Update 325 — Economic Groundhog DayNo Shadows; Corporate Debt Clouding Horizon The American debt binge is not limited to the national debt. As we will show below and in the next update, private debt has scaled up in recent years just as precipitously, to mix monetary metaphors. We start today with a look at …
Update 324: Our Systemically Riskiest Markets… Beyond a Shadow of a Notional Doubt The long weekend ahead —or the furlough as the case may be — affords the opportunity to look at the little-understood but vast shadow banking system. Many firms involved in the 2008 financial crisis continue to operate in a relative regulatory void, …
Update 323 — Wall or Nothing WH Stays Aloof Trump Unmoved: Let Them Make Adjustments Before the holiday break, we wrote an update on the budget wranglings over Trump’s border wall. At the time, it looked likely that the government was heading for a partial shutdown. The record-breaking shutdown is now in its 25th day. …
Update 322 — Bear or Bull: What’s the Beef? What Market Volatility Means for Real Economy Markets are notoriously difficult to read, let alone predict. And market performance correlates to growth and other macroeconomic factors in an opaque way. But the increasingly erratic capital markets are arresting attention and arousing concerns. Which of these real …
Bear or Bull Market: What’s the Beef? (January 11) Read More »
Update 321 — House Democrats Lead Off 2019 with HR 1, Broad and Bold Anti-Corruption Bill House Democrats have given legislative pride of place to the For the People Act, a signal and far-reaching anti-corruption bill, making it H.R. 1. The bill includes critical voting rights and ethics reforms. But of particular note is the …
House Democrats Lead off 2019 with H.R. 1 (January 9) Read More »
Update 320 — Budget Outcome Still TBD After Wall-Eyed White House Fakes Out GOP Donald Trump’s decision yesterday not to sign Congress’ extension of a continuing resolution in place since September 28 to February 8 of next year has brought both the budget process and the federal government to the brink of shutdown. It seems …
Wall-Eyed White House Fakes Out GOP (December 21) Read More »
Update 319: Do Democrats Have Ways & Means To Pass Real or Just Marginal Tax Reform? Given the new majority in the House starting next month, the House Ways and Means Committee, with its exclusive jurisdiction over tax legislation, means the end of tax cut mania in Congress. The immediate challenge in this policy area …
Ways & Means Under Rep. Richard Neal (December 14) Read More »
Update 318: Tax Extenders Time is Here; Perennial Policy Debate is Itself Debated No holiday season on the Hill is complete without a tax extenders bill to re-up the temporary tax breaks expiring that given year. A policy perennial, the annual debate can be seen as a natural way to review and renew breaks not …
Update 317: Incumbent Ranking Members in the Next Congress Sens. Brown of Banking and Wyden of Finance Last week, we looked at the agenda for the House Financial Services Committee under new Chair, Maxine Waters. The midterms were less kind to Democrats in the Senate, as Republicans narrowly increased their majority. Gavels on Senate Banking …
Senate Banking and Finance in the Next Congress (December 7) Read More »
Update 316 — Fed Stability Report: Incomplete Missing: Systemic Risk and TBTF Analysis Yesterday, the Dow lost over 800 points, its third worst point decline in history; the S&P 500 saw its steepest fall since February. Waves of selling are hitting Wall Street amid fear of slowing economic growth and trade tensions between the U.S. …
