House votes to ease post-crisis bank rules in victory for Trump

The U.S. House of Representatives passed on Tuesday bipartisan legislation that would ease bank rules introduced in the wake of the 2007-2009 financial crisis, giving President Donald Trump a major legislative victory.

Tuesday's vote rolls back some of the 2010 Dodd-Frank rules that restricted operations by smaller banks and community lenders and keeps the Republican president's campaign promise to try to spur more economic growth by cutting regulation.

The bill, which was approved by the Senate in March, marks the first significant rewrite of U.S. financial rules introduced following the crisis, which saw Wall Street lenders bailed out to the tune of $700 billion.

Republican critics say Dodd-Frank went too far and curbs banks’ ability to lend, while many Democrats say it provides critical protections for consumers and taxpayers.

The bill, approved 258-159, raises the threshold at which banks are considered systemically risky and subject to stricter oversight to $250 billion from $50 billion. It also eases trading, lending and capital rules for banks with less than $10 billion in assets.

It does not, however, weaken the top U.S. consumer watchdog created by Dodd-Frank that has been consistently attacked by Republicans who say it oversteps its mandate.

But the bill does offer a handful of niche provisions that would help some larger banks, such as allowing custody banks like BNY Mellon and State Street Corp to exempt the customer deposits they place with central banks from a stringent capital calculation requirement.

It also offers more favorable treatment for municipal bonds, a measure that analysts say is likely to help Citigroup Inc's bond-trading business.

But backers of the bill stress that the core Dodd Frank provisions that aimed to shore up the financial system and make banks less risky, remain untouched by this legislation.

The bill also does not alter the so-called "Volcker Rule" banning Wall Street banks from making risky bets with their own money, or limit the ability of regulators to apply stricter rules to large institutions they deem critical to the financial system.

SOURCE

**********************************

Former Trump Advisor Says MULTIPLE Spies Embedded Into Campaign, They’ll “Be Wearing Orange Suits”

Former Trump Advisor Michael Caputo unleashed a tsunami on the Obama Administration and Deep State during Laura Ingraham’s show on Fox News last night.

After Ingraham aired a clip of Former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, justifying a spy on the Trump campaign. He even called the spying “a good thing.”

Caputo shreddded the United States government for being similar to a Russian spy agency. Hew then went on to say there were multiple spies and multiple agencies involved.

“Let me tell you something that I know for a fact, this informant, this person that planted, that they tried to plant into the campaign and even into the administration, if you believe Axios–he’s not the only person who came into the campaign!” Caputo stated. “And the FBI is not the only Obama agency who came into the campaign.”

Caputo dropped the biggest bomb of all on Clapper. “I know because they came at me. And I’m looking for clearance from my attorney to reveal this to the public. This is just the beginning and I’ll tell ya, when we finally find out the truth about this–Director Clapper and the rest of them are gonna be wearing some orange suits,” Michael Caputo added.

It certainly looks like this is just the beginning as more and more is revealed every single day. As we previously reported:

“New revelations from the 2016 campaign have exposed top-secret CIA and FBI source, Stefan Halper, a Cambridge University professor, for contacting and being in touch with Trump advisers Carter Page, George Papadopoulos and Sam Clovis.”

Now we’re finding out CNN was even in on it. This is an unbelievable abuse of power in an attempt to take down our President.

SOURCE

***************************

Trump's Not Messing Around With MS-13 'Animals'

He issued a statement titled "What You Need To Know About The Violent Animals Of MS-13."

The Leftmedia went out of its way to peddle a BIG Lie about Donald Trump and immigration last week — that he called all illegal aliens “animals” instead of simply the violent thugs of the MS-13 gang. Never one to shy away from a fight, Trump issued a White House statement yesterday titled “What You Need To Know About The Violent Animals Of MS-13.”

Trump’s statement recounts numerous incidents of “unthinkable violence of MS-13’s animals.” And he’s right — their crimes include decapitation, dismemberment and savage beatings and stabbings. “President Trump’s entire Administration is working tirelessly to bring these violent animals to justice,” the statement concludes.

Politically, this accomplishes two things beyond sending a message of law and order to illegal alien thugs. It reassures Trump’s base that he’s serious about addressing the worst elements among immigrants. And it also fires a shot across the Leftmedia’s bow that Trump won’t be intimidated by lies meant to “prove” his supposed racism. “I referred to them as animals,” he said later, “and guess what? I always will.”

Dennis Prager gets to the bottom of the issue, “Biologically, of course, we are all human. But if ‘human’ is to mean anything moral — anything beyond the purely biological — then some people who have committed particularly heinous acts of evil against other human beings are not to be considered human. Otherwise ‘human’ has no moral being.”

