Subject: Update: Challenging Debate Myths
From: Dana <[email-masked]>
To: Mike Pyle <[email-masked]>
Cc: Mike Schmidt <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2016 17:45:34 -0500

Mike & Co. --

Washington remains shut down because of snow.  The House has put off all votes until next week and has postponed most hearings.  The Senate is still scheduled to return tomorrow.   Relevant developments are all occurring on the campaign trail. 

There, for the most part, the Democratic primary debate on fiscal and financial issues has been mainly on the merits, not ad hominem, with policy differences generally more of emphasis than of vision.  But there are some persistent distortive or at least unedifying myths in the fiscal and financial policy primary debate that are worth challenging.  Among them:

•   Glass-Steagall would have prevented the meltdown of 2008, and its resurrection can prevent the next one

•  Sanders tax plan to pay for health care program would be the largest ever but at least it is progressive across the board

And there is a point that has gotten lost in the dispute about speaking fees: what matters is where you stand, not where you  are standing. 

More on these points below.  Comments welcome. 

Best,

Dana

-----------------
•  Glass-Steagall -- Form vs. Conduct
Post hoc ergo propter hoc.  Some observers believe that because the final repeal of Glass-Steagall (1999) occurred before the financial meltdown and subsequent recession (2008, ff.), the repeal is responsible for the recession. This has become one of the major points of contention between HRC and Sanders and is an area where they demonstrate stark differences in policy.
A candidate's position on that 1999 repeal has become a proxy for Democrats over whether a candidate would appoint regulators to aggressively enforce existing laws, or whether a candidate would force banks to break up into constituent parts in the hopes that they become too small to cause any trouble.  Most officials, even under Democratic President Obama, won’t openly say they want to go that far.
A despondent history of the crisis has taken hold on the left.  It bothers Barney Frank who as Chair of the House Financial Services co-wrote the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.  But he gets the anger:  “It’s because nobody went to jail... But big banks are still more powerful than people would like.” 

But restoring Glass-Steagall wouldn’t do enough to oversee large nonbank financial institutions like insurers and hedge funds. The consensus among experts supports Clinton's view, in sum,  “I just don’t think it would get the job done.”   Here's why: HRC’s proposals focus on behavior, not a corporation's legal form, as Glass-Steagall does.   

•   Political Viability

No one on the progressive side wants to defend Wall Street or downplay the pressure on middle- and working-class Americans, but Sanders's ideas should not be seen as a more honest or uncorrupted policy.  The despairing vision he paints of America is oversimplified.  
Sanders transcends questions about the viability of his plans, suggesting that a pure candidate can rally voters into a righteous uprising that would unsettle the conventional laws of politics --that would leave him with a working majority in Congress somehow.  
Similar populist strategies inspired the disastrous Goldwater and McGovern campaigns.  Another  model for its success would be 2008 with Obama's election.  But Obama did not issue extensive and radical policy position papers.  He organized passionate volunteers on a massive scale — far broader than anything Sanders has done — and tried to keep his volunteers engaged throughout his presidency.  And, in office, Obama had a majority in Congress, one long since gone.  Why would Sanders’s grassroots campaign succeed where Obama’s far larger one failed?
Standing in the way of Sanders’ promises is the fact that the president’s ability to deliver largescale change is far more limited.  The next president will face a House firmly under right-wing rule, making the prospects of important progressive reform impossible.  This hardly renders the presidency impotent, obviously -- the end of Obama’s term has shown that a creative executive can still work some change.

•  Breaking Up -- Have a Bank in Mind?
They say that breaking up is hard to do. Sanders’s call to break up the banks is an appealing one but... which ones?  He demand suggests some confusion about Dodd-Frank, which established an authority and a process for breaking up banks that has been approved by Congress.  Presumably knowing this, Sanders must be saying that the authority should be exercised forthwith.  Sanders has made this a key facet of his speeches: "Within one year, my administration will break these institutions up so that they no longer pose a grave threat to the economy as authorized under Section 121 of the Dodd-Frank Act."   But what's stopping him from identifying which ones?  

J.P. Morgan, the country’s biggest bank by assets with about $2.4 trillion, spent much of last year defending its size, especially after Goldman analyst argued breaking up the firm would unlock value in the share price. Fed Chair Yellen said in February that causing firms to think about their size is “exactly what we want to see happen” as a result of higher capital rules. J.P. Morgan has since become leaner and reduced its regulatory capital requirements by moving certain deposits off its books and continuing to slim down its overall assets.

Citigroup too has shrunk total assets by 17 percent since the end of 2007, to $1.81 trillion from $2.18 trillion. It has jettisoned units considered risky or tangential—such as a Japanese company that runs call centers, or the subprime lender OneMain Financial—but it has also gotten rid of units that some investors would have preferred they keep, like the wealth management firm Smith Barney.        

