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...appeared that this deficit-ignoring bliss might end. Chinese officials said repeatedly that they were uncomfortable holding so many U.S. securities. Interest rates on Treasuries inched up. And another billionaire launched an assault on deficit spending - this time private-equity kingpin Peter Peterson, who took most of the $1.9 billion he made from the 2007 initial public offering of his Blackstone Group and put it into a foundation devoted to raising fiscal awareness...
That may sound like a lot of money--Duncan plans to give his share to charity--but it's chump change compared with the kind of cash he gets to play with at work. The economic-stimulus bill passed by Congress in February included $100 billion in new education spending. Of that total, Duncan has $5 billion in discretionary funding. That money alone makes him the most powerful Education Secretary ever. "I had very little--in the single-digit millions," says Margaret Spellings, Duncan's predecessor. "That's millions, with...
Duncan's choices could have a transformative impact on America's beleaguered public-education system. On July 24, he stood beside President Barack Obama and announced the guidelines for states to compete for most of that cash. The $4.35 billion Race to the Top (RTT) fund lets states apply for grants that focus on a short list of reforms guaranteed to anger one of the Democratic Party's core constituencies, the teachers' unions. (The remaining $650 million will go to innovative local school districts and nonprofits.) With Duncan handling the ball, the Obama Administration is about to square off with...
...regardless of ideological association--expanding charter schools, paying students for good grades, experimenting with teacher merit pay and shutting down failing schools and reopening them with new staffs. He's still keen on such controversial turnaround strategies. In late August, he announced another competitive grant program that uses $3.5 billion in nondiscretionary funding in an effort to fix the nation's worst schools...
Areva has soared on nuclear's second coming. But its 2008 profits--$824 million on $18.4 billion in sales--were down 17% from 2007, owing mostly to a whopping $2.4 billion write-down linked to construction troubles with what is supposed to be its leading-edge Finland reactor...