This article was originally published by Slate on Thursday, June 17, 2010.
Why do dads lie on surveys about fatherhood? And why their lying is socially significant.
By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
A new Boston College study makes the modern American dad look positively Swedish in his dedication to his children and his zeal to participate equally in raising them. The yearlong qualitative study of 33 first-time fathers, released yesterday, found that they viewed themselves as sharing family responsibilities 50-50 with their wives and claimed to devote an average of 3.3 hours each workday to child care. The new dads openly gushed about the way parenthood had changed their priorities and career aspirations. "I love being a father so much more than I thought I would," said one study participant about his new baby girl. "The highlight of my day is in the morning when I hear her start to wake up and I can just go in there and pick her up."
Could that be true? Has the American father adapted so quickly to modern feminist demands? The researchers themselves were somewhat suspicious. After all, the most recent large-scale, benchmark studies on time use found that fathers spend significantly less time on child care than mothers. The Families and Work Institute, for instance, puts fathers at three hours and mothers at 3.8 hours with kids under 13, while Census Bureau time-use surveys found that married men spend about 1.2 hours per weekday caring for children under age 6, while married women spend 2.6 hours on the same activity. (For both benchmark surveys, the most recent year available is 2008.)
The answer, it turns out, is that the men in the Boston College study were probably lying about how they spend their time. But that's no reason to be disappointed. The Boston study relied upon in-depth interviews with men after the fact. Time-use studies involve questions about the previous day's behavior. With in-depth interviews, researchers expect subjects to have imperfect recall or exaggerate behaviors they perceive as being socially desirable—weight loss and breastfeeding are classic examples. But the direction in which they lie is socially significant. Thirty years ago, dads claimed to spend less time with their children than they actually did, since child-rearing was considered women's work. Now they are lying in the opposite direction, which suggests that they perceive doing half of the parenting to be a manly affair.
Why Do Dads Lie?
Obama's King of Cool
This article was originally published by the Fiscal Times on Monday, June 14, 2010.
Obama's performance czar, Jeff Zients, seeks to streamline the bureaucracy and make it cool to work for the government.
By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
Just a week after Jeffrey D. Zients assumed his first management job 18 years ago, he slashed the size of his staff from six to two and replaced one of the remaining individuals. The ambitious 25-year-old was on a fast track at a Washington consulting firm, and he knew he needed the right people in place as quickly as possible.
But when he took over as President Obama's first-ever government performance officer a year ago, there was no way Zients could replicate that quick start. That's because it takes on average five months to hire a worker under the convoluted federal hiring process
"I knew there was no way we would be able to meet the president's challenge to make government service cool again and at the same time have such a broken hiring process that, for the most part, did not have senior leaders spending the appropriate amount of time on people," recalled Zients, a trim 43-year-old who is graying around the temples.
What he did next tells a lot about how Zients attacks a problem: He quickly enlisted Housing Secretary Shaun Donovan to launch a pilot project at his agency to try to dramatically reduce the time it takes to bring a new worker on board. First, department officials mapped the convoluted hiring process, identified logjams and cut out redundancies, which reduced the number of steps from 40 to only 14. Then, they trained hiring managers on techniques for getting involved much earlier and identifying job candidates with the right skills. Finally, they tracked each step in the process to see how close managers were to hitting the time allotted for each stage.
Six months later, the experiment succeeded in reducing the hiring process from an average of 139 days to a mere 77. When Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry and Zients rolled out hiring reform for the entire government in May, they were able to point to this success as evidence that the changes would work.
"Organizations often spend too much time thinking about and planning and preparing for change management," Zients said during a recent interview with The Fiscal Times, over mugs of hot tea from his wife's native South Africa. "The best way to change is to begin to change, and then to celebrate those early wins. That builds a natural momentum."
Banking Bill Leaves Huge Gaps in Financial Reform
This article was originally published by the Fiscal Times on Monday, May 24, 2010.
Financial regulation legislation silent on key issues.
By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
The Senate's action last week to discourage high-risk behavior and regulatory failures has been hailed as the most sweeping reform of the banking and financial system since the 1930s, yet the landmark legislation leaves huge gaps in addressing the causes of the 2008 financial crisis, according to analysts and experts.
