This event will address the problems and improvements needed for student loans, beginning with a keynote presentation by former secretary of education Bill Bennett.

Alex J. Pollock was interviewed by Institutional Risk Analytics to discuss his ideas for abolishing the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the need for meaningful financial reform legislation.

The ongoing sovereign debt crisis in Europe continues to weigh heavily oncredit markets and political systems throughout the developed world. 

Most people know virtually no financial history, so when we have a financial crisis, it seems like it has never happened before. But it has, again and again. As Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, remarked: "About every ten years, we have the biggest crisis in 50 years." 

The latest public opinion data on several topics in the news.

A wave of defaults is coming. This will badly damage Obama's reelection chances.

Many US municipalities and states are currently facing severe financial pressure. They have huge unfunded pension commitments, and recent forecasts of widespread defaults have resulted in a large sell-off of their bonds. This is not new. Financial history is full of instructive defaults by governments on their debt. Can these past crises teach us about what to do now?

Secretary Geithner argued that we have forgotten the reasons that the Dodd-Frank Act was necessary, and that's why the act has become so controversial. What the secretary seems to have missed is that we have learned a lot in the intervening years. The administration's rush to judgment on the financial crisis is a case study in why it would have been worthwhile to wait for the facts.