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What can Brazilian power lines teach New York about introducing private-sector competition to its public-bus system? In 1999, Brazil started to hold auctions open to both public and private sector players interested in improving the nation's trans Read More

The Wall Street Journal today that the town of Avondale, AZ, will use a $2.5 million grant from the federal government's "Neighborhood Stabilization Program," signed into law by the president in July, in part to "build two additional rental Read More

As promised, here are our articles in today's newspaper parsing the Ravitch report on how to fix the finances of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority: E.J. on Me on the Read More

Today, the Ravitch commission released its report on MTA finances. We'll have more to say about this tomorrow. Here's an interesting piece of data to tide readers over 'till then: Read More

The Times today that the amount of commercial real estate on the market in Manhattan has doubled since last year, and that rents are down "20 to 30 percent from the going rents at the end of the summer — to around $75 to $80 a square foot Read More

Just for fun, our friends at Municipal Market Advisors have looked at how municipal bonds fared during the Great Depression.  Read More

The Ravitch Commission is said to be mulling a payroll tax to help close large deficits faced by the state Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA).   Other elements of the package reportedly would include fare increases and the acquisition and Read More

Britain's conservative-party head David Cameron didn't win any thanks from his own party for a in which he called the division between public-sector and private-sector pension plans in Britain "apartheid" and said that he wants Britain "to move incr Read More

Swiss banking giant UBS has announced a to executives and board members. Although the system does not apply to traders and mid-level bankers, it's still a useful document. The future iteration of Wall Street is going to rethink its entire bonus str Read More

Yesterday was another watershed day for New York and for American financial capitalism. Read More

From Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli's new on the financial meltdown's economic impact on New York, there's this chart comparing the drop in Wall Street jobs during the "current downturn" (dated back to the summer of 2007) to losses following the crash Read More

The Post was kind enough to run on the MTA today, in which I detail how the state-controlled public authority that runs the metro region's buses and subways got itself into the pickle it's in today, as well as suggestions for a way out. On Read More