Meanwhile, President Trump is requesting $500 million more for the border wall.

SOURCE

******************************

China Makes Massive Cut to Car Tariffs After Truce With Trump

Bloomberg’s Tom Mackenzie discusses China’s decision to cut tariffs on imported cars to 15 percent from 25 percent.
China will cut the import duty on passenger cars to 15 percent, further opening up a market that’s been a chief target of the U.S. in its trade fight with the world’s second-largest economy.

The Finance Ministry said Tuesday the levy will be lowered effective July 1 from the current 25 percent that has been in place for more than a decade, boosting shares of automakers from India to Europe. Bloomberg News reported last month that China was weighing proposals to reduce the car import levy to 10 percent or 15 percent.

A reduction in the import duty follows a truce between President Donald Trump’s administration and Chinese officials as they seek to defuse tensions and avert an all-out trade war. While the levy reduction could be claimed in some quarters as a concession to Trump and will be a boon to U.S. carmakers such as Tesla Inc. and Ford Motor Co., the move will also end up benefiting European and Asian manufacturers from Daimler AG to Toyota Motor Corp.

“This is, without a doubt, positive news,” said Juergen Pieper, Frankfurt-based head of automobiles research at Bankhaus Metzler. “You can’t completely disregard the fact that there are certain imbalances in China’s favor. This could be a signal that if one side is making concessions, it could lead to the Americans easing some of their pressure as well.”

Shares of Jaguar Land Rover owner Tata Motors Ltd. and BMW AG posted their biggest intraday gains in more than a month on the news. The Finance Ministry in Beijing said later Tuesday that the step is intended to help reduce prices and aid competition.

The import duty on car parts will be reduced to 6 percent, China’s Finance Ministry said. The shift is significant more for its optics than its potential impact given imported cars made up only about 4.2 percent of the country’s 28.9 million in automobile sales last year.

The latest round of tariff easing is part of a flurry of policy announcements in recent months aimed at demonstrating China’s commitment to opening the economy -- partly in response to the accusations of protectionism leveled by the Trump administration. Beijing has also pledged to cut ownership limits in the auto sector as well as in banking, and last November reduced import tariffs on almost 200 categories of consumer products.

China announced May 18 that it would end its anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigation into imports of U.S. sorghum, citing the “public interest.” That move, coupled with recent steps including restarting a review of Qualcomm Inc.’s application to acquire NXP Semiconductors NV, signal a conciliatory stance from the Chinese side.

For his part, President Trump has retreated from imposing tariffs on billions of dollars worth of Chinese goods because of White House discord over trade strategy and concern about harming negotiations with North Korea, according to people briefed on the administration’s deliberations.

In further evidence of an easing in tensions, China and the U.S. agreed on the “broad outline” of a settlement to the ban on China’s ZTE Corp. buying American technology after alleged sanctions infringements, the Wall Street Journal reported.

At the Boao Forum in April, President Xi Jinping reiterated China’s commitment to reduce import tariffs on vehicles.

Of the $51 billion of vehicle imports in 2017, about $13.5 billion came from North America including sales of models made there by non-U.S. manufacturers like BMW. China imported 280,208 vehicles, or 10 percent of total imported automobiles, from the U.S. last year, according to China’s Passenger Car Association, an industry trade body.

A duty cut would typically benefit luxury carmakers or manufacturers, like Tesla, that don’t have a local production site. Most automakers produce mass-market models in China.

For Tesla, a tariff cut will provide a boon until the company manages to set up local production. The Palo Alto, California-based company has been working with Shanghai’s government since last year to explore assembling cars in China. China saying that it will allow foreign new-energy vehicle makers to fully own auto factories as early as this year removed a primary hurdle for founder and billionaire Elon Musk.

Luxury sales leader Audi, part of Volkswagen, has been making cars in China since 1990s. General Motors Co.’s Cadillac, which has relegated Lexus to fifth in the luxury-car rankings, opened a factory in Shanghai in 2016.

Foreign carmakers have long pleaded for freer access to China’s auto market, while its own manufacturers are expanding abroad. In April, China announced a timetable to permit foreign automakers to own more than 50 percent of local ventures.

SOURCE

***************************

Seattle created its homelessness crisis; now it’s trying to make it worse

Seattle never learns. Seattle says it has a homelessness problem, which it does. The city says the problem is getting out of control and something needs to be done about it. Are the uber-liberal residents and politicians of the city stepping forward to house the unfortunate people? No. Seattle is failing to learn its lesson and is insisting on more bloated government to solve a problem bloated government created.

