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Well, it’s official: Most Americans don’t know squat about financial investing. That’s one of the chief conclusions of a 212-page study of financial literacy that the SEC, collaborating with the Library of Congress, released late last month: . . . American investors lack basic financial literacy. For example, studies have found that investors do not […]

Anyone who has hung around progressive circles for the past two decades has invariably logged a small chunk of their lives in frustrating “vision” conversations. The problem, always, was coming up with the elevator pitch for a Balkanized liberalism that was more a grab bag of specific causes than a movement guided by a few […]

There is such hysteria about the problems facing Social Security, that it’s easy to forget a simple fact: Much of the program’s shortfalls in future years will go away if we just raise payroll taxes. And, as it turns out, that solution is more popular with the public than cutting benefits. This is the finding […]

One of the scariest moments of the 2008 financial crisis was the run on money market funds. It was a moment when, suddenly, many regular investors feared that their own cash could disappear into thin air — along with the billions going poof at big firms like Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch. The federal government […]

It’s not often that we get a detailed look inside the tax strategies of a private equity firm, so Gawker’s publication of a trove of documents related to Bain Capital is a welcome event. The documents show — once again — how sophisticated business people have myriad ways to avoid taxes — and, in the […]

Last week, I wrote about the difficulties that young people with student loans can have getting getting a mortgage — yet one more example of how debt can make it hard to build assets. Now it turns out that young people who do have homes aren’t doing so much better. According a new analysis by […]

If you believe that self-interest is both the strongest and most virtuous motive for human behavior, you may well calculate that current Medicare recipients wouldn’t object to a plan that leaves their benefits alone while gutting the program for future retirees. And there you would be wrong. In fact, seniors don’t want to pull the […]

The Pew Research Center is out with a depressing new study today about how America’s middle class has lost ground — along with some of its famous can-do optimism, too. No big surprise there, given that we’re now in year five of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. But what’s striking from the […]

Quick question: What happens when you step down a slope? Well, if it’s a steep slope you’ll start sliding, but not so fast that you can’t catch yourself, avoiding serious harm. And that’s exactly the situation Washington will face early next year, if it doesn’t reach a deal on expiring tax cuts and new spending […]

Earlier this summer, after Peregrine Financial collapsed — and its customers found themselves out $215 million — it was revealed that the firm’s auditor was a one-person shop run out of a home in suburban Chicago. Even as Peregrine’s CEO forged key records and ripped off customers, the auditor vouched for the company’s soundness year […]