In the U.S., “middle class” is not just an income category. It’s a cultural norm. more

Four years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and the near-total paralysis of capitalism’s central nervous system – the moment fear completely overwhelmed greed on Wall Street – we are starting to see a few glimmers of hope. more

Global regulators have a peculiar way of assessing the soundness of big banks: Ask bankers how risky their investments are, then figure out if they have enough capital to absorb the potential losses. more

The New England Council was honored to recently host a discussion of federal immigration policy with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch. These two respected leaders highlighted the critical role that foreign-born workers play in our economy, filling important jobs throughout the work force. more

The Obama administration tried last week to convince the U.S. Supreme Court that the federal government can deny landowners the use of their property for years – decades if need be – without ever paying compensation. more

Last week, after the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced an unexpected decline in September’s unemployment rate, former General Electric Co. CEO Jack Welch questioned the credibility of the data. more

In a challenging economy, nothing seems more important for employers than productivity during the workday. The focus is on meeting your goals, serving the needs of your customers, managing major issues and/or creating innovative new products or services. While these are critical priorities, it’s also important to consider how your big picture could be positively impacted by other things, such as serving the community. more

Morpheaus, the mysterious leader of the human resistance in the iconic movie “The Matrix,” holds out his hands to Neo, the young seeker of truth, offering him two pills. The red one holds the truth of the world, and the blue an escape back to the carefully constructed world of the Matrix. We learn fairly quickly that the “real” world is a nightmare compared to the dream of the Matrix. You don’t need to see this movie to grasp the meaning of choosing one pill over the other. more

For most of the past century, the United States and continental Europe have followed different paths. Social Democrats often ran European governments, which typically taxed and spent a greater share of their national incomes on social programs, such as public health care. more

The “fiscal cliff,” a combination of tax increases and severe spending cuts scheduled to kick in next year, is a product of multiple deceptions. Both the expiration date on the Bush-era tax cuts and the trillion-dollar “sequesters” that were enacted as part of last year’s debt-ceiling deal were designed to cover up an overarching problem: the country’s out-of-control debt. more