Latinos: The Sleeping Giant?

By Celia Canon- Talk Radio News Service

The U.S is not responding to the needs of its Hispanic citizens even though the population of Hispanics college students in the US rises and many industries are gearing their marketing toward this changing demographic, according to former director of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Henry Cisneros.

Cisneros, now Executive Director at CityView and author of “Latinos and the Nation’s Future”, gave a speech on” Latinos and the Nation’s Future” today at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

“A very interesting phenomenon will be the growth of the second generation of Hispanic immigrants. The Pew Foundation says that this number, which is 11 million second generation Hispanics today, will be 30 million in 2030, so it will triple in 20 years or so,” said Cisneros.

Recently, the nomination of Hispanic judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court has brought many criticisms from Republicans, who argue that she is not being sufficiently patriotic because she pronounces her name with a Spanish accent.The criticism of Sotomayor has renewed the debate on immigration integration.

Tamar Jacoby, President and CEO of ImmigrationWorks USA and co-author of “Latinos and the Nation’s Future”, said “For a long time, people have said that Latinos in American politics were the sleeping giant of American politics... The reason they thought that is because they said ‘look at these people, look at these demographics’... The political participation was below the potential.”

But Jacoby rejoiced of this complete turn for the best which began with the most recent presidential election of Barack Obama, saying that “In November 2004, 7.5 million Latinos voted; In 2008, 11 million Latinos voted.”

As a consequence of this Hispanic political awakening, Cisneros says that “We will see that the make up of community schools and colleges will be decidedly different in the time period we are describing... We will see that in markets as consumer products relate to the reality of these markets.”

Cisneros added that “Many industries view the growth of Latinos and immigration as the principal basis by which they will grow.”

“The sleeping giant woke up,” said Jacoby.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Investigates CEO Severance Packages

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing on "Executive Compensation II: Mortgage CEO Severance Packages," focusing on CEOs involved in the ongoing subprime mortgage crisis.

Chairman Waxman (D-CA 30) said corporate executives currently earn an average of 600 times more than the average employee, up from 40 times in 1980. A CEO can sometimes earn all of 10% of a companies net profits. This works out to around $160,000 per hour. He also said that such earnings may be justified by market conditions but that this does not explain the recent hundred million dollar severance packages received by the former executives of Countrywide, Merrill Lynch, and Citigroup, all of which recorded multi-billion dollar losses before their resignations.

Ranking member Davis (R-VA-11) shared these concerns, but warned against congressional involvement, fearing the consequences of micromanaging these volatile financial markets.

Susan Wachter, professor of financial management of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, described a misalignment of incentives that led to the recent economic troubles which contributed to these huge corporate losses.

Anthony Yezer, Economics Professor at GWU, stated that borrower education is not a viable option for preventing similar financial troubles because borrowers lack the mathematical understanding that predicates financial understanding.

Nell Minow, editor of The Corporate Library, said that the pay packages given to executives contributed directly to the economic crisis because they created incentives to produce more business rather than better.