Jamie Dimon, once a resident of Chicago’s Gold Coast and a leader of the city’s business community, has gone on to become the nation’s most influential banker as boss of JPMorgan Chase in New York. Last week, he explained why, like so many leaders of big companies, he is spending today like there’s no tomorrow.

The $2 billion a week in ...Read more

When in doubt, blame COVID.

That’s a big takeaway from the state’s response to revelations of fraud in the Massachusetts SNAP program.

As the Herald reported, a 2024 letter showed that President Joe Biden’s administration urged Gov. Maura Healey to clean up the state’s SNAP program, which was recently found by state and federal ...Read more

From Maine to New York to Illinois to California, and many places in-between, a national rent-control movement is rising up — and Big Real Estate is running scared. That’s as it should be, because a successful movement would make it much harder for the real estate industry to rent gouge tenants.

Rent regulations have a long history of ...Read more

Great minds go off on odd tangents. In 1930, John Maynard Keynes took time out from thinking about the Great Depression, which was throwing millions out of work, to write a charming essay about the “economic possibilities for our grandchildren.” What would life be like a hundred years hence, he asked. His answer: The depression would prove ...Read more

Generational conflict is commonplace in history but now increasingly consequential. Many younger Americans believe things are getting worse, and some blame the boomers who came before them.

Former private equity executive Bruce Gibney, now 50 and a Gen Xer, labeled boomers “a generation of sociopaths” who have left behind a burden of ...Read more

As major social media companies head to court this year to defend themselves against claims that their products have harmed young people’s mental health, policymakers are searching for decisive responses.

The lawsuits, which focus on whether platforms knowingly designed addictive, psychologically harmful systems for youth, are bringing long-...Read more

There was a McDonald's in my neighborhood that we would drive by often when I was growing up. Each time, I would read about the weekly sale advertised on the marquee underneath the golden arches. Occasionally, I would ask my folks if we could stop at that McDonald's on the corner. And each time their answer was: "Do you have McDonald's money?"

...Read more

I had a nagging toothache recently, and it led to an even more painful revelation.

If you X-rayed the state of oral health care in the United States, particularly for people 65 and older, the picture would be full of cavities.

"It's probably worse than you can even imagine," said Elizabeth Mertz, a UC San Francisco professor and Healthforce ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The race for California governor couldn’t be much closer. And that’s scary for Democrats.

Only the top two vote-getters in the June 2 primary — regardless of their party — will advance to the November election. And although still unlikely, it’s increasingly conceivable that both could be Republicans.

“Scare ...Read more

NEW YORK — If this city was like it used to be, like it’s supposed to be, then the fracas that erupted in Washington Square Park last week would have been nothing more than the simple snowball fight that Mayor Zohran Mamdani said it was.

But it wasn’t.

Because if what happened in Washington Square Park had been a simple snowball fight ...Read more

Donald Trump has never been one to play by the rules.

Whether it's stiffing contractors as a real estate developer, defying court orders he doesn't like as president or leveraging the Oval Office to vastly inflate his family's fortune, Trump's guiding principle can be distilled to a simple, unswerving calculation: What's in it for me?

Trump is...Read more

One thing you can say for California Gov. Gavin Newsom: He's not afraid to tick people off.

In 2004, as mayor of San Francisco, he defied the law and ordered that gay couples be allowed to marry. The move, he was told, was a career ender. He did it anyway.

In 2013, as lieutenant governor under then-Gov. Jerry Brown, Newsom took the occasion of...Read more

Retirement experts note the folly of retiring from something, which drives what most people do, and the wisdom of retiring to something, a rarer but far superior choice.

The analogy holds when it comes to what just happened this weekend in Iran.

Especially if you look at what took place in Venezuela, the previous example of Donald Trump-led ...Read more

The U.S. and Israel gambled on “decapitation” in Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and many others. History shows the danger of this approach in nationalist conflicts: It often works tactically — and fails strategically.

Although the weekend’s “shock and awe” bombing campaign and the U.S.-led regime change remind ...Read more