By Miriam Pepper, Star editorial page editor
The banks sure have a way with words. Overdraft protection sounds so soothing. What it masks are the costs of that protection. Those costs brought in $28 billion in fees in 2008.
That's a whole lot of protection, for the banks' bottom lines.
By Larry Marsh, Kansas City Star Midwest Voices columnist
George Soros will spend $50 million to create an Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) designed to reject traditional economics. In particular Soros's new institute will reject the efficient market theory that has performed so poorly in predicting our current economic recession.
By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel
There are times when we read the national news and wonder how it affects us in the Kansas City area. The transcript of today's Great Plains Energy (KCPL) Q3 call (read here) is good local analysis.
By Maggie Jackson, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel
As this recession lumbers along at a painful pace, I am reminded of what my mother used to say about friends. “Friends are the people who stick when you hit bottom.” The same can easily be applied to family.
By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel
However our dollar has been devalued, for all the reasons both domestic and international, supposedly it’s good right? We don’t talk about this often. It’s awkward for the President. Perhaps in those G-20-something summits they planned this. I hope they planned some of it.
By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel
Andrew Ross Sorkin’s new book called “Too Big to Fail” gives the reader an inside-the-room feel for what (may have) happened during the economic meltdown last year. It’s a very good read...
By Larry Marsh, Kansas City Star Midwest Voices columnist
The financial crisis has exposed a deficiency in economic theory.
The underlying cause of the financial crisis was the failure of individuals to exert sufficient mental energy to properly evaluate the risks involved in both the housing and financial derivatives markets. In short, people just didn’t do the math.
By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel
Jason Bourne, please step aside. We need to read about this real person named Brooksley. You may have met her before. You may remember her warning about the black box market called OTC Derivatives, her testimonies before Congress.
By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel
Set aside Sarah Palin’s calls for “drill baby drill” strategies on the domestic front, for a moment. An ironic result of our foreign excursions of late has been to clear the way for China’s oil company, CNPC to produce more oil and gas.
By Larry Marsh, Kansas City Star Midwest Voices columnist
On Demand Books has partnered with Google Books to sell an Espresso Book Machine that can print and bind a 300 page paperback book with full color cover in 4 minutes for a suggested retail price of $8 per book. You can now purchase books literally hot off the press.
By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel
People presently look anxiously for bottoms…in the housing market, for example, but businesses cannot be forthcoming with all of their news despite our desire for transparency and honesty.
By Larry Marsh, Kansas City Star Midwest Voices columnist
Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University in Bloomington and Oliver Williamson from the University of California at Berkeley won the Nobel Prize in Economics for their work on economic governance and the organization of cooperation.
By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel
Paul Krugman was last year's Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences. Paul’s award lecture, delivered in December 2008 is here here if you’d like to read it.
By Larry Marsh, Kansas City Star Midwest Voices columnist
A nation has an infinite number of possible histories. There is only one history that happened, and many histories that didn't happen. If America is to lead the world throughout the 21st century and beyond, we must grasp the full implication of the Internet now and fundamentally change our education system.
By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel
We’re good-hearted loyal law-abiding citizens who pay our taxes. We send money there. Truckloads. But economic competition is fierce. Sure some of the bucks trickle back home. Have you been to the real Emerald City lately? Take a field trip to visit your subsidized rich cousins, back east.
By Larry Marsh, Kansas City Star Midwest Voices columnist
The individualized newspaper (aka "Daily Me") that caters to each reader's personal preferences is coming soon. The Google News approach of allowing each reader to customize the display by selecting topics or phrases is not adequate for a newspaper's long term survival.
The Star's Tuesday editorial
Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has come in for criticism on the economic development front lately. So his announcement of a state-provided boost for the Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport Monday was a welcome opportunity for the governor and for Kansas City.
By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel
The business of sports at KU is business; very lucrative and serious for those with a financial stake in victory and image. Jason Whitlock’s recent column about hip hop culture misses another angle on this feud.
The Star's Wednesday Editorial
Congress is giving greater attention to the problem of bank overdraft fees, and rightly so.
Most banks automatically offer transaction-covering loans to cover insufficient account balances, and then charge customers a fee — the average is $35 — often without immediately notifying the customer.
By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel
Last year, a young entrepreneur in England developed an anti-bullying kit. Right now he’s his own boss at 10. Watch how he charmed a venture capitalist out of £5,000.
By Dean Hubbard, Kansas City Star Editorial Advisory Panel Columnist
By Maggie Jackson, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel
So the Great Recession is finally ending, or at least that is what Fed Chairman Bernanke stated on Tuesday. Many blue collar, middle class workers couldn’t agree less.
By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel
It’s Sprint’s time to shine in preparation for their possible acquisition by Deutsche Telecom. But in Kansas City, this is a story about people we know.
By Larry Marsh, Kansas City Star Midwest Voices columnist
Since this was written, President Obama has signed an order for a 35 percent tariff on Chinese tires. Obama's gesture is pointless since the tariff is temporary and only applies to China. Low income American consumers should not worry. Wal-Mart will find cheap tires from another low-wage country to quickly fill the gap.
President Obama must make a key decision about which way to lead America in the 21st century. Should he hit consumers with a 55 percent increase in the price of imported Chinese tires at Wal-Mart and other discount tire outlets to protect workers at American tire manufacturing plants and risk retaliatory curbs on American exports? Or, should he resist union demands to fend off the cheap Chinese tires? Cooper Tire in Albany, GA has already laid off over 2,000 workers.
By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel
"Look, it’s something that you have in your head, in your way of seeing things. It’s not there. Come back to reality and just consider this for a moment...
By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel
Unemployment the worst since 1929, businesses failing, and the government worried as to how to turn things around. Chance, or Chauncey Gardiner as people called him, spoke about gardening and people listened.
By The Kansas City Star Editorial Board
Health care reform isn’t the only initiative of President Barack Obama running into headwinds. His financial-markets reform package is also meeting opposition.
By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
The federal government's Cash for Clunkers program was a winner for almost everyone except U.S. taxpayers.
-- Car buyers got rid of junk and ended up with new vehicles.
-- Car dealers moved autos off showroom floors.
-- Car makers revved up sales.
By Larry Marsh, Kansas City Star Midwest Voices columnist
Greed reveals itself not in income but in consumption. Warren Buffet has lived in the same modest house since 1958, but other wealthy people live in enormous houses costing tens of millions of dollars. Many famous people have just one or two homes and just a few vehicles while others spend lavishly on eight or nine homes and dozens of cars.
By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
GM's eye-popping claim Tuesday -- the new Volt will get up to 230 mpg in city driving -- is newsworthy but also questionable.
For starters, how much will GM charge motorists to buy a vehicle that supposedly will get that many miles a gallon?
