Update 338 — “Activities-Based” Designation: Red Herring from FSOC Gets Hearing at SBC With April Fool’s Day coming up, one might believe a Trump Treasury proposal seeks greater regulatory focus on systemically risky financial activity, were one to read last week’s FSOC proposal (Authority To Require Supervision and Regulation of Certain Nonbank Financial Companies). But …
Red Herring from FSOC Gets Hearing at SBC (March 15) Read More »
Update 337 — Federal Paid Leave Policy: Unreformed Since America was Great Again The last major federal legislation on family and medical leave — the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) — was in 1993 under President Bill Clinton. A big step forward for families and workers, FMLA nevertheless excludes from coverage over 40 percent …
Update 336: House Passes H.R. 1 by 234-193 No Ds Dissent; Long March Ahead in Senate Earlier today, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 1, a comprehensive political reform measure that would greatly expand ballot access, help level the campaign finance playing field, and codify ethics rules across all branches of government. The vote …
Update 335 — The Labor Participation Rate: After the Shouting, What Have We Learned? We tear ourselves away from the House floor debate on H.R. 1 — the anti-corruption political reform package scheduled for a vote on final passage at 11 a.m. on Friday — to provide a labor market update focused on the labor …
Update 334: Hitting Hill for Humphrey-Hawkins;Powell Cites Concerns, Holds Rates in Place This Tuesday and yesterday, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell appeared before Senate and House Committees to report, as the Fed Chair does semi-annually, on the state of the economy and monetary policy. In his July 2018 testimony, Chairman Powell painted a picture of …
Fed Chair Powell Cites Concerns, Holds Rates in Place (February 28) Read More »
Update 333: Bronx Cheer for Amazon in Queens City Loses Site in Firm’s Preemptive Break-Up In honor of the opening of spring training, we pause to remember the words of Casey Stengel, manager of the New York Mets, who played and mostly lost, compiling the worst record in baseball history in 1962, in Queens: “Come …
Update 332 — The BB&T/SunTrust Merger: Bank Consolidation Gains, Thanks to S. 2155? Virtually every major sector and industry in the American economy has seen increasing concentration and reduced competition over the last several decades and banking is no exception. Trump era deregulation has accelerated this trend and last year’s S. 2155 and its implementing …
Update 331 — A Day in the Sun for HR 1;House Admin Hearing Tees Up Feb. 26 Markup Yesterday, the House Administration Committee held the last of the Committee hearings on H.R. 1, the For the People Act. The bill is a sweeping democracy reform package that aims to restore voting rights protections, fight special …
Update 330 — House Fin. Services Drilldown: Subcommittee Chairs, Members, Agendas Chairwoman Maxine Waters and the House leadership have announced assignments for House Financial Services Subcommittee seats in the 116th Congress. No less than a dozen freshmen, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Katie Porter of California, have landed spots on prominent subcommittees, such as …
Update 329 — Access to Financial Services:Survey of Public Banking Bills in Congress Before long, the winter will lift and we will see a thousand flowers bloom in the marketplace of policy ideas over the spring, with the first official presidential primary debates to follow in June. Among the most far-reaching economic policy proposals surfacing …