Once upon a time on Wall Street, in the days when investment banks were small private partnerships, a simple but ingenious idea kept bankers and traders accountable for their actions: the collective-liability clauses in their partnership agreements. A mistaken trade here or bad advice there, and all the partners suffered.

Shareholders were mad about excessive compensation last year, when the economy was booming. This year, governance experts say, they are livid. “They are furious about the dichotomy of experiences — their shares fall, yet C.E.O.

New government research has found “large and growing” disparities in life expectancy for richer and poorer Americans, paralleling the growth of income inequality in the last two decades.

The United States seems to have slipped into recession; Americans are losing their homes, jobs and health insurance; banks are struggling — and the Iraq war appears to have aggravated all these domestic woes.

http://www.ourfuture.org/tba Register now for the Take Back America conference March 17-19, 2008, in Washington D.C.

The authors of a new study by scholars at the Brookings Institution in Washington and sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts warned that widening gaps in higher education between rich and poor, whites and minorities, could soon lead to a downturn in opportunities for the poorest families.

Watch our video reality-check on Bush’s State of the Union fantasies.

Once upon a time on Wall Street, in the days when investment banks were small private partnerships, a simple but ingenious idea kept bankers and traders accountable for their actions: the collective-liability clauses in their partnership agreements. A mistaken trade here or bad advice there, and all the partners suffered.

Shareholders were mad about excessive compensation last year, when the economy was booming. This year, governance experts say, they are livid. “They are furious about the dichotomy of experiences — their shares fall, yet C.E.O.

New government research has found “large and growing” disparities in life expectancy for richer and poorer Americans, paralleling the growth of income inequality in the last two decades.

The United States seems to have slipped into recession; Americans are losing their homes, jobs and health insurance; banks are struggling — and the Iraq war appears to have aggravated all these domestic woes.

http://www.ourfuture.org/tba Register now for the Take Back America conference March 17-19, 2008, in Washington D.C.

The authors of a new study by scholars at the Brookings Institution in Washington and sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts warned that widening gaps in higher education between rich and poor, whites and minorities, could soon lead to a downturn in opportunities for the poorest families.

Watch our video reality-check on Bush’s State of the Union fantasies.