Corporations will no longer be able to hide how much CEOs are paid compared to the workers who make those companies run, under a rule proposed today by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The rule requires companies to disclose the ratio of total compensation between chief executive officers and the median pay of employees.

That new rule does far more than help point out the historic and growing massive gap between CEO and worker pay. It is an important tool for investors to judge a company’s internal compensation structure, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.

Thomas Palley, the former Bernard L. Schwartz Economic Growth fellow at the New America Foundation and former assistant director of public policy at the AFL-CIO, joined us here today at the federation to discuss his new book, From Financial Crisis to Stagnation: The Destruction of Shared Prosperity and the Role of Economics. The event is the third in the AFL-CIO summer book series, which includes discussions with noted economists who will talk about their new books on jobs, inequality and the U.S. financial crisis. (Get details and RSVP here.)

In his new book, Palley sets out to explain the cause of the 2008 financial crisis and what can be done to prevent another economic collapse. Here is a Q and A with the author:

At the height of the Wall Street financial scandal that rocked this country into near economic ruin, bankers were ablaze with greed. To mark the approaching two-year anniversary of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the think tank Demos has compiled some of the more colorful quotes from this group and challenges you to guess who said them.

AFL-CIO Policy Director Damon Silvers has been appointed to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) new Investor Advisory Committee. The committee was created as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

The Senate failed today to pass a set of amendments to the cynically named JOBS Act, which will do little to create jobs but will deregulate Wall Street and weaken the Wall Street reform measures enacted after the financial industry’s take-down of the economy.

The Americans for Financial Reform Conference on Executive Pay and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act will discuss this afternoon a provision that would disclose the CEO-to-worker pay ratio to investors and the public for the first time. The AFL-CIO is hosting the conference.

Last year’s Wall Street reform law, the Dodd-Frank Act, established significant changes in federal oversight of executive pay. On Monday, Dec. 12, at the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C., Americans for Financial Reform will host a conference on the new executive pay rules.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka announced support for President Obama’s plan to nominate Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Cordray, a former Ohio attorney general, currently is chief of enforcement at the CFPB.

Last week, we told you how 44 U.S. senators are fighting to keep consumer and working family advocate Elizabeth Warren out of the top spot of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), created by last year’s landmark Wall Street reform legislation.

While 25 million unemployed and underemployed U.S. workers are drowning, CEO pay skyrocketed by 23 percent, for an average salary of $11.4 million in 2010, according to the AFL-CIO Executive PayWatch. Released today, data compiled at PayWatch also show CEOs have done little to create badly-needed jobs, instead sitting on a record $1.93 trillion in cash on their balance sheets.