Research Fellow Polina Vlasenko highlights the impact new credit card legislation will have on responsible borrowers in the July 28 issue of The Washington Times. Her full quotation is below:

Polina Vlasenko, a research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research, said what irks her the most is that responsible borrowers are becoming the new victims under Congress' "law of unintended consequences."

"Borrowers with solid credit and a history of paying off their credit card charges on time are treated exactly the same as those with poor credit and a history of late payments," she said, because banks are no longer allowed to differentiate fees and rates for customers based on good or bad behavior.

As the Obama Administration continues to push for a moratorium on deepwater drilling and announces $2 billion in stimulus funds for solar energy companies, a new analysis by the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) shows a growing disconnect between political visions of a green energy economy and the practical reality of U.S. energy use.

“Developing cleaner energy sources and reducing our reliance on fossil fuels is not impossible, but it’s a huge challenge that is much more complicated than the bumper stickers and slogans suggest,” says AIER Senior Fellow Kerry Lynch, whose analysis appears in a recent issue of AIER’s Research Reports. “The inconvenient truth is that no one has yet developed an alternative to fossil fuels capable of providing energy on a comparable scale at a comparable cost.”

Lynch points out that shifting from one energy source to another is difficult because their costs vary greatly and they are not necessarily interchangeable.

AIER President and CEO Charles Murray is quoted in a recent Fiscal Times article entitled "Consumer Debt Numbers Improve Despite Rise in Mortgage Delinquencies."

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Research Associate Kenneth D'Amica was interviewed by the Springfield Republican for the article "Springfield unemployment up; Massachusetts home sales way up." His reference in the article appears below:

Unemployment can go up even as the number of jobs increase because more people are entering the work force, said Kenneth J. D’Amica, research associate at the American Institute for Economic Research in Great Barrington. That growing work force can be a good sign because it means people who had stopped looking for work are looking again.

People whose unemployment insurance has run out are counted as unemployed and as part of the work force as long as they keep looking for work, he said.

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Research Fellow Polina Vlasenko has been quoted in an article for the Westminister Herald (CA). The article addresses how the European crisis may affect car loans in the United States. Read her quotation below:

"An increase in Libor is significant because it indicates some sort of change in the market, and banks are being more cautious," says Polina Vlasenko, research analyst at the American Institute for Economic Research in Great Barrington, Mass.

"If this proves to be a sustained trend, something that will go on for a couple of months, then slowly all other interest rates will start creeping up. If banks in London are worried, then at some point banks in the U.S. will start worrying."

Click here to read the full article.