Articles and Op-Eds: 2010

In 1985, Rajnish Mehra and Edward C. Prescott, economists then at Columbia University and the University of Minnesota, published a paper pointing out a strange anomaly they dubbed “the equity premium puzzle.” Since the late 19th century, stock investments in America had generated returns that were 6 percent higher than what economists call “the risk-free rate—the yield on an investment for which there is virtually no risk of losing your principal. The low-risk investments, such as short-term U.S.

The House ethics charges facing Maxine Waters for aiding a bank on whose board her husband sat have been met with a shrug here in California, and why not? Waters’ alleged misdeeds are only the latest scandal produced by the state’s members of Congress, authors of a decade-long list of embarrassment so lengthy that it begs the question:

Does California have the worst congressional delegation in the country?

We've all heard the bad news: Our public schools are in a sorry state. In surveys of 30 developed nations, American high school students ranked 24th in math and 17th in science. Meanwhile, our dropout rates are at a near-crisis level, with more than a quarter of students failing to graduate. And the recession has inflicted more damage, forcing layoffs among teachers, larger class sizes and cutbacks in important programs.

Last week, opponents of the new health care reform law cheered what they saw as two victories -- a federal district court said a Virginia lawsuit against the reform could proceed, and Missouri voters overwhelmingly supported an anti-reform ballot initiative. Both targeted a key part of the reform law -- the requirement that everyone have or purchase health care insurance.