The housing crisis in Seattle is the fault of the Seattle government. The city has been on a nonstop rampage to declare itself the most progressive society in the world for the last few years. During its crusade to kill jobs and make life miserable in the city it has enacted rules and regulations that make it almost impossible to build housing there.

John Stossel, from Reason Magazine, reported the building code is 745 pages long, and the residential building code is another 685 pages. Jeff Pelletier, of Board and Vellum Architects, points to the permits as one of the main drivers in the rise of housing cost in Seattle stating, “while there is a lot of benefit to a thorough review of your project, we are seeing tremendous cost and schedule increases from local building departments.”

One way to help solve the housing problem would be to build mid and high-rise condominiums. On a plot of land that usually accommodates 3-4 single family homes, the city could allow developers to build projects that house 100+ people, getting much more bang for your buck in land use. But no, this is Seattle. Strict zoning laws have only given multi-family and commercial/mixed-use areas one-third the land use of residential land use, driving up the price of single-family homes.

The city’s recently enacted minimum wage law is also having an impact on the housing problem. On June 2, 2014, Seattle’s extremely progressive city council attempted to regulate prosperity by instituting a $15 minimum wage over time. Business owners warned about the economic impact the move would have, but not one person on the council listened, and all voted for the job-killing regulation, showing no one on the council has a basic understanding of economics.

In 2018, the full $15 per hour minimum wage went into effect, but the impact was felt much earlier. A University of Washington team completed a study of worker pay, hours, and benefits in Seattle in 2017, and found the law was a net loss for workers. The study concluded:

“Our preferred estimates suggest that the Seattle Minimum Wage Ordinance caused hours worked by low-skilled workers (i.e., those earning under $19 per hour) to fall by 9.4% during the three quarters when the minimum wage was $13 per hour, resulting in a loss of 3.5 million hours worked per calendar quarter. Alternative estimates show the number of low-wage jobs declined by 6.8%, which represents a loss of more than 5,000 jobs. These estimates are robust to cutoffs other than $19.45 A 3.1% increase in wages in jobs that paid less than $19 coupled with a 9.4% loss in hours yields a labor demand elasticity of roughly -3.0, and this large elasticity estimate is robust to other cutoffs… The reduction in hours would cost the average employee $179 per month, while the wage increase would recoup only $54 of this loss, leaving a net loss of $125 per month (6.6%), which is sizable for a low-wage worker.”

Keep in mind this was before the full impact of the $15 per hour minimum wage could be felt, as the law only became fully implemented this year, the situation is going to get worse in Seattle.

So now that we know Seattle’s own laws created a shortage of housing in the city while at the same time reducing the amount of take-home pay for lower-income residents, what is the city council’s solution? More government.

In 2017, King County and Seattle spent over $195 million to combat homelessness, which included city, county, state, federal, and charity spending. Surely the massive amount of spending had an impact on the problem? No, homelessness actually increased last year.

But don’t worry, the city council has a plan. All other plans have failed, this one will work. The city council had the great idea to institute another tax, known as a “head tax.” The city is going to tax its largest business $500 for every employee. This money would then be used to build “affordable housing.” It is hard to see how that could be done with the current zoning laws, the laws that helped start the crisis in the first place, still in place.

After the city council voted 9-0 for the ordinance business leaders spoke out, and Amazon paused construction on a project, pitting hard-working construction workers against do nothing, full-time protesters. After some negotiating between the city council and Mayor Jenny Durkan the tax was reduced to $275. This may seem like a win, but like everything in Seattle, all is not as it seems. Along with the lower rate, so far the funds are non-binding. Meaning there is no plan to spend the money and it could easily be spent on non-homelessness issues.

What Seattle has done is so poorly planned, even some of the homeless are calling out the city for its excessive spending. Geno Minetti, currently living out of his car, stated, “They’re wasting the taxpayer’s money. If they get more; they’ll waste more.” It is a shame this man can see the problem and knows government spending is not the answer, but the people in charge only see taxation and spending as an answer to every problem.

Businesses in the Seattle must now ask themselves some important questions, is it worth expanding if the business will get taxed for succeeding? If Seattle doesn’t want a person’s business to grow and expand, why should he or she move or start it there?

The lunacy of Seattle never ceases to amaze. Only the left would watch its taxation, zoning, and employment laws create a crisis, then advocate for more of the same. Every city should pay close attention to what Seattle is doing, and do the opposite. If a city wants to increase its tax base, decrease poverty, and increase the quality of living, don’t be like Seattle.

SOURCE

************************************

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

***************************