Many public workers are overpaid relative to their private sector counterparts, especially in large, unionized states such as Wisconsin, Ohio and California. This may sound like a controversial claim, but it shouldn't. A consensus is building about the need for reform.

Every serious study of U.S. infrastructure has reached the same conclusion: More investment is needed -- and fast. But with Sen. Jeff Bingaman's amendment to the highway reauthorization bill, the Senate effectively penalizes states for using innovative infrastructure financing.

Prohibiting their bond trading will seriously weaken banks and the markets that banks supply with liquidity.

The massive underfunded pension funds of states and municipalities and the precarious status of the budgets of these entities have received wide publicity recently.

Critics have renewed their calls to tax the carried interest as ordinary income. Unfortunately, the populist rhetoric used by some critics can obscure the facts about how carried interest is actually taxed.

A panel of retirement experts and public policy economists will address the growing threats to the pension liabilities of states and municipalities.

Longstanding policies that were intended to promote confidence in the independence of regulatory decision-making have now been wiped away by the Dodd-Frank act, which has in effect placed all the financial regulators under the direction of the Treasury secretary.

Public pension accounting standards encourage state and local governments to promise too much, fund too little and take too much risk with their investments.