Current Affairs

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Are teen pregnancies good for the economy?

At Pew Research Center, Eileen Patten points out that “[t]he teen birth rate in the U.S. is at a record low, dropping below 30 births per 1,000 teen females for the first time since the government began collecting consistent data on births to teens ages 15-19”:

[Pew]

What’s changed? “The short answer is that it is a combination of less sex and more contraception. Teenagers have a greater number of methods of contraceptives to choose from,” Bill Albert, the chief program officer of The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, told TIME. He added, “The menu of contraceptive methods has never been longer.”

Reducing teenage pregnancy has long been a matter of policy for the federal government, and the latest trends represent a policy victory for successive administrations who have tried to achieve that goal. While liberals and conservatives manage to find ways to disagree on issue after issue, teen pregnancy is one point on which they largely agree. Though they diverge on the means — many conservatives advocate abstinence while liberals tend to favor contraception — both sides happily shake hands on the common goal of reducing teen pregnancy.

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General Mills backed down from its controversial lawsuit policy. But the problem isn’t over.

Class action lawsuits are an efficient way for wronged individuals — who may lack funds and legal expertise — to fight back against the powerful legal muscle of big business. One very famous example is the case of Erin Brockovich, who built a class action lawsuit that successfully sued Pacific Gas and Electric over contamination of drinking water.

A lone consumer wronged by a large corporation might struggle to foot the bill to hire the legal firepower necessary to win their case in court. But hundreds or thousands of consumers claiming similar injuries or damages from the same company or organization can, by banding together in a class action lawsuit.

It isn’t surprising, then, that some firms are taking measures to limit their customers’ abilities to join class action lawsuits.

General Mills, the manufacturer of Cheerios, Betty Crocker, Green Giant, and various other grocery products has reversed a recent change to its online legal policy that would have barred customers who “liked” General Mills’ social media pages, downloaded money-saving coupons from its website, or entered any company-sponsored contests from joining class action lawsuits against the firm.

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Obama is right to be worried about income inequality — it’s gotten a lot worse under his watch

Americans today are very worried about income inequality.

A Gallup poll this month found that 67 percent of Americans are unhappy with the distribution of income and wealth in the U.S. The disappointment goes across party lines — 54 percent of Republicans are dissatisfied, as well as 70 percent of Independents and 75 percent of Democrats:

And a growing number of people are worried that they can no longer get ahead simply by working hard, suggesting that inequality is becoming more entrenched.

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Do Americans really prioritize security over freedom?

Americans are getting less hawkish about national security.

Jake Tapper of CNN raised eyebrows recently by claiming that “the American people, honestly, want security over freedom.”

That would seem to be a big departure from the ideals of, say, Benjamin Franklin, who wrote that“those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

And is Tapper’s claim even true? Do the American people prioritize security over freedom? The most recent evidence doesn’t support Tapper’s claim.

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Is cash the most ‘efficient’ Christmas gift?

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Some economists think that Christmas gift-giving is a big waste of resources, and that cash is a much more efficient present.

When giving specific gifts, people often get things they don’t want, which is a waste of resources.An estimate by Wharton Professor Joel Waldfogel suggests that 20 percent of gift giving money is wasted this way.

Woldfogel argues that a person who spends $100 on himself or herself will presumably spend that money on something that actually nets them $100 worth of satisfaction. But when another person spends that amount on a gift they may end up getting a painting of a cat for a dog-lover, a sweater in the wrong size, or a coffee maker for a tea drinker, etc.

Woldfogel argues it would be much more efficient to just give cash, so that the recipient can spend something that nets $100 worth of satisfaction.

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Why are Democrats souring on big government?


According to a new Gallup poll, 72 percent of Americans say that big government is a greater threat to the U.S. in the future than big business or big labor, a record high in the half century that Gallup has been asking the question. The previous high for big government was 65 percent in 1999 and 2000:

And this isn’t just Fox News-watching Republicans who think that Obama is a Communist Muslim born in Kenya who is plotting to seize all privately-owned guns and declare martial law.

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Who should the SEC punish next for the Madoff scandal? Itself.


J.P. Morgan Chase is nearing a settlement with federal regulators over the bank’s ties to convicted fraudster Bernie Madoff, reports The New York Times. The deal would involve penalties of up to $2 billion dollars and a rare criminal action. The government intends to use the money to compensate Madoff’s victims.

For two decades before his arrest, Madoff had banked with J.P. Morgan — and apparently laundered up to $76 billion through the bank. Employees at the bank had raised concerns about Madoff’s business. In 2006, a J.P. Morgan employee wrote after studying some of Mr. Madoff’s trading records that “I do have a few concerns and questions,” and expressed worry that Madoff would not disclose exactly which trades he had made. Madoff’s company turned out to be an elaborate ponzi scheme that stole an estimated $18 billion from clients; it collapsed in 2008.

Is it fair to blame J.P. Morgan for the activities of Madoff? Do banks have a responsibility to know if their clients are involved in criminal activities? I think so — banks should have strong checks and balances to prevent fraud and money laundering, because if they don’t then criminals like Madoff can get away with it for years and years. According to Robert Lenzner of Forbes, “J.P. Morgan never reported to the Treasury or the Federal Reserve a huge cache of checks going back and forth for seven years between Madoff’s Investment Account 703 and Bank Customer Number One, belonging to real estate developer Norman Levy, who died in 2005.”

By agreeing to pay the fine and the government’s rebuke, J.P. Morgan is admitting a failure of oversight. But it’s not as if J.P. Morgan is the only one to blame. Others on Wall Street had expressed concern about Madoff’s business much earlier.

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Is there life on Jupiter’s moon?

The hunt for alien life just made a pretty big breakthrough.

Unfortunately — or perhaps fortunately — we’re not anticipating flying saucers on the White House lawn anytime soon. Instead, scientists discovered a (relatively) easily-accessible source of hydrogen and oxygen — which together make water, one of the most basic ingredients for life — on one of Jupiter’s moons.

There is already lots and lots of evidence for the existence of both liquid and frozen water in other parts of our solar system. Frozen water is abundant in asteroids. In 2009, huge amounts of frozen water were found on Earth’s moon. Some scientists suggest that Mars’ surface has been shaped by the flow of liquid water, and NASA’s Curiosity rover found frozen water in soil samples on Mars just this year. And back in 2000, the Galileo probe found evidence of water on Jupiter’s moons Ganymede and Europa — and scientists believe that liquid oceans of water are trapped beneath the the moons’ frozen surfaces.

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Why the Volcker Rule won’t solve the problem of Too Big To Fail

The Volcker Rule was originally proposed to end the problem of banks needing taxpayer bailouts. Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, proposed that commercial banks using customer deposits to trade — a practice known as proprietary trading — played a key role in the financial crisis that began in 2007.

Five former Secretaries of the Treasury — W. Michael Blumenthal, Nicholas Brady, Paul O’Neill, George Shultz, and John Snow — endorsed the Volcker Rule in an open letter to the Wall Street Journal, writing that banks “should not engage in essentially speculative activity unrelated to essential bank services.”

The Volcker Rule was signed into law as part of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in July of 2010, but its implementation has been delayed until yesterday when it finally received approval from the five (!) regulatory agencies that will enforce it — the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

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Why so many Americans are missing out on the stock market boom

The stock market has been on a major tear for the last four years, with both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 climbing to all-time highs:

But the gains aren’t trickling down to the majority of Americans.

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