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Journalist Lectures on FDR’s Labor Sec. Frances Perkins

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 While the future of the global economy remains uncertain, many look to the lessons of the past for advice on how to tackle today’s problems. Kirstin Downey, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist from the Washington Post, explained this philosophy yesterday while discussing her recently released biography The Woman Behind the New Deal:  The Life of Frances Perkins, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Secre­tary of Labor and His Moral Conscience.
Fannie Coralie Perkins was born in Boston in 1880 and quickly realized that her life would be based around helping others. Perkins, who later changed her name to Frances, worked with Jane Addams at the Hull House in Chicago and later worked for the Tammany Hall political machine and then-governor of New York, Al Smith.

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Root Capital Director Explains His Company’s Lending Role

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Financing typically comes in two sizes for businesses: very large or very small. Large-scale financing caters to the needs of large businesses, while small-scale financing answers the needs of tiny enterprises. In a manner reminiscent of Goldilocks’ perfect fit, Root Capital — a nonprofit social investment fund based in Cambridge, Mass. — aims to provide much-needed capital to help such medium-sized businesses grow.
Last night, students and faculty alike gathered in the Plant Science Building for a lecture entitled “Beyond Microfinance: Finance for the ‘Missing Middle’ in Africa and Latin America” to learn more about the financing avenues made available to medium-sized enterprises through Root Capital.

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United In Disarray

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Storm clouds are gathered over Brussels: the economic and political crisis that grips the countries of the European Union is highlighting the weaknesses of the EU. Among those weaknesses, the inability of the organization to create common political policy is especially apparent. Though European leaders are hailing a “consensus” that they reached at their emergency summit, the economies of Europe, especially those of Central and Eastern Europe, are falling closer and closer to collapse.

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Programming Board Faces Financial Strain

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Last October, when the Cornell University Programming Board brought Steven Colbert to Cornell, his entrance was anything but subtle. First he roused thousands of students at 9 a.m. to buy tickets online. Then he sold 3,000 tickets in 15 minutes, selling out his scheduled performance in record time. To top it off, he performed an additional show to quell the desire of eager Cornell audience members. Attracting a crowd of about 10,000 over 2007’s First Year Family Weekend, CUPB, to say the least, started the year with a bang.