The House judiciary committee will reconvene Friday to vote on two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump after its Democratic chairman ended the marathon hearing Thursday night. The committee debated the nine-page resolution charging Trump with two offenses for 14 hours Thursday without holding a vote when committee chairman Jerold…
Read moreState insurance regulators moved briskly through four topics as they try to thread the needle between suitability and fiduciary in crafting an annuity sales model law.
Nearly 700 health insurance and benefits advisors from across the nation will travel to Washington to meet with members of Congress. In addition, NAHU members will hear from industry experts, members of Congress and members of the Trump administration as they look at the future for health care reform.
Congress has a lot of its plate, but financial services would like to see a retirement income security bill get passed before the end of the year.
Three times since August, the Federal Reserve has cut the federal funds rate — the rate banks charge each other for overnight loans and that strongly influences the short-term rates they charge businesses. However, Chairman Jerome Powell has made clear the Fed won’ t lower rates further as long as the economy continues to grow at its current moderate pace.
—U.S. wholesale prices were unchanged in November as the rise in energy costs slowed following a big gain in the previous month. The Labor Department said Thursday that the flat reading in November on its producer price index, which measures inflation pressures before they reach the consumer, followed a sizable 0.4% increase in October which had been driven by a…
UGABER WASHINGTON- The Federal Reserve left its benchmark interest rate alone Wednesday and signaled that it expects to keep low rates unchanged through next year. The Fed's decision follows three rate cuts this year and reflects its view that the U.S. economy has, so far, withstood the U.S.- China trade war and a global slump and remains generally healthy.
—Higher energy prices lifted U.S. overall consumer prices in November. The Labor Department said Wednesday that its consumer price index rose 0.3% last month after rising 0.4% in October. The Fed has cut the short-term interest rate it controls three times this year, partly to protect a record-breaking U.S. economic expansion from the effects of President…
Dec. 11– PLATTSBURGH– Local, state and federal officials shared their support after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Tuesday that House Democrats and the White House had reached a deal on the United States- Mexico-Canada Agreement. She said the agreement continues NAFTA's zero-tariff treatment, expands access to the Canadian market for U.S. dairy…
The Federal Reserve is set to leave its benchmark interest rate unchanged Wednesday and will likely signal that it expects rates to remain low well into next year despite a robust job market. Many economists have said they think sluggish growth will even compel the Fed to cut rates at least once in 2020.
—Facing intense pressure to answer questions about his work in the private sector, Democratic presidential contender Pete Buttigieg on Tuesday disclosed a roster of former consulting clients that include a major health insurance provider, a nationwide electronics retailer, the U.S. Department of Energy and the Department of Defense.
–Demand from prospective homebuyers and lack of supply from the existing home market are expected to boost new home sales and housing starts in 2020 according to data from the latest Health of Housing Markets Report from Nationwide economics. Among the positive demand factors are: solid job gains, historically low mortgage rates and above-trend household…
Paul Volcker, who as Federal Reserve chairman in the early 1980s elevated interest rates to historic highs and triggered a recession, always maintained it was the price to be paid for quashing double-digit inflation.
President Trump is riding one of the strongest economies in modern U.S. history, even as House Democrats move their impeachment effort into high gear this week. White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow summed up the jobs report for the president this way: “It's a sunny day, sir.” The White House and its Republican allies are using the historically strong economy as…
Sure, the youngsters might say,“ OK, boomer” on hearing Joe Biden utter the word, but if you think he’ s all wet for using it, you can take your phonus bolonus and tell it to Sweeney. Mr. Biden has never really been my cup of tea. Most of the Twitterati weren’ t even twinkles in their father’ s eye when Mr. Biden first ran for the Senate, and it’ s no surprise they don’ t get his appeal.
Friday’ s November jobs report will provide insight into whether steady hiring remains a source of strength for the U.S. economy even as the Trump administration’ s trade conflicts have heightened uncertainties for employers. Renewed concerns that trade will continue to hamper the U.S. economy drove stock prices lower earlier this week.
Democrats are charging toward a Christmastime vote on removing the 45th president, a situation Pelosi hoped to avoid but which now seems inevitable. Trump is alleged to have abused the power of his office by putting personal political gain over national security interests, engaging in bribery by withholding $400 million in military aid Congress had…
Dec. 4– PLATTSBURGH– The impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump continues today with a House Judiciary Committee hearing featuring four constitutional scholars as witnesses. On Feb. 20, the Judiciary Committee argued that “an indictable offense standard was too narrow and impeachment should also apply to conduct at odds with the performance of…
President Trump said Monday he will slap tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Argentina and Brazil, accusing those countries of hurting U.S. farmers through currency manipulation. Brazil has been stepping up as a major supplier of soybeans to China as Beijing cut back on its U.S. farm purchases in retaliation for the tariffs. “U.S. Markets are up as much as…
That’ s one of the findings of a Bank of America survey of owners taken during July and August and obtained by The Associated Press. The Institute for Supply Management, an industry organization for corporate purchasing executives, said its index of manufacturing activity fell to 48.1 in November from 48.3 in October. “Global trade remains the most significant…
—The Latest on the COP21 climate summit in Madrid:. Democratic members of Congress say the United States remains committed to the Paris climate accord despite President Donald Trump’ s decision to withdraw from the 2015 agreement. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told an audience Monday at this year’ s U.N. climate meeting in Madrid that“ we’ re still in it.”.
Former Vice President Joe Biden has retaken the lead in the Democratic primary race for president as Senator Elizabeth Warren's numbers have plummeted, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today. Biden receives 24 percent of the vote among Democratic voters and independent voters who lean Democratic, while South Bend Mayor Pete…
Thanksgiving is a time for turkey, football, pie– and political arguments with your relatives. And if politics do come up at the Thanksgiving dinner table, about the same proportion said they would change the subject. Below are six tips to help you navigate politics during Thanksgiving.
Testifying to Congress this month, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell sent a message seldom heard from his predecessors: That the Fed should consider the struggles of the lowest-income Americans in setting its interest-rate policies.
In my decades-long career in medicine, I have never seen a worse example of industrywide price gouging than surprise medical bills. These are expensive medical bills that patients receive when they are treated at a hospital or by a medical practitioner that is outside of their insurance's network of authorized health care providers. A hospital, for example,…
Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, and Elizabeth Warren, D- Massachusetts, advocating for Medicare for All. On the moderate end sit South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and former Vice President Joe Biden, both wary of requiring people to leave private insurance plans for a single-payer system. Sometime in the coming weeks or months, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in…
Even the MSNBC and Washington Post moderators questioned whether Warren's staunch backing of the government-run health care system could cost her “critical votes.” From the far end of the stage, U.S. Sen. Warren said her wealth tax– a 2% tax on wealth between $50 million and $1 billion, and a 6% tax on net worth above $1 billion– “is not about punishing anyone.
Brian Schatz, D- Hawaii, issued the following news release:. Today, U.S. Senator Brian Schatz, a member of the Senate Banking Committee and Chair of the Senate Democrats’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis, introduced the Climate Change Financial Risk Act of 2019. The legislation will direct the Federal Reserve to conduct stress tests on large financial…
Most Federal Reserve officials believed last month that the three rate cuts they have made this year would be enough unless the economy weakened significantly. The consensus is that the Fed will now pause after having cut rates three times in 2019, with its benchmark rate now in a range of 1.5% to 1.75%. The central bank’s key rate influences many consumer and business loans.
Democrats reveled Wednesday over Ambassador Gordon Sondland’ s testimony that Trump was requiring a“ quid pro quo”— specifically, a public Ukrainian commitment to investigate Democrats in exchange for a Trump Oval Office meeting that their newly elected president badly wanted. Yet GOP lawmakers minimized Sondland’ s appearance, saying his revelations about…
The 37- year old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, gained significant ground in recent months in Iowa, which holds the nation’ s first caucuses in February. He is bunched at the top of most polls in Iowa with candidates who have much longer political resumes: former Vice President Joe Biden and Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
—President Donald Trump said Tuesday he went through a“ very routine physical” when he visited Walter Reed National Military Medical Center over the weekend. It raised questions about his health in part because the trip didn’ t follow protocols the White House has used for previous physicals, including advance public notice. The White House released a statement…
President Donald Trump summoned Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to the White House on Monday to discuss the economy and interest rates— issues on which Trump has repeatedly attacked the Fed. The Fed said in a statement that Powell told Trump that the economy is in good shape and that the Fed would likely suspend its rate cuts for now.
After months of dialogue, the White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have parted ways on Medicare price negotiations that Pelosi advocates and Trump— unlike most Republicans— once supported in principle. Instead Trump is backing a compromise bipartisan bill in the Senate, which does not give Medicare bargaining authority, but forces drugmakers to pay…
—New York billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who is deciding whether to launch a Democratic presidential bid, is pouring $100 million into an online advertising campaign attacking President Donald Trump. The campaign, which targets voters in four general election battleground states— Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin— begins running on Friday,…
Nov. 15– President Donald Trump’s pick to succeed Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, Dan Brouillette, received broad support Thursday during his nomination hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Lisa Murkowski, in her opening statement, said Brouillette has done an “excellent” job as the Department of Energy’s second in command.
—Shares advanced in Asia on Friday after White House officials said China and the U.S. were getting close to an agreement to cool tensions over trade. Markets have swung from euphoria to alarm as officials in Beijing and Washington offered conflicting opinions about the state of the negotiations over ending a tariff war between the two largest economies.
WASHINGTON– Americans increased their borrowing for the 21st straight quarter as more households took out loans to buy homes or refinance existing mortgages, according to a report released Wednesday from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Total U.S. household debt rose $92 billion, or 0.7%, to $13.95 trillion in the third quarter, the New York Fed’s quarterly…
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is asking Congress to tackle the growing budget deficit. Powell’s remarks before the House Budget Committee Thursday came a day after he told Congress’ Joint Economic Committee that the Fed was likely to keep rates unchanged in the coming months, unless there was a “material” shift in the economy’s outlook.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell announced on Wednesday that he expects the U.S. economy to continue its growth trajectory, despite risks from overseas and concerns about trade tensions between the U.S. and its prime trading partners, including China and the European Union. Powell has noted that by cutting interest rates which reduced borrowing costs…
—President Donald Trump has been fulminating for weeks over the impeachment inquiry, which he sees as a persecution cooked up by Democrats and “Never Trumpers.” On Wednesday, with the opening of historic public hearings, Republicans in the House are primed to defend him while Democrats lean in to make their points before a presumably big TV audience.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is due to testify Wednesday in Congress about the outlook for the U.S. economy, giving his perspective two weeks after the Fed cut interest rates for a third time this year. The three cuts, which lowered the interest rate the Fed controls to a range of 1.5% to 1.75%, were intended to offset drags from slower global growth.
President Donald Trump touted U.S. economic strength, and criticized Democrats and the Federal Reserve on Tuesday in remarks to the Economic Club of New York. The non-profit is non-partisan, but Trump didn’t shy away from criticizing Democrats, including his predecessor, President Barack Obama, while pushing his own economic record. U.S. job growth has slowed…
Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban became the latest tycoon to criticize Sen. Warren. In a series of tweets criticizing Warren’s socialized-medicine plan and accusing her of Trumpesque snake-oil peddling, Cuban noted that Warren is “filthy rich” and thus a hypocrite in her constant rhetorical bashing of the wealthy.
—Two political supporters of U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry secured a potentially lucrative oil and gas exploration deal from the Ukrainian government soon after Perry proposed one of the men as an adviser to the country’s new president. Perry’s efforts to influence Ukraine’s energy policy came earlier this year, just as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s…
What we’re watching heading into a new week on the 2020 campaign:. Days to Iowa caucuses: 84. Whether he does or doesn’t run, New York billionaire Michael Bloomberg has escalated doubts about front-runners Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren and pushed Democratic anxiety to new heights.
Top Trump administration officials mulled a mass resignation last year to warn the public about President Trump’s conduct, says a yet-to-be-released book obtained by the Washington Post. It says Trump has continued his well-known misogyny in the White House. But “Anonymous” repudiates that part of the op-ed in his or her book, the Washington Post said.
Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg unveiled a $1 trillion strategy Friday that aims to enhance middle-class America with investments for housing, child care and tuition-free higher education. The plan earmarks hundreds of billions for federal funding to help pay for child care, make available public colleges for students whose families…
—Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City, is opening the door to a 2020 Democratic presidential campaign, warning that the current field of candidates is ill equipped to defeat President Donald Trump. The 77- year-old has spent the past few weeks talking with prominent Democrats about the state of the 2020 field, expressing concerns…
WASHINGTON, D.C. (Nov. 11, 2019) – Fifty-one insurance and financial services professionals, one representing each state and the District of…
President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to China this week suggests that the United States risks being sidelined on the global stage under President Donald Trump. Just as the Trump administration formally launched the process of pulling out of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, France and China issued a ” Beijing call” on Wednesday for increased global cooperation…
Deb Tekippe spent much of this year convinced she would support Joe Biden in his 2020 bid for president, but the more she has seen of him on the stump in Iowa and in debates on television, the less confident she has become. Tekippe’ s experience reflects the new reality