News behind the news. This picture is me (white spot) standing on the bridge connecting European and North American tectonic plates. It is located in the Reykjanes area of Iceland. By-the-way, this is a color picture.
On Wednesday, Breitbart reported that the Senate Banking Committee has approved the nomination of Stephen Miran to fill the vacancy on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve created when Andrea Kugler unexpectedly announced she would resign prior to the end of her term in January.
The article reports:
The committee voted 13-11 along party lines to advance Miran’s nomination to the full Senate, where it is expected to come up for a vote on Monday.
That would put Miran in place to vote at the Federal Open Market Committee meeting on September 16 and 17. The FOMC is widely expected to announce an interest rate cut at the conclusion of that meeting.
…President Trump could nominate Miran to fill the subsequent 14-year term but he would need to be confirmed again by the Senate. Alternatively, Trump could appoint someone else to the seat, perhaps someone he expects to elevate to the chairmanship of the Fed later this year when Jerome Powell’s tenure expires. Miran would be able to hold the post until a new nominee is confirmed.
Miran currently chairs the White House Council of Economic Advisers. He told senators at his confirmation hearing that he would take an unpaid leave of absence from that position while working at the Fed. Democrats attacked this arrangement, claiming it would compromise the independence of the Fed. Many Fed officials take similar leave of absence from private sector jobs while serving on the Fed but those have mostly been academic positions rather than roles in the White House.
I hate to be cynical (but I’m good at it!), but the Democrats would have found some way to attack the nomination and the arrangement proposed regardless of the details. The Democrats have created the greatest logjam in American history in the nomination process for President Trump’s nominees. I think I would have been surprised if they hadn’t objected.,
Like him or not, President Trump is a businessman. He has also encouraged Congress to do things that make sense from a business perspective. He worked hard to undo the damage done by the economic policies of the Obama administration–he has decreased regulation, lowered corporate taxes, and it working hard to put Americans back to work. Well, it looks as if Congress has also decided to help encourage the American economy.
The Daily Caller reported yesterday that the Senate had voted 67-31 to roll back some of the provisions of the Dodd-Frank bill. At this point I need to mention that the Dodd-Frank bill was a supposed solution to the housing bubble, but never actually addressed the read source of the problem. The video below explains the true source of the problem.
Below is a nine-year old YouTube video I have repeatedly posted. It is the most honest history of the housing bubble I have seen. It is embedded because I am afraid that someday YouTube will take it down:
The DC Caller Article reports:
Seventeen Democratic senators joined Republicans in the Senate to approve the roll back.
The bill is the brainchild of Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo and aims to rework a number of the protective barriers Dodd-Frank put between consumers, banks and the greater economy in the wake of the 2007-2009 Great Recession.
“This bill has received widespread support for good reason: the cycle of lending and job creation has been stifled by onerous regulation,” Crapo said on the Senate floor prior to Wednesday evening’s vote.
Dodd-Frank was originally intended to increase transparency by implementing a consistent set of regulations aimed at closing loopholes and making firms accountable for their own mistakes. The bill attempted to shift the burden of major financial mistakes from taxpayers to market participants, ensuring those who partake in risky investment practices would bear the financial burden of their mistakes. Dodd-Frank promised to “end too big to fail” and “promote financial stability.”
Large banking institutions have grown dramatically since the passage of Dodd-Frank despite the act’s intentions, and small community banks have incurred serious losses as they try to keep up. Crippling regulations saddled smaller banks, forcing American consumers to market with fewer investment vehicles and greater costs.
Even if Dodd-Frank were actually attempting to address the true cause of the housing market collapse, it failed miserably.
There is some question as to whether or not the bill can pass in the House of Representatives.
Just as a reminder, I would like to post the content of an article that I wrote in March of 2009 here:
I don’t have a link on this because I don’t want to get people in trouble. This is a true story, but I will leave the specific names out. This is truly a tale of the upside down world we currently live in.
There is a small local bank in a city in Massachusetts. It is not a rich city, and the city has the reputation of being a rather ‘rough’ city. The bank is a small local bank that has probably been in business for twenty or thirty years. The bank has had no foreclosures on property that it owns this year. The bank had made a small profit last year. Almost (if not) all of the mortgages the bank has given out are current. No property is currently in foreclosure. This rather quiet little bank is simply doing its job of being a small, local bank as best it can.
Last week the bank got a letter from the federal agency that regulates the bankling industry in this country. The letter had done its annual review of the bank and was sending the results to the bank. The letter was highly critical of the bank–the agency felt that the bank had not created enough sub-prime mortgages and that it had not done enough lending to people in lower income brackets with bad credit ratings. Duh. That’s why the bank is not in need of bailout money!!
The time has come for a little common sense on the part of the government.
The real cause of the housing crisis was the federal government. How can we manage to get them under control?
