Christopher Sopher

Edmund Mierzwinski on how financial regulation can be used as a community organizing tool: Typically, federal regulation is the province of government bureaucrats and industry interest groups. These regulations enhanced citizenship. The result has been a system that, according to the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC), has since 1977 leveraged over $6 trillion in reinvestment […]

Mark Schmitt on how Obama’s belief in the power of our institutions is forcing change: The occasions on which President Barack Obama says something simply preposterous are rare enough that they ought to attract some attention. Yet it passed almost without notice when, in his May 21 speech on national security, Obama explained that he […]

Tim Fernholz on what to expect from the Obama administration’s renewed diplomatic push with China: It’s a new dawn of summitry in Washington with this week’s Strategic & Economic Dialogue between the United States and China, a meeting of several hundred top government officials to talk about shared interests. The discussions made little news — […]

According to a June study by the Pew Internet Center, one in every three Americans does not have a broadband Internet connection, and 21 percent have no home Internet at all. Just 35 percent of households making less than $20,000 and just 46 percent of blacks have broadband connections. This is the persistent digital divide. […]

If you’re over 30 and struggling with debt, your mortgage, or unemployment, you should seek help. If you’re in your 20s, though, you should suck it up. Your financial woes are all in your head. That’s the thrust of Kimberly Palmer’s argument in U.S. News. In “A Financial Roadmap,” she suggests that young people’s difficult […]

Though it is always difficult to make accurate generalizations about a generation of people, it’s not difficult to point out the generalizations that are wrong. Trying to simplify one of the most complex generations in American history onto a wallet card is one of those. The Washington Post had a profile last week of Anne […]

Tara McKelvey on why the supposed anti-war movie The Hurt Locker is actually a powerful military recruiting tool: An Iraqi butcher holds a cell phone as he stands near the site of a bomb — or an improvised explosive devise (IED), as it is known in The Hurt Locker, the critically acclaimed new movie about […]

Tom Lee on the problem with a privately owned service — Twitter — serving as a platform for political activism: That discussion of the Iranian election popped up on Twitter was not particularly surprising. The microblogging service is often mocked as a venue for the discussion of daily minutia — a recent spoof was made […]

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced yesterday a new, simpler version of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. For nearly two decades college aid advocates have pushed for a more accessible FAFSA, currently a six-page goliath of a document whose detailed financial questions are a significant hurdle for low-income and middle-class students who need […]