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American Essays

  •  Fixing Student Loans: Let’s Give Colleges Some ‘Skin in the Game’

    Fixing Student Loans: Let’s Give Colleges Some ‘Skin in the Game’

    What lessons on student loans can be learned from the searing national misadventure with mortgages?

    There are provocative parallels between student loans and the mortgages that created the disastrous housing bubble. In both cases, the government promoted plausible goals— higher education and ...

  • Dining with Vultures: Rent-to-Own, the Feds, and the Housing Sector

    Dining with Vultures: Rent-to-Own, the Feds, and the Housing Sector

    Distressed asset buyers are either ruthless or go bust, and government entities have no business co-venturing with them.

    Rent is suddenly the rage for solving the housing debt crisis—and vulture capital with it. But the ambivalence conjured up by private equity magician Mitt Romney, who has simultaneously ...

  • Just How Dangerous Is Talking and Driving?

    Just How Dangerous Is Talking and Driving?

    The NTSB, cell phones, and regulatory hyperbole.

    A recent announcement by the National Traffic Safety Board (NTSB), the federal agency responsible for traffic safety and investigating traffic-related accidents, recommended that all states ban ...

  • Snapshot of a Creative Destruction

    Snapshot of a Creative Destruction

    Kodak, Rochester, and the decline of the industrial northeast.

    One technology replaces another only when it is better or cheaper or both. The automobile, for instance, was so much more versatile, safe, and easy to use than the horse and buggy that, once Henry ...

  • Banks and Government Near Settlement on Mortgages: What Does It Mean?

    Banks and Government Near Settlement on Mortgages: What Does It Mean?

    A fair settlement could facilitate the restart of lending and help accelerate the repair of the housing sector. But if ...

    Media reports indicate that banks are poised to reach a settlement with the federal government and state attorneys general over bad mortgage lending practices. Headlines focus on the topline dollars ...

  • Tim Tebow and the Atheist’s Dilemma

    Tim Tebow and the Atheist’s Dilemma

    Perhaps the only effective remedy for the all-too-human temptation to hubris among the spectacularly gifted, especially ...

    Many Americans today are pondering the same profound religious questions that confronted the great thinkers of the past, and all because of one highly successful and devoutly religious NFL ...

  • How Many Jobs Did Romney Create at Bain?

    How Many Jobs Did Romney Create at Bain?

    The companies Bain Capital funded under Romney have created tens of thousands of jobs using any measure.

    Editor’s note: See yesterday’s article “How to Think about Private Equity” for a primer on this issue. Given the political controversy over private equity and Mitt ...

  • How to Think about Private Equity

    How to Think about Private Equity

    If the overall pattern is so positive—for investors, companies, and even employment—why is private equity so ...

    Interest in the private equity business has exploded with the intense scrutiny of Mitt Romney’s experience as a private equity investor. Some of the discussion has been confused and confusing. ...

  • The Origins of Envy

    The Origins of Envy

    Our egalitarian feelings were forged in the Stone Age. But the cave man ethos is not always appropriate in the context ...

    Man will become better when you show him what he is like. — Anton Chekhov. They’re the 99 percent. They have a set of demands as clear as the streets they occupy. They’ll hold a ...

  • Public Pension ‘Air Time’ Is an Absurdly Generous Perk

    Public Pension ‘Air Time’ Is an Absurdly Generous Perk

    Why do public employees get a generous deal that is available pretty much nowhere else and to no one else?

    USA Today reports that “government workers in 21 states are using an obscure perk to retire early or to boost their annual pensions by thousands of dollars, which can cost taxpayers millions ...

Datapoints

The Parties in Congress

Neither party in Congress is popular.

The Parties in Congress

Most Viewed Articles

Fixing Student Loans: Let’s Give Colleges Some ‘Skin in the Game’ By Alex J. Pollock 01/26/2012
What lessons on student loans can be learned from the searing national misadventure with mortgages?
How Many Jobs Did Romney Create at Bain? By Steve Kaplan 01/19/2012
The companies Bain Capital funded under Romney have created tens of thousands of jobs using any ...
Tim Tebow and the Atheist’s Dilemma By Lee Harris 01/20/2012
Perhaps the only effective remedy for the all-too-human temptation to hubris among the ...
How to Think about Private Equity By Steve Kaplan 01/18/2012
If the overall pattern is so positive—for investors, companies, and even employment—why is private ...
Dining with Vultures: Rent-to-Own, the Feds, and the Housing Sector By Jay Weiser 01/25/2012
Distressed asset buyers are either ruthless or go bust, and government entities have no business ...
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