held a good debate last night on whether or not President Obama's economic policies are working. The participants -- three for the president's policies, three against -- focused a big part of their discussion on what the White House has done about Read More
Just how ephemeral is Wall Street's "recovery"? State comptroller Thomas DiNapoli notes in today's that securities firms' profits are reaching record highs, because "the sharp decline in interest expenses (to $5 billion in the second quarter of 2 Read More
The market value of assets in New York State's Common Retirement System increased by 18.3 percent during the first half of the 2009-10 fiscal year, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli announced today. That brings the total fund value to $126 billion — Read More
"Wall Street Recovering Faster Than Anticipated" is the headline on today's press release from state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli's office, heralding a that points to potential record-breaking profitability and lower-than-expected employment losses a Read More
Senate Democrats are "secretly considering" up to $1 billion in "new taxes on medical services" as an alternative to health care spending cuts in Governor Paterson's deficit reduction plan, according to in today's New York Post. Such a t Read More
Four days after proposing to slash the salaries of 350 Harrison town employees by 20 percent, Supervisor Joan Walsh was re-elected supervisor by voters in the affluent Westchester County suburb. With the town facing a budget gap between $3.3 milli Read More
Yesterday, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) a major settlement with J.P. Morgan Securities concerning the fascinating municipal-corruption case of Jefferson County, Alabama. Under the deal, J.P. Morgan, which doesn't admit or deny any Read More
In their weekly outlook, Municipal Market Advisors (MMA) tries to dampen the hysteria over a "coming municipal market collapse," saying that although "state and local credit quality is undeniably getting worse," we're unlikely to see mass-scale muni Read More
In today's Post, E.J. Gov. Paterson, Lt. Gov. Ravitch, and the state legislature to "freeze wages now," observing that "[f]or the first time in nearly 20 years, New York state is running short of cash to pay its bills." The $2 billion in Read More
in today's New York Post explains why—and how—the Paterson administration should declare a fiscal emergency and seek to impose a three-year freeze on all state and local employee salaries in New York. This would save taxpayers statewid Read More
Gov. Paterson told radio host John Gambling this morning that although arbitrators in the MTA-TWU case "probably made the correct ruling technically" to give transit workers 11.3 percent raises over three years because the rest of the city's labor u Read More
When this year's state budget was first enacted back in April, the budget gap for fiscal 2010-11 was at $2.17 billion. The in July more than doubled this estimate, to $4.62 billion. And today's says next year's gap has grown by another 47 per Read More