U.S. Edition
New York (CNNMoney) – The American Dream is supposed to mean that through hard work and perseverance, even the poorest people can make it to middle class or above. But it's actually harder to move up in America than it is in most other advanced nations.
It's easier to rise above the class you're born into in countries like Japan, Germany, Australia, and the Scandinavian nations, according to research from University of Ottawa economist and current Russell Sage Foundation Fellow Miles Corak.
New York (CNNMoney) – Many people think that the rich are able to weasel their way out of taxes, but they actually pay an overwhelming majority of the taxes in the United States.
What's more, their share of the tax burden is increasing.
New York (CNNMoney) – The U.S. economy now has more jobs than it did when the president took office in January of 2009.
With the addition of Friday's fairly strong jobs report, plus upward revisions over the last couple of months, there are now 194,000 more jobs than there were in January of 2009, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
New York (CNNMoney) - No mater how hard President Obama may try, the Solyndra debacle - and its $529 million taxpayer-backed price tag - just won't go away.
Just last Week Mitt Romney criticized Obama's economic acumen while standing in front of the company's now-closed headquarters in Fremont, Calif.
New York (CNNMoney) – The Energy Department's controversial loan program got some much needed help.
An independent audit, ordered by president Obama, said the DOE's loan program would cost the government $2.7 billion due to risk from defaults, a little less than the $2.9 billion in costs the energy department had predicted.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) - Sen. Dick Durbin on Tuesday urged customers unhappy with Bank of America's new $5-a-month debit card fee to take their business elsewhere - calling the fee a golden opportunity for other banks "not as greedy" to drum up new business.
"I believe in something called competition," the Illinois Democrat said on a conference call with reporters.
New York (CNNMoney) – After weeks of Republican attacks over tightening environmental regulations, President Obama said Friday he would halt a planned increase in clean air standards.
In a statement released just hours after the U.S. Labor Department said the economy created no new jobs in August, Obama said he told Environmental Protection Agency head Lisa Jackson to withdraw the draft Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards.
New York (CNNMoney.com) - The government was supposed to keep an eye on offshore oil drilling, it was supposed to make sure nothing went wrong.
Clearly, something went very wrong. Now the agency that oversees offshore drilling – already entangled in a sex, drugs and rubber-stamping scandal even before the BP disaster – is up for a complete overhaul.
Formerly the Minerals Management Service (MMS), the Obama administration has renamed it the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.
Plans are to further split the agency up into three separate divisions, all under the Department of Interior. The idea is to remove an apparent conflict of interest – charging one agency with both ensuring safety and maximizing oil revenues for the federal government. Full story
New York (CNNMoney.com) – President Obama is once again stumping for stimulus at one of his favorite spots: a plant that makes batteries for electric cars.
These plants have been a high profile piece of the controversial stimulus package, and Obama has visited at least four of them since stimulus was enacted. Dozens of projects dedicated to advanced batteries have received over $2 billion in federal funding as part of the administration's $800 billion-plus plan to revive the economy, create jobs, and push the manufacturing sector into the 21st century.
"These are jobs in the industries of the future," Obama said Thursday at the groundbreaking of the Compact Power plant in Holland Mich.
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New York (CNNMoney.com) - Never let a good crisis go to waste. That's paraphrasing White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's supposed argument for sweeping reforms to the American economy amid the meltdown.
Now many say lawmakers are doing just that with the oil spill: failing to enact sweeping energy reform to wean the nation off fossil fuels while the public is fixated on events in the Gulf.
"This incident is a punctuation point," said Joseph Stanislaw, an independent energy adviser at Deloitte & Touche. "We've never had an energy policy, and we've been squandering opportunities for decades."
The energy policy favored by Stanislaw, many Democrats in Congress, and most renewable energy advocates involves making fossil fuels more expensive either by adding some type of tax or putting a price on carbon emissions. It also involves requirements that utilities buy more clean energy, as well as lots of money for energy conservation.
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