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Tax-funded contributions to the New York State Employee Retirement System (ERS) will have to jump by 61 percent between 2010 and 2011, .  Contributions for members of the Police and Fire Retirement System (PFRS)--already higher to begin with--will r Read More

The New York Times has about city and state or "moderate-income housing." The head of New York State's Housing Finance Agency, Priscilla Almodovar, said one aspect of the plan will involve using the state's credit to guarantee mortgages fo Read More

Should physicians, who are licensed by the state of New York, be required to take a civil service exam in order to work for the state of New York? A state judge thinks so, but that's unlikely to be the last word on the controversy. Read More

In a , the Washington Post reports that "the biggest" of the nation's too-big-to-fail "banks are even bigger" today, with three big banks alone owning more than 30 percent of the nation's deposits, and four big banks issuing "one of every t Read More

Oneida County employees participating in a proposed cash buyout program would have a strong incentive to get their co-workers to join them: their payments will increase if more employees participate. Read More

The chairman of Britain's Financial Services Authority (similar to our SEC), Lord Turner, yesterday floated the idea of a global tax on financial transactions to shrink "a swollen financial sector," the FT . Turner admits that "the probl Read More

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has notified board members that the state-run authority has decided to petition a state judge to vacate state arbitrators' recent to the Transport Workers Union, which called for 11.3 percent raises Read More

Today's WSJ  that "a stream of hedge-fund managers ... are quitting the U.K." as the nation levies a new tax rate of 51 percent on people earning more than $250,000 annually, starting next April. "We have reached a tipping point, in term Read More

What issue got 2,000 rural upstate New Yorkers fired up enough to rally Sunday (under threatening skies) in opposition to a bill sponsored by who represents many of them in Congress? . Read More

"China's much-vaunted stimulus package has exacerbated structural imbalances in the economy and may delay the country's transition to a more sustainable growth model. ... [M]ost of the stimulus [has] gone to the state sector." -- Financial Times Read More