MetLife said the risk of increased capital requirements “contributed to our decision,” suggesting other factors were at play as well. While its plan would hewn off some businesses that regulators had flagged as risky, such as certain guaranteed annuities, that business was also facing profitability pressures amid low interest rates. The Fed also hasn’t yet specified what the rules of the road would be for MetLife or other insurance firms. 
         
In light of these events, it is apparent that the new law is working far better than it gets credit for.  The Dodd-Frank reforms of the financial industry may not have broken up the big banks, but they have, at the very least, highly reduced systemic risk. The penalties for being too big to fail exceed the benefits, and, as a result, banks are actually breaking themselves up to avoid being large enough to be regulated as systemic risks.

Sanders' $1.9 Trillion Tax Hike is at Least Partly Progressive

Another canard.  The taxes that Sanders plans to use to fund his replacement for the ACA are a mix of flat and progressive but are more regressive on balance.  Some of his tax proposals are in line with most liberal approaches to raising taxes: by lifting tax brackets, he will increase both income taxes and the estate tax. Additionally, he wants to tax capital gains as regular income and limit tax deductions for those that make more than $250,000. But his 2.2 percent premium for households and the 6.2 percent health care premium paid by employers are both flat tax rates, an unpopular form of regressive taxation. 

Although the burden of his progressive tax proposals will be mostly borne by the wealthy, the flat taxes will undoubtedly weigh on the middle class and they are the majority of his plan, in dollar terms.  Sanders has claimed this extra burden on the middle class is worth it for reduced healthcare premiums, but that remains to be seen.  What is certain is that those in the middle class will have to pay both the 2.2 percent premium and deal with reduced wages because of the 6.2 percent premium on employers. 

It's What You Say, Not Where You Say It.

Sanders sought to put HRC on the spot last week by invoking the speaking fees she received from large banking interests after leaving the State Department in 2013. But he failed to bring up the content of her speeches.  When Hillary spoke before the clients of GoldenTree Asset Management for a fee of $275,000, the focus of her speech was Dodd-Frank and its necessity after the financial crisis.  Even though she was speaking to a financial institution, she delivered the same message of financial regulation and its importance.  Does speaking to Liberty University students imply anything about your policy views?

Both candidates agree on the need for strong regulations and strong regulators, and the distinction between them is drawn only in the points of emphasis.   HRC’s proposals focus on behavior, not a corporation's legal form, making firms police themselves with strict oversight, while Sanders would prefer requiring those firms to divest more quickly. 

--------------

Recent Updates

Debate Myths Challenged  (Jan. 25)
Regulating the Regulators  (Jan. 21)
Sanders' Tax/Healthcare Policy  (Jan 20)
HRC's Tax Policy  (Jan. 17)
2016 Tax Agenda on the Hill  (Jan. 16)
Glass-Steagall, Take 2  (Jan. 13)
2016 Tax Policy Issues  (Jan. 8)
Sanders Proposals/GS & TBTF (Jan. 7)
Sanders' Fin Reg Proposals  (Jan. 5)
Year-End Review: Fiscal Policy (Jan. 1)  Year-End Review: Fin. Reg.  (Dec. 29)  Omnibus Review (Dec. 15)
Omnibus Situation  (Dec. 14)
FY 2016 Omnibus Talks (Dec. 10)
Customs Bill  (Dec. 8)
Tax Extender Negotiations  (Dec. 6) o
Brown on HFT  (Dec. 4)
Shelby 2.0 Update  (Dec. 3)

