San Jose, where pension contributions have had to rise to more than 20% of the city budget.... More

Borrowers who received help through the government's main foreclosure prevention program are re-defaulting on their mortgages at alarming rates, a new study says.

The opportunities and inequities of our free-market system.

For many workers, hours are not only short, but increasingly erratic as managers scramble to cover shifts without the steadying influence of experienced full-time employees.

....you ignore most of the debt.

Obama faces pressure from left and right to fix his financial fix. And in 2016 —eight years after Lehman Brothers failed — reining in Wall Street could lurk again as an election issue.

The sooner cities start realizing incentives like the ones offered to Curt Schilling's games company often don’t pay off for their communities the better.

Union leaders tell the President: Unintended consequences causing nightmare scenarios.

The Oil Drum was a forum, arguably the best such, dedicated to the "peak oil" theory; the idea that mankind's ability to produce oil had peaked and particularly in the hydrocarbon fields of America. The inevitability and urgency to subsidize alternatives to hydrocarbons was fueled by the peak oil theory. But what peaked instead was the ability to argue that the era of oil, and hydrocarbons, was over.

In a world in which many nonprofits get extensive government funding, it is far better to reserve the charitable tax deduction for those groups that do not rely on government — who get, say, no more than a quarter of their income, at most, from government contracts. That way, we can use our philanthropic dollars to help those pursuing new ideas through unconventional approaches.

Washington's attitude toward our federal debt is the equivalent of a man jumping off a 10 story building and saying around the 3rd floor, everything's fine so far.

If the situation in California is really as bad as conservatives say, then why don't you folks just pack up and leave? Or, to put it more bluntly, "Don't let the door hit you on the rump on your way to Texas."

Nostalgia is not enough to end Too Big to Fail.

With deadline near for buying new policies, little is being said about doctor shortage.

The rate for new loans is 6.8 percent. That's not a bad thing, but there was a better way to solve the problem. Obama suggested it himself. Tie interest rates to the market. Because House Republicans, Senate Democrats and the White House cared more about blaming the other guys for doubling loans, it didn't happen.

Washington’s new law will hurt low-income people much more than it hurts the big retailer.

Without the millstone of college debt around their necks, my high school friends-turned-entrepreneurs felt they had more freedom to take risks in the marketplace before and after they finished college. My college friends, on the other hand, had to deal with the pressures of paying back their loans and so opted for safer and what they thought would be better money-making careers. On a more macro level, the trend is the same.... More

How public employees became members of the elite class in a declining California offers a cautionary tale to the rest of the country, where the same process is happening in slower motion.

In an ideal world, there would be no free-trade agreements because governments would never have grabbed the power to obstruct trade in the first place.

Liberal economists have a ready response to conservatives who fret that U.S. debt might spiral out of control, a la Southern Europe: “America is not Greece.” Certain parts of the United States, however, are like Greece.

Among the things New Yorkers will really need over the next four years is a city controller who’s willing to be a forceful and effective watchdog and advocate for taxpayers. Unfortunately, personal peccadilloes aside, Eliot Spitzer's record as governor of New York raises serious questions of his suitability for this particular job.

This decision to postpone Obamacare's employer mandate is unlikely to lead to an increase in hiring, because employers are rational. They know that in 18 months they will face this punishing tax and they are adjusting their labor force accordingly.

Even as state budgets improve somewhat, municipal budgets remain very vulnerable to cutbacks. Both state aid and property-tax collections have continued to drop, something that perhaps will be slowed by a developing bubble in real estate values. Similarly, city financers at the end of 2012 projected a sixth consecutive year of year-over-year declining revenue.

An IBD search of employer announcements revealed workweek cuts for 16,500 workers as ObamaCare penalties drew closer. That number barely scratches the surface of the law's real impact because it excludes the vast majority of cases in which employers have announced cuts without putting a number on the workers facing reduced hours.

The age of all-seeing, all-knowing information analytics is nearly upon us.

Retiree costs make up two-thirds of the city’s annual health-care bill, swamping those for current workers.

Unless Congress reforms archaic restrictions on crude oil exports, all the new black gold America is producing is going nowhere.

As payroll companies struggle to predict the impact of new laws on movie and TV shoots, one insider says the act "wasn't written with this industry in mind."

As state government leaders struggle to reconcile public demand for services with still sluggish post-recession tax collections, they have turned to tax increases -- but will call them anything but. Governors and lawmakers in several states have labeled their ideas extensions, surcharges or fees and used verbal gymnastics to explain why they aren't tax increases.

Conservatives and liberals alike have realized that traditional Medicare is not an efficient or cost-effective way to cover the care that the elderly and disabled will need in the coming years. It makes sense, then, to consider injecting some cost-controls through market-based competition into the program through al model that has private plans competing with Medicare.

The gulf between the hard realities of the global energy market and the Obama administration's energy policies grows wider by the day.