Trade
Critics challenge US plans for the TPP Al Jazeera America ..."I personally, as an American citizen, find it puzzling that the Obama administration is pushing for an economic policy abroad which will increase the cost of health care, reduce access, where at the same time, one of his signature presidential legacies is supposed to be affordable care," Professor Susan Sell at George Washington University told Al Jazeera...
No rush in TPP talks Japan Times ...Top leaders of countries taking part in the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade negotiations last Monday in Beijing failed to set a time frame for a final agreement. In doing so they abandoned the earlier goal of completing a broad agreement by year’s end...
State Battles
How Local Governments Are (or Aren’t) Examining Economic Development Dollars Governing ...A new survey provides a detailed portrait of how local governments use business incentives, finding many lack basic accountability measures...
War on Workers
Court orders strip club to pay $10M in back wages to dancers CNN ...More than 2,000 current and former exotic dancers in New York City were awarded $10 million in a class-action lawsuit they brought against their employer, Rick's Cabaret. The federal judge's order came on Friday, four years after the dancers filed their lawsuit alleging the company cheated them out of wages...
This Fed President is Correctly Worried About a 1937-Style Slump Wall Street on Parade ...The reference to 1937 relates to the fact that as the U.S. economy was showing signs of improvement from the conditions of the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Federal government and the Federal Reserve overreacted to inflationary concerns with contractive measures in 1937, sending the economy into a sharp slump in late 1937 and 1938...
Plant where workers died reported recent violations Texas Tribune ...State records show that in the last five years, the plant has been cited at least two-dozen of times by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality for violating state law...
Miscellaneous
Democrat-led Senate set to finally vote this week on Keystone, in odd turn of political events FOX News ...The Democrat-controlled Senate is expected to take a long-awaited vote Tuesday on approving the Keystone XL oil pipeline -- in an unexpected and politically-charged turn of events for legislation that has languished in the upper chamber for roughly six years...
