Update 348 — O-Zone Protections Paltry;Road for Investors, Public Still Perilous The Trump Administration’s putatively anti-poverty program known as the Opportunity Zone initiative seeks to promote economic investment in 8,700 distressed areas throughout the country. It was passed into law as part of the Trump tax cut. Taxpayer money is put to use here as …
Update 347 — Congressional Taxonomy: Which Tax Bills Can Pass SFC and HW&M? Roughly 100 million Americans, people and corporations, both prepared or just signed and filed federal tax returns due this past Monday. And now the government wants to go and change the tax code again? When doesn’t it? So we thought this would …
Update 340: Middle Class Cash & Credit CrunchCase Studies, Problems and Policy Solutions The long-awaited, much discussed, often feared inversion of the yield curve — where long-term yields fall below short-term ones — occurred at about 1 pm ET this afternoon. As we have discussed, this is a widely recognized harbinger of recession, news that …
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 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 …
