The U.S. Federal Reserve is stuck between an apparently booming economy and a financial crisis that might be right around the corner. That’s why its decision to cut interest rates by another quarter point on Oct. 30 – its third reduction in as many months – seems so odd. Lowering...
Opinion: On Oct. 3, Happy Deficit Day
Imagine that the federal government received all the revenue it will receive for the year in a lump sum on Jan. 1, and then proceeded to spend that money at a constant rate. If the federal government’s budget were balanced, the money would last until the stroke of midnight on...
California’s Pension Debt Cannot Be Ignored
A decade ago, at Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s request, I supervised a graduate student team that performed a comprehensive analysis of public pensions in California. The goal was to calculate California’s pension debt, the difference between assets and liabilities. The team’s conclusions: the unfunded liability was over $500 billion—seven times the number officially...
Central Unified Wants Voter Input on Proposed Bond Measure
Central Unified School District residents soon will be asked whether they would vote in favor of a new hundred-million-dollar bond measure for school construction and improvements that could cause a double-digit hike in the district's property tax rate over the next decade. The district has yet to set the size...
Sanders Wants to Wipe Out All Student Loan Debt
WASHINGTON — Days before the first Democratic presidential debates, Sen. Bernie Sanders and House progressives rolled out legislation to cancel all student debt, going farther than a signature proposal by Sen. Elizabeth Warren as the two jockey for support from the party's liberal base. By canceling all student loans, Sanders says...
Can You Believe It? National Debt Now $22 Trillion.
WASHINGTON — The national debt has passed a milestone, topping $22 trillion for the first time. The Treasury Department's daily statement showed Tuesday that total outstanding public debt stands at $22.01 trillion. It stood at $19.95 trillion when President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20, 2017. The debt figure...
Netflix Raising Prices for 58M US Subscribers as Costs Rise
SAN FRANCISCO — Netflix is raising its U.S. prices by 13 percent to 18 percent, its biggest increase since the company launched its video streaming service 12 years ago. Its most popular plan will see the largest hike, to $13 per month from $11. That option offers high-definition streaming on...
America Is a Mess, and Baby Boomers Should Own It
One of the more popular books in America is Bruce Cannon Gibney's "A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America." Certainly, millennials love it. And it's hard to argue against Gibney's indictment of baby boomers, a generation that has enriched itself repeatedly without paying the tab for its...
Can’t Pay the IRS Today? Here’s What To Do.
Tax Day is finally here once more. If you’re getting a refund, lucky you. But if you owe the government money, you may be worried that you have to pay the amount due by the filing deadline of April 17 – even if you asked for an extension. Owing the...
Fiscal Sanity Suffered a Painful Death the Morning of Feb. 9, 2018
In an eleventh-hour twist, Sen. Rand Paul protested the costs of Congress’ latest budget deal and briefly shut down the federal government. Then, in the wee hours of Feb. 9, both houses of Congress eventually voted to pass the budget deal – a bipartisan agreement to repeal expenditure limits and...