Most notably, the Senate-passed bill doesn't address the future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage giants at the center of the credit market collapse, which hold $5.5 trillion of residential housing loans, about three-quarters of the market. Nor does the massive, 1,500-page bill establish comprehensive regulation of insurance companies, such as American International Group. Instead, the bill would create an insurance office at the Treasury Department merely to collect data from state insurance regulators.
Obama Administration Speeds Up Hiring
This article was originally published by the Fiscal Times on Tuesday, May 11, 2010.
The Obama administration has ordered sweeping changes to speed up the federal hiring process and to make it less frustrating to apply for a job.
By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
The Obama administration implemented sweeping changes to the federal hiring process Tuesday to make it easier and faster to hire new government employees. Following years of complaints that federal hiring practices were hopelessly mired in red tape and bureaucratic delays, the change is expected to reduce by half the time it takes to fill vacancies and enhance the government’s ability to compete with the private sector for strong talent.
Under the old method, the hiring process took an average of five months, with as many as 40 individual steps and 19 signatures needed, said John Berry, director of the Office of Personnel Management, in unveiling the changes. The overhaul eliminates required knowledge skills assessment essays, which will allow people to apply for a job with a simple cover letter and resume, saving millions of hours and getting rid of cumbersome paperwork. "This initiative is the biggest step forward for fixing federal hiring in over three decades," Berry said. "It will substantially reduce the time and aggravation it takes to find and hire the best. When we've achieved that goal, all of government will work better."
Each year, the federal government adds about 330,000 employees to its 2 million person workforce, through a process that has long been criticized as byzantine and cumbersome by lawmakers, according to the Government Accountability Office and academics. Streamlining hiring will save time and money, and result in better talent, Berry told an audience of government employees, managers and journalists.
"Mounting deficits and debt are placing enormous pressure on government spending. At the same time, trust in government is on the decline," said Jeffrey Zients, Obama's chief performance officer, noting that only 22 percent of Americans trust the government -- a half-century low. "To make sure every tax dollar is spent wisely, we have to get the right people."
In addition to throwing out the knowledge essays, Berry said the changes will:
Controversy Dogs Efforts to Regulate Derivatives
This article was originally published by the Fiscal Times on Wednesday, May 5, 2010.
Efforts to regulate financial derivatives trigger memories of a failed effort during the Clinton administration to impose regulations.
By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
As the Senate negotiates sweeping changes to financial regulations, some policy experts are flashing back to the late 1990s, when a Clinton administration appointee named Brooksley Born explored oversight of complex financial contracts known as over-the-counter derivatives.
Born, an attorney, chaired the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Her efforts to shed light on and regulate the opaque world of derivatives quickly died in the face of vehement opposition from then-Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan, Treasury secretary Robert Rubin, powerful members of Congress, and Wall Street executives who opposed increased market regulation.
Now that credit default swaps and mortgage-based derivatives have been implicated in the near collapse of the international financial markets, it's only natural to wonder what the world would have looked like if Born and the CFTC had succeeded in bringing transparency to the $600 trillion derivatives market — or even imposing capital and margin requirements.
"It would've prevented the meltdown because there would've been too much information that would have countered the theory that housing prices would always go up," said Michael Greenberger, who was director of the division of trading and markets at Born's CFTC. "If regulators had seen the gambling, they would've seen that the risk was being repeated by multiple institutions."
Senate Showdown Over Too Big to Fail
This article was originally published by the Fiscal Times on Sunday, April 18, 2010
Democrats and Republicans disagree on the methods to prevent future emergency bailouts.
By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
In the wake of a major government fraud case against Goldman Sachs, the Obama administration and Senate Democrats are poised to forge a consensus this week on a sweeping overhaul of financial regulations. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner declared yesterday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that Democrats and some Republicans "are very close on this," and suggested that the Securities and Exchange Commission's civil suit last week, charging Goldman Sachs with selling investors a subprime mortgage investment designed to lose value, might provide added impetus for the financial regulatory legislation.
As Senate leaders and the White House attempt to push legislation that responds to the lessons of the global financial crisis, perhaps the single most important question will be whether they can successfully address the potential damage from financial institutions deemed "too big to fail."
It was the collapse of Lehman Brothers and near-death of American International Group (AIG) and other major banks and institutions that prompted unprecedented government intervention in the financial markets in the fall of 2008. As Senate negotiators and the administration exchange ideas this week on the final shape of a financial regulatory reform package, Democrats and Republicans agree on the essential goal of preventing future emergency bailouts, but they disagree markedly on the methods.
