Will companies that issued derivatives based on bundled student loans be the next financial dominoes that will require a government “bailout”? The country’s long dedication to education makes it a virtual certainty.
The emphasis of the role of government in education predates the establishment of the United States as a country. As early as 1642, a [...]

Why, oh why, did the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression have to hit during a presidential election year?
The ‘Fear Index’, also known as the VIX (or, officially, the Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index) is a financial tool that measures market swings or volatility. The higher the VIX goes, the scarier the market [...]

More than 20 countries have set up sovereign wealth funds while a dozen more have expressed interest in establishing them. Many of these sovereign wealth funds are picking up stakes in U.S. companies, which is raising concerns about the need for regulating them. Up until the $700 billion bailout, which effectively is a U.S. [...]

In an op-ed piece of October 17’s New York Times world-famous entrepreneur and financier Warren Buffet urged American investors to return to the stock market and bet on the long term future success of the United States. “Buy American,” Buffett’s headline reads. “I am.”
The essay was a vote of confidence from a successful guy at [...]

A recent article splashed across the front page of the mid-size mid-western city where I live tells a surprisingly unfamiliar story about how ordinary people have pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars by investing in subprime real estate. Though the current financial crisis has brought about intense discussion about the moral hazard of borrowing beyond [...]

With the U.S. credit crunch gone global and the $700 billion bailout package now looking like a small drop of water in a tidal wave of woe, the question of blame is now all over the media.
Who caused this mess?
If you read the Wall Street Journal you could easily come away thinking that the whole [...]

For at least a year now, ordinary people in the United States (people the press has been referring to as “Main Street”) have known that the economy was starting to slow down at the same time that prices were rising uncomfortably fast.
Now, some economists are finally starting to admit that, yes, the U.S. probably went [...]

On October 1, 90-year-old Addie Polk, distraught over her home’s impending foreclosure, shot herself twice in an attempted suicide.
Fortunately, Ms. Polk’s attempt was unsuccessful. Even better for her, Fannie Mae – which had taken possession of her mortgage after numerous missed payments – forgave Ms. Polk’s debt and signed the house over to her, free [...]

Evelyn Black wrote a great blog on September 26 explaining the financial inter-connectedness of the U.S. and China. To sum it up, she says that the U.S. imports more from China than it exports to China. This difference, the trade deficit, is made up by the Chinese government’s investment in U.S. government debt. In other [...]

Several questions during the last few days pointed out the obvious: lost in the media coverage of the American financial crisis and the tail end of the presidential election seems to be the fact that there really is news beyond Wall Street and Main Street.
I could not agree more.
For example, how much attention has been [...]