Projections of an impending crisis in financing Social Security depend on unduly pessimistic assumptions about basic demographic and economic variables. Moreover, even if the assumptions are accepted, the projected gap between Social Security revenues and expenditures would not constitute a...

As his new term begins, President George W. Bush has been trying to focus his domestic agenda on what he calls the "ownership society", a sweeping vision of an America in which more citizens would hold significant assets and be free to make their own choices about providing for their health care...

Senior Scholar L. Randall Wray lays out the numerous and critical ways in which we have failed to learn from the latest global financial crisis, and identifies the underlying trends and structural vulnerabilities that make it likely a new crisis is right around the corner. Wray also suggests...

The Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board (FASAB) has proposed subjecting the entire federal budget to "intergenerational accounting" - which purports to calculate the debt burden our generation will leave for future generations - and is soliciting comments on the recommendations of its...

In this new Public Policy Brief, Senior Scholar L. Randall Wray explains today's complex and fragile financial system, and how the seeds of crisis were sown by lax oversight, deregulation, and risky innovations such as securitization. He estimates that the combined losses throughout the entire...

President Dimitri B. Papadimitriou and Senior Scholar L. Randall Wray argue that the common diagnosis of a "sovereign debt crisis" ignores the crucial role of rising private debt loads and the significance of current account imbalances within the eurozone. Profligate spending in the periphery is...