The Return
This story was originally published by the Washington Post Magazine on Sunday, April 4, 2010, in conjunction with an online discussion.
A stay at home mom attempts to go back to work after nearly two decades. Can she revive her career?
By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
Amy Beckett put away her reading glasses and file folder and stood up.
It was time. It was almost past time.
She tossed the empty paper cup into the trash and swung open the door to leave the deli on Rhode Island Avenue NW. As Beckett walked into an upscale office lobby, her scarf slipped from around her neck and drifted to the ground. She scooped it up and shoved it into her shoulder bag. She didn't want to arrive late for the job interview.
She handed the security guard a photo ID. Once in the elevator, she looked up at the ceiling and exhaled noisily. "I'm never doing this again," she said, closing her jade-colored eyes for a moment. At the seventh floor, she opened the heavy wooden door to Suite 713, identified in gold lettering as the Law Offices of Stephen H. Marcus. The suite's unique double doors, parquet floor and crown molding signaled its former life as the ticket office for EL AL Airlines. The receptionist looked up from her desk with a smile. She took Beckett's business card and said it would be a few moments until Marcus finished with a client.
With her back straight in a modern brown chair by the door, Beckett folded her hands over the bag on her knees and waited. It was March of last year, three days after she had turned 52 and 17 years since she'd last held a job.
Sue the debt collector
This article was originally published by MSN Money, on Monday, March 29, 2010
Federal law sets clear limits on what debt collectors can do. If their tactics go beyond those limits, you can win money -- and it's a surprisingly easy process.
By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
If you're overdue on your bills, you may know all too well the headaches of phone calls, letters and threats from creditors.
Now some debtors are hitting back by suing when debt collectors violate their rights.
"People will take a lot of crap until it gets to the point where they're so desperate they feel they have nothing to lose by fighting back," said Steven Katz of Tucson, Ariz. Katz is the founder of Debtorboards, where consumers post their frustrations and successes with the collection industry.
Suing is a surprisingly easy process. Federal law lets individuals receive $1,000 for each abuse of their rights, plus any damages or attorney fees. Sometimes, a single phone call from a collector involves multiple violations.
Consumer Financial Protection Plan Divides Congress
This article was originally published by the Fiscal Times on Thursday, March 25, 2010.
Democrats want a watchdog to protect consumers from reckless practices, but Republicans say regulation would be costly and inefficient.
By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
When it comes to overhauling financial regulations, Democrats and Republicans have much to fight over: how best to rein in the derivatives market, establish bank takeover procedures, curb executive pay and end government bailouts of mismanaged institutions deemed "too big to fail."
But as the Senate prepares to debate a bill next month aimed at preventing the behavior that led to one of the worst financial crises in U.S. history, perhaps the most contentious measure is one that would create a regulator devoted to protecting consumers from unscrupulous or reckless practices.
President Obama and House and Senate Democratic leaders believe the proposal is a no-brainer. Unless an independent regulator is looking out for consumers, they say, any financial regulatory reform will fail to prevent the kind of risky behavior and predatory business practices that fostered the 2008 financial meltdown.
Treasury Nominee Languishes in the Senate
This article was originally published by the Fiscal Times on Thursday, March 4, 2010.
While he awaits Senate confirmation, acting Treasury assistant secretary for tax policy Michael Mundaca has seen his job dwindle from a meaty policy role to a more technical position.
By Katherine Reynolds Lewis
Last fall, President Obama picked Michael F. Mundaca, a talented legal mind and political pragmatist, as assistant treasury secretary for tax policy. Former colleagues praised him as a gifted team builder, and many assumed Mundaca would play a central role in overhauling the tax code.
"His skill set is right in the sweet spot of where the activity is going to be," said Mark Weinberger, global vice chairman at Ernst & Young, who held the same spot during the Bush administration and worked with Mundaca at Ernst & Young.
Yet five months later, Mundaca is still waiting for the Senate to confirm his nomination and the administration's agenda doesn't include broad tax reform.
While he serves as acting assistant secretary and a senior advisor on tax policy at the Treasury, his job has dwindled from the meaty policy role seen in previous administrations to a more technical position of defending and implementing policy decisions that are largely made in the White House, according to Treasury observers.
