A new Challenge on Climate Change

On June 29, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the American Clean Energy and Security Act by the narrow margin of 219 to 212. This comprehensive bill, which now moves on to the Senate, seeks to create clean energy jobs, achieve energy independence, and reduce global warming pollution.

Despidos

Hace poco tuve una de esas experiencias frecuentes que nos unen a todos los puertorriqueños. Estaba tratando de resolver un problema por teléfono con una agencia de Gobierno.

The Great Recession of 2009

Some economists in the U.S. have started to talk about the Great Recession of 2009 when analyzing the current economic downturn. In the U.S. alone, home equity lost, between 2006 and 2008, $4.2 trillion; the value of retirement assets has declined by $2.3 trillion; while other investments and savings show losses of an additional $2.5 trillion.

Asset Building in Puerto Rico: A Study of Children Development Accounts in Caguas

In this paper we examine the establishment and operations of a CDA program in Caguas, Puerto Rico. This program affords us an opportunity to test whether asset-building policies can provide a new approach to social welfare in Latin American countries and Hispanic communities in the United States, a middle way between paternalistic, government-based social programs on the one hand and so-called neo-liberal approaches on the other.

Trabajadores

La crisis fiscal y económica por la cual atravesamos en Puerto Rico y a nivel global, ha resaltado muchas de las diferencias de percepción e interpretación de los eventos entre trabajadores y patronos. Ambos lados reaccionan con preocupación. Pero sus propuestas en la mayoría de los casos son muy diferentes.

Puerto Rico’s Anemic Private Sector

Professors Steven Davis and Luis Rivera Batiz, in an analysis conducted for their contribution to the book The Economy of Puerto Rico: Restoring Growth, published in 2006 by the Center for the New Economy and the Brookings Institution, found that a “truly striking feature of Puerto Rico’s economy is the underdeveloped state of its private sector.” According to their analysis, private sector employment rates in Puerto Rico are less than half the U.S. rates in recent decades.

The Dangers of (de)Globalization

Between 1870 and 1914 the world lived the high point of the first era of economic globalization. The globe was effectively connected through railways, steamships, and telegraph lines.

Seeing Things in their Precise Shape and Color

The current economic situation, both locally and globally, is the most complicated the world has seen since the Great Depression. In the midst of all this complexity is it imperative that we see things as they really are in order to properly diagnose the situation and to prescribe the correct course of action.