President Obama is doing the right thing by offering young immigrants, most often in this country through no action of their own, a chance to live and work openly, free from the fear of deportation.

We are all used to paying a sales tax when we buy things - almost 9 percent here in New York City. The application of this concept to the financial sector could solve our need for revenue, bring some sanity back into the financial sector, and give us a way to raise the revenue we need to run the government in a fiscally responsible way.

Any reasonable economist will tell you that it's nearly impossible to isolate the impact of right-to-work laws on a state's job growth. A multitude of other factors intervene. However, one thing the numbers can show is that right-to-work laws have a negative effect on the wages of workers in that state.

A year is an eternity in politics - though less than a moment in history.

The big lie out there, the big lie that the Republicans propagate day after day, is that cutting marginal rates for those at the top is going to create jobs. It's simply not true.

The pace of global warming is accelerating and the scale of the impact is devastating. The time for action is limited - we are approaching a tipping point beyond which the opportunity to reverse the damage of CO2 emissions will disappear.

I don't have any particular expertise-I've never been a banker or an investment banker. But I did see an evolution in the system that I thought was problematic.