Blog Posts by Morgan Korn

Maya MacGuineas, president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a non-profit organization committed to analyzing and influencing fiscal policy, says the next five months are critical for budget reform.

In an interview at the Milken Institute's 2013 Global Conference, MacGuineas argues that Washington needs to replace the sequester with a bigger debt deal – one that tackles the “real problem areas of the budget” such as health care, aging and an outdated tax code. The budgets for defense and domestic spending were cut by roughly 8% in early March because of the sequestration.

Related: The Economic Argument Is Over — And Paul Krugman Won

MacGuineas, a longtime deficit hawk who has excoriated both Democrats and Republicans for not coming up with viable deficit-reduction solutions, says Congress and the White House cannot squander another opportunity to solve the nation’s underlying budget issues.

“The real risk is [budget reform] won’t happen and it would be a

There are more than 11 million people living in the U.S. illegally. In Los Angeles, the nation’s second largest city, one out of 10 residents are undocumented. LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa recently traveled to Washington to push lawmakers to change our immigration system, one that the mayor calls “broken.”

Villaraigosa said his meetings with President Obama and Senators John McCain and Harry Reid left him optimistic that immigration reform would happen this year.

“I think there’s a consensus that we’re probably at the best time we’ve been to at least since 1986 to get comprehensive immigration reform,” Villaraigosa tells The Daily Ticker at the Milken Global Institute Conference 2013. “Things look really good.”

Related: Pres. Obama: 'The Time Has to Come to Pass Comprehensive Immigration Reform'

Villaraigosa says the House could approve the broad reform bill introduced by a bipartisan group of senators (the “Gang of Eight”) if the Senate overwhelming votes for it. An overhaul of the

Niall Ferguson has two words for Paul Krugman: you’re wrong.

The Harvard University history professor and author of "The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die" and “Civilization: The West and the Rest” says Krugman’s pro-government spending thesis not only fails to address the core problems facing the U.S. and Europe today but also has dire consequences for individuals living in these economies.

“You can’t borrow trillions of dollars a year for the rest of time,” Ferguson says in an interview with The Daily Ticker at the Milken Institute Global Conference 2013. “Once a government gets to a very very high level of debt, the risk is very small increases in borrowing costs which create a vast ocean of red ink. So that risk is not negligible. Very large debts do not simply disappear by magic.”

Related: The Economic Argument Is Over — And Paul Krugman Won

Ferguson argues that Carmen Reinhart’s and Ken Rogoff’s conclusions about the relationship between high debt and

Few Americans were aware of the dangers of industrial farming and processed food before Michael Pollan published his best-selling books “In Defense of Food” and the “Omnivore’s Dilemma.”

A hero to the locavore and organic movements, Pollan has never shied away from expressing his opinions on what to eat, where to eat and the proper way to raise and harvest what we eat.

In his new book “Cooked," Pollan urges more Americans to home-cook their meals. Cooking, he says, will lower obesity rates and re-connect individuals with “the material world.”

Related: Michael Pollan: Home Cooking Will Solve America's Obesity Epidemic

Eating the right foods are as important as eating foods that are not genetically modified, Pollan argues in the accompanying clip. Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are “plants or animals created through the gene splicing techniques of biotechnology, or genetic engineering,” according to The Non-GMO Project, a nonprofit organization that tests food products for GMOs.

Reports of the cupcake’s demise are premature. The popularity of the cupcake – an all-American sugary treat that comes in various (and delicious) fillings, frostings, and decorations – exploded in recent years with gourmet and artisanal shops popping up across the country.

Cupcakes soon became a “trendy” and stylish dessert to indulge in and cable networks aired shows like Cupcake Wars and DC Cupcakes that helped fuel more demand for cupcakes.

Must all good things come to end? According to The Wall Street Journal, the cupcake bubble has burst and the phenomenon that took Americans by storm and shattered people’s diets may be officially over. The paper cites the downfall of Crumbs Bake Shop (CRMB) – a husband and wife owned cupcake chain that opened its doors in March of 2003 on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

Crumbs cupcakes -- exalted for their enormous size (they’re about 4 inches tall) -- quickly became a fan favorite and the leader in the cupcake craze. But the company’s rapid growth

Best-selling author and Food Network personality Sandra Lee is the exemplar of the ‘American Dream’: she grew up in poverty, helped raise her four younger siblings and now manages a lifestyle empire that includes 25 books, a magazine that bears her name, four highly-rated culinary TV programs and a housewares line that’s sold in Kmart/Sears. She says unequivocally that her meager upbringing was the reason why she’s so successful today.

“My childhood was a complete blessing,” she says in an interview with The Daily Ticker. “It was a challenging way to live, a challenging way to grow up… but it benefitted me so much.”

Related: The 'American Dream' Is a Myth: Joseph Stiglitz

By age 12 Lee was cooking, cleaning and checking her siblings’ homework assignments after her stepfather moved out of the family’s Washington home and her mother became bedridden. Welfare and food stamps paid the bills.

In Made From Scratch, Lee’s 2007 memoir, she writes, “If we had extra expenses, or even if we were

The U.S. housing market – once seen as the savior of the economic recovery – has now come under intense scrutiny. Some experts are ringing the alarm bells that ultra low interest rates championed by the Fed could result in the next housing bubble. David Stockman, President Reagan’s OMB director, believes the U.S. is already in the middle of a new housing crisis due to artificially low rates and speculation. Former FDIC Chairwoman Sheila Bair told The Daily Ticker earlier this month that low rates were actually discouraging banks from lending and, in turn, hindering economic growth.

Related: The Recovery in Housing Is Behind Us: David Rosenberg

Now government regulators are expressing apprehension over the meteoric rise in mortgage REITs. According to The Wall Street Journal, mortgage real-estate investment trusts “have been selling shares to the public at a rapid clip over the past three years” and “assets held by mortgage REITs are increasing from $159 billion in 2009 to $450 billion

Sales of existing homes unexpectedly fell 0.6% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.92 million in March, the National Association of Realtors reported Monday. Analysts had been expecting an increase of 5.03 million homes. February existing home sales were revised down to 4.95 million from an original estimate of 4.98 million.

The numbers in March continue to point to a healthy housing recovery: existing home sales are up 10.3% compared to a year ago and the median home price in March ($184,300) is nearly 12% higher than it was in March 2012. Last month also marks the largest year-over-year price growth since November 2005.

Related: Toll Brothers CEO: ‘Housing Recovery Is the Real Deal This Time’

David Rosenberg, chief economist and strategist at Gluskin Sheff, says growth in the housing market could be slowing. He notes that first-time buyers are still hesitant about taking on mortgage debt and their absence from the market is the “missing link” in the recovery.

“Most of this