Americans File Taxes Earlier and Online in Hopes of Faster Refunds, According to NRF Survey Source: National Retail Federation Anxious to get hard-earned money back in their pockets, Americans expecting a tax return will be filing early this year, according to NRF’s Tax Returns Consumer Intentions...

The Disappearing Defined Benefit Pension and Its Potential Impact on the Retirement Incomes of Boomers Source: Urban Institute Over the last three decades there has been a steady shift from DB to DC pensions. The Pension Protection Act of 2006 may accelerate this trend. This paper examines the impac...

Reducing Costs While Improving the U.S. Health Care System: The Health Care Reform Pyramid Source: Deloitte LLP In recent history, health care reform efforts have fallen short as a result of two forces: The economics of the status quo make change an uphill battle for reformers and end users – cons...

The Changing Prospects for Building Home Equity: An Updated Analysis of Rents and the Price of Housing in 100 Metropolitan Areas (PDF; 476 KB) Source: Center for Economic and Policy Research In the Spring of 2008, we released a report comparing ownership and rental costs in the 100 largest metropoli...

Oil and Grain Costs Way Down, But Consumer Food Prices Still Up Source: Renewable Fuels Association The release of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for October proves what too many Americans already have learned the hard way: input costs for food processors are way down but the prices they charge groc...

by Paul Alan Levy The latest abuse of trademark law to suppress discussion of topics of substantial public interest comes from not from a company, like most of the trademark abuses previously discussed on this blog, such as here and here, but from the Republican National Committee, which has threate...

“Spam”: An Overview of Issues Concerning Commercial Electronic Mail Source: Congressional Research Service (via OpenCRS) Spam, also called unsolicited commercial email (UCE) or “junk email,” aggravates many computer users. Not only can spam be a nuisance, but its cost may be ...

Before you buy that lovely NIKE Rafael Nadal tennis outfit for your kid.... The sun is shining and the athletic and graceful elite of the tennis world battle it out for glory on the grass of Wimbledon. Perfect role models for your kids it seems; hard working, dedicated, healthy, polite (mostly). But...

The Sentinel Initiative: A National Strategy for Monitoring Medical Product Safety Source: U.S. Food and Drug Administration Imagine a national electronic safety system capable of tracking the performance of a drug or medical product, beginning with the earliest stages of clinical research through i...

My mom called me the other day… Bless her heart. Tells me she been bleeding from the nose and mouth for seemingly no good reason at all. So my dad rushed her to the hospital ER. After a while, a doc sees her does all the tests, etc. Doc finally asks her what meds if any she’s on. She tells him C...