Update 328 — Bicoastal Bids in Big BattleAs 2020 Contest of the Tax Proposals Unfolds It’s a classic match-up — East Coast vs. West Coast, familiar champion vs. lesser-known challenger, with the biggest stakes on the line. Talking New England Patriots, the L.A. Rams, and Sunday’s Super Bowl? Yes, but also the first big-ticket economic …
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 302: Senate Banking Hearing Tomorrow on S. 2155 — Why is Implementation So Slow? When the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act (S. 2155) was signed into law four months ago, we saw risk, not a reason to rush implementation. Industry apparently sees otherwise and so Senate Banking will ask why it’s …
Senate Banking Hearing Tomorrow — Why is Implementation So Slow? (October 1) Read More »
Update 300: Review of the Banking Sector; the Irony of Records Being Set Amid Deregulation Today we go back to basics with a quarterly review of the health of the financial sector and the disparate sub-sectors comprising it. Industry has fostered misrepresentations of the state of the sector claiming to be hamstrung by regulation and …
Update 289: Trump Floats Tax Cuts By Decree Called “Illegal, Flat-Out Bonkers;” Is it News? The GOP impulse to overreach when it comes to tax cuts is gaining almost frantic momentum right before the the August recess, as the GOP’s hopes of keeping its majorities in Congress looks ever more remote. Last week it …
Trump Floats Tax Cuts by Decree Called "Illegal, Flat-Out Bonkers" (August 1) Read More »
Update 269: In the Tax Cuts’ Wake: Pensioners, Workers to Pay the Piper Whether the GOP will campaign on last year’s tax cut is a central question of the midterm season. American taxpayers aren’t as enamored by this as much as similar cuts in the past. The sense has taken root, stoked by Paul Ryan …
Update 266 – Dereg Now, Dereg Whenever: Capital Rules Debate Pits Quarles vs. Quarrels If rapidly increasing economic growth, historic highs in financial industry profits, and capital markets in record territory of late all call for deregulation, there’s no bad time for it. And if proponents of financial deregulation control the House, Senate, and White …
Update 265 — 1st Qtr Bank Profits Break Records But Markets Skeptical: Is an Encore in Store? With the last of the financial sector’s quarterly earnings reports for 1Q18 trickling in, we take a look at the condition of the large and diverse financial sector in the United States. What we find is a sector …
Update 264 — GOP Double-Down Hair-Doo: Liked the Tax Cut? How about a Perm? While today marks the last day Americans will file their taxes under the old tax code, a number of Americans have already seen their paychecks influenced by lower tax withholdings. Republicans wasted little time celebrating the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act …
Update 262 — Peering over the Fiscal Cliff: Trillion-Dollar Deficits Far as the Eye Can See Earlier this week, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that the federal government’s annual budget deficit will reach $1 trillion next fiscal year. Under current CBO expectations, the national debt will exceed $33 trillion by fiscal 2028, up from …