tyb
nevermind them. always has comments.
POTUS pressures Fed's Powell: 'Let's see what he does'
President Donald Trump on Tuesday kept up pressure on the head of the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates, following a report that White House lawyers earlier this year explored whether they could legally strip Jerome Powell of the Fed chairmanship.
Asked by reporters outside the White House if he wanted to demote Powell, Trump said: “Let’s see what he does.”
Trump has repeatedly attacked Powell for raising interest rates, claiming that the Fed’s four rate hikes last year were undercutting his economic and trade policies, particularly as he battled over trade issues with China. Last October Trump said the Fed had “gone crazy” under Powell.
The Fed wraps up a two-day policy meeting in Washington on Wednesday. Powell and fellow U.S. central bankers are expected to leave interest rates steady but potentially lay the groundwork for a rate cut later this year.
“They are going to be making an announcement pretty soon, so we’ll see what happens,” Trump told reporters.
Earlier Tuesday, European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi signaled he would ease policy to deal with low inflation across the Atlantic, a move that Trump said benefited Europe and was unfair to the United States.
“I want to be given a level playing field, and so far I haven’t been,” Trump told reporters.
The comments add to pressure on Powell, who is facing financial market expectations for three rate cuts by year’s end as economic data has weakened, though the data still points to continued, though slower, growth.
Trump, who picked Powell to replace Janet Yellen as the Fed chair, told ABC News last week: “I’m not happy with what he’s done.”
Bloomberg News, citing people familiar with the matter, reported Tuesday that the White House’s counsel’s office had looked into the legality of demoting Powell to a Fed governor in February, soon after Trump discussed firing the Fed chairman. Such a move would be unprecedented in the Fed’s 100-year history.
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow declined to confirm or deny the report, but told reporters that Trump is not considering any changes to Powell’s status. Powell’s four-year term as Fed chair expires in 2022.
“The Fed is independent. They’ll act on their own time, in their own way,” Kudlow said.
Powell has said he does not believe the president has the power to fire him, and that he would not resign if asked.
A spokeswoman for the Fed Board of Governors on Tuesday said, “Under the law, a Federal Reserve Board chair can only be removed for cause.”
Robert C. Hockett, a law professor at Cornell Law School, whose research includes monetary law and economics, said demoting Powell might not be considered removal. But any move by Trump to do so would probably be contested by members of the Senate, which must confirm nominees for Fed chair and to the Fed’s Board of Governors, and could lead to a legal challenge over the limits of the president’s power, Hockett said.
He also said the Fed’s policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee, known as the FOMC, could act to preserve Powell’s authority.
“Even if Trump could ‘demote’ Powell, the FOMC could nevertheless vote to keep him on as FOMC chair, thereby neutralizing Trump’s move,” Hockett said.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-kudlow/trump-pressures-feds-powell-lets-see-what-he-does-idUSKCN1TJ24A?
as you see I do it by name, just easier for me.
reminds me I have to get to the dig folder, been dreading that. 1.5g I think. That stuff coming up again soon with fed shit.
wouldn't that be tha shit
What is the Laffer Curve?
The Laffer Curve is a theory developed by supply-side economist Arthur Laffer to show the relationship between tax rates and the amount of tax revenue collected by governments. The curve is used to illustrate Laffer’s argument that sometimes cutting tax rates can increase total tax revenue.
Key Takeaways
*The Laffer Curve describes the relationship between tax rates and total tax revenue, with an optimal tax rate that maximizes total government tax revenue.
*If taxes are too high along the Laffer Curve, then they will discourage the taxed activities, such as work and investment, enough to actually reduce total tax revenue. In this case, cutting tax rates will both stimulate economic incentives and increase tax revenue.
*The Laffer Curve was used as a basis for tax cuts in the 1980's with apparent success, but criticized on practical grounds on the basis of its simplistic assumptions, and on economic grounds that increasing government revenue might not always be optimal.
Understanding the Laffer Curve
The Laffer Curve is based on the economic idea that people will adjust their behavior in the face of the incentives created by income tax rates. Higher income tax rates decrease the incentive to work and invest compared lower rates. If this effect is large enough, it means that at some tax rate, and further increase in the rate will actually lead to decrease in total tax revenue. For every type of tax, there is a threshold rate above which the incentive to produce more diminishes, thereby reducing the amount of revenue the government receives.
At a 0% tax rate, tax revenue would obviously be zero. As tax rates increase from low levels, tax revenue collected by the also government increases. Eventually, if tax rates reached 100 percent, shown as the far right on the Laffer Curve, all people would choose not to work because everything they earned would go to the government. Therefore it is necessarily true that at some point in the range where tax revenue is positive, it must reach a maximum point. This is represented by T on the graph below. To the left of T an increase in tax rate raises more revenue than is lost to offsetting worker and investor behavior. Increasing rates beyond T* however would cause people not to work as much or not at all, thereby reducing total tax revenue.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/laffercurve.asp
bread 8672 and June 18, was current when originally posted.
PG&E settles California fire claims with local governments for $1 billion
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - PG&E Corp will pay $1 billion as part of its bankruptcy reorganization to more than a dozen local governments in California struck by wildfires in recent years, the company and lawyers for the governments said on Tuesday.
Payments to the local governments will settle claims from lawsuits put on hold by PG&E’s bankruptcy and are separate from the thousands of individual claims stemming from wildfires that the company expects will be filed against it during the bankruptcy period.
San Francisco-headquartered PG&E filed for Chapter 11 protection in January anticipating $30 billion in liabilities from wildfires in 2017 and 2018 blamed on its equipment.
The local governments said in a filing in March that their claims could top more than $2.5 billion for fire-related damage to roads, bridges, sidewalks, road signs and signals, public landscaping and water systems.
The governments include the city of Paradise, which was leveled by November’s Camp Fire in California deadliest and most destructive wildfire of modern times.
The city of Santa Rosa and Sonoma and Napa counties, which were hard hit by blazes in 2017, also are among the localities that settled with PG&E.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pg-e-us-settlement/pge-settles-california-fire-claims-with-local-governments-for-1-billion-idUSKCN1TJ30O
> pass the damages on to their clients.
socal edison did exactly that with the two big fires in sd cty last decade.