> On Jan 21, 2016, at 8:25 PM, Dana <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Mike & Co. --
> The legislative wheels in Washington are moving into gear slowly year.   Everything will stop in its tracks though as the city becomes snowbound over the weekend.  Then when the streets clear, work will resume on some important regulatory bills, though they and everything else on the Hill will face tough sledding. 
> Three of these bills making their ways through Congress that would have the biggest financial regulatory and political impact are reviewed below. 
> Stay warm and dry. 
> Best,
> Dana
> ------
> There are three especially salient legislative regulatory initiatives being drafted or under consideration on the Hill that are more likely than most others to see votes in Congress and could have bearing at some point on the campaign or represent an opportunity in that context. 
> •   The independent Agency Regulatory Analysis Act 
> A bipartisan measure introduced by Sens. Portman, Warner, and Collins to apply CBA studies to financial rule making.  The bill, versions of which have been introduced since 2012 without success, authorizes the president, through the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, to require that the agencies conduct in-depth CBA in addition to considering “least burdensome” regulations as well as the economic impact of their rules.  
> Critics claim that the purpose of the bill is to inject political considerations into these agencies and that the requirements would impose not only a cost and time burden but would also limit the agencies’ ability to rapidly respond to crises and drain resources.   Two agencies, the SEC and CFTC, are already required to undergo a type of cost-benefit analysis.  Traditional CBA, critics say, aren’t even an applicable method of accounting when dealing with these agencies.  
> One of the bill’s own co-sponsors, Susan Collins, spoke out against this very policy proposal only a few years ago, saying “If you bring these independent agencies within the regulatory purview of OIRA, you defeat the whole purpose of having them be independent agencies.”
> CBA is one of rallying calls for opponents of the Dodd-Frank law to raise questions about agencies in an attempt to stall or overturn regulations.  In fact, opponents have had a number of successes with that approach in the last decade.  Sen. Portman defended the bill, saying “(the agencies are) independent, so they should be immune from political influence -- but they shouldn't be immune from the laws of economics and common sense.”  
> Given the political climate of the upcoming election year, as well as the past failures of this bill, it’s not likely that this legislation will take root but keep an eye on this bill, because it could make it even more difficult to implement remaining Dodd-Frank rules.   
>  •    SEC/Political Disclosure Rule 
> Sen. Elizabeth Warren said on a conference call today that “shareholders have a right to know how companies spend their money.”   To that end, she and Sens. Schumer, Menendez, and Merkley have called on the SEC to draft a rule which would require that publically held companies disclose their political contributions to trade associations and political nonprofits.
> Though the omnibus government spending bill passed last month includes language preventing the commission from finalizing a corporate political disclosure rule, “there is nothing preventing the SEC from preparing the rule this year," per Warren.  Sen. Schumer said that language preventing such a rule could be “ripped out root and branch” during the next Congressional appropriations cycle, leading the way for the SEC to finalize the requirement. 
> This past August, 44 Senators sent the SEC chair a letter calling for political spending disclosure.  In October, eight of the 10 Democrats on Banking wrote to the two nominees for SEC commission, expressing their support.  The bill would be staunchly opposed by the GOP and business groups.   But due to support inside Congress and from the public, and with Sen. Warren championing this initiative, observers should watch closely – while the rule may not be particularly viable, the fight which it will stir up is the real prize involved. it will remain an issue to be closely watched in the coming months.  
> •   The DOL Fiduciary Rule
> Rep. Wagner’s Retail Investor Protection Act passed the House in October and has been referred to Senate Banking.  The bill restricts the Department of Labor from drafting any rules concerning when an individual is considered a fiduciary until 60 days after the SEC issues a final rule governing the standards of conduct for brokers and dealers.
> It also prevents the SEC from writing such a rule until it has reported to particular congressional committees on a number of related matters, including the impact of such rules (or their absence) on retail investors and whether or not a standard fiduciary code of conduct would “adversely impact retail investor access to personalized, cost-effective investment advice and recommendations.”   The goal of this legislation may be to entangle the two organizations so fully that they cannot properly carry out their mandates. 
> Tying up the DOL and SEC’s rule-making abilities by connecting the two organizations is another step in the fight from the right against the current regulatory climate.  Attempts to bog down regulators in regulations of their own, a sort of double-stack of regulations, may be a hallmark of this legislative year.
> 
> ----
> 
> Recent Updates
> 
> Regulating the Regulators  (Jan. 21)
> Sanders' Tax/Healthcare Policy  (Jan 20)
> HRC's Tax Policy  (Jan. 17)
> 2016 Tax Agenda on the Hill  (Jan. 16)
> Glass-Steagall, Take 2  (Jan. 13)
> 2016 Tax Policy Issues  (Jan. 8)
> Sanders Proposals/GS & TBTF (Jan. 7)
> Sanders' Fin Reg Proposals  (Jan. 5)
> Year-End Review: Fiscal Policy (Jan. 1)  Year-End Review: Fin. Reg.  (Dec. 29)  Omnibus Review (Dec. 15)
> Omnibus Situation  (Dec. 14)
> FY 2016 Omnibus Talks (Dec. 10)
> Customs Bill  (Dec. 8)
> Tax Extender Negotiations  (Dec. 6) 
> Brown on HFT  (Dec. 4)
> Shelby 2.0 Update  (Dec. 3)
> HTF Conference Report  (Dec. 3)
> FY 2016 -- Policy Riders  (Nov. 30)
> Dodd-Frank and the CR  (Nov. 13)
> FRB Interest Rate Policy  (Nov. 9)
> Ryan and Tax Reform (Nov. 4)
> HTF/Pay-fors  (Nov. 3)
> FRB System Risk Rule  (Nov. 2)
> Ex-Im Reauthorization  (Oct. 30)
> Tax Extenders  (Oct. 30)
> Boehner Budget Deal (Oct. 27)
> Ex-Im Reauthorization  (Oct. 26) 
> Debt and Debt Limit  (Oct. 22)
> SEC Nominations  (Oct. 20)
> TPP/Currency Manipulation  (Oct. 15)
> Ex-Im Update  (Oct.  9)
> Fed Dividend  (Oct. 7)
> Debt/Extraordinary Measures  (Oct. 6)
> Jobs Report (Oct. 2)
> Fiduciary Rule  (Oct. 1)
> FY2016 Budget/CR  (Sept. 29)
> Trade/TPP  (Sept. 25)
> GSE Reform  (Sept. 25)
> Carried Interest  (Sept. 23)
> Bush Tax Cuts  (Sept. 15)
> Puerto Rico  (Jul. 23)
> Shelby 2.0  (June 24) 
> 
>