Consumers impacted by the coronavirus — virtually everyone in America at this point — might have trouble paying their bills this month. What will that do to their credit reports? Unfortunately, trouble lies ahead, and neither Congress nor the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau seem ready to stop it. I wrote [Keep reading]
“Do you realize this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to stay home and practice all day?” That’s the message a musician friend posted today, and it stopped me in my tracks. June. I think we are all staring June in the face right now. The reality is, if [Keep reading]
Domestic abuse is all about power, and the age of coronavirus has created terrifying new weapons for abusers. They might withhold hand sanitizer, or use shelter-at-home orders to prevent victims from going to the grocery store, or outside at all. They might terrorize targets by threatening to cancel their health [Keep reading]
You’ve been “hearing” a lot of yelling lately on social media — about the president, about the virus, or if you’re lucky, about sports. You’ve probably read thousands of comments and wasted countless hours on some of these round-and-round-we-go discussions. Have you ever witnessed anyone change their mind? Not often. [Keep reading]
Whenever disaster strikes, there’s almost always two waves of pain: First, There’s the immediate human cost, which deserves top priority. Then there’s the financial cost. Lost jobs, credit card “maxing,” unpaid bills, lost homes. Unfortunately, America has a fine-tuned way of keeping score in the credit world: Credit reports. And [Keep reading]
The gig economy is complicated and it’s about to get a lot more complicated. Gig workers are helped by the enormous coronavirus relief bill that’s expected to be signed into law soon, but like all things gig economy, the law is likely to raise more questions than it answers. Self-employed [Keep reading]
Every crisis births heroes, but the coronavirus pandemic will open our eyes to a new kind of heroism. Check that: Heroism that had become dangerously invisible to most of us in recent years. Many workers with unglamorous jobs are rising to occasion in the age of coronavirus — Target employees, [Keep reading]
If you’re like me, you’re wondering how the coronavirus bailout bill has gone from $1 trillion to $2 trillion to $6 trillion within a few days. It would be impossible to make a $5 trillion extra shopping list that fast. Fortunately, I am a regular reader of Matt Stoller, and [Keep reading]
When an old friend called recently and invited me to write a feature story about a different kind of technology school in the Bronx called “Per Scholas,” I had an immediate gut reaction. “I know that name…” Or, at least my father did. My father taught computer science at [Keep reading]
There many moving parts right now as Congress weighs legislation designed to help the economy during the coronavirus crisis. Small businesses — many in freefall, already closing and laying off all their staff — can’t wait for Congress to get its act together, and they don’t have to. The Small [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan