Just for fun, our friends at Municipal Market Advisors have looked at how municipal bonds fared during the Great Depression. Read More
Research
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
Devastated by the specter of Albany's slash-and-burn budget tactics, New York's health sector struggles for survival in a recession-wracked world. As today's Times : A major hospital trade association, one of New York City’s most ag Read More
The consumer price index fell 1 percent month on month in October, according to . Falling consumer prices, if they continue, worsen New York's fiscal position. Read More
How's New York's economy doing? Private trash collectors (who pick up from stores and the like) are reportedly seeing an "unprecedented" loss in business over the past quarter, as customers have not only closed their doors but closed up so sudden Read More
Goldman Sachs surprised hardly anyone when it announced that its top seven execs would take no bonuses this year. UBS followed suit a day later. But top executives aren't the real bonus worry. Read More
The redoubtable Larry Littlefield has boiled down the latest U.S. census data on local government employment into a handy spreadsheet with a regional breakdown showing the extent to which New York exceeds national averages in this category. His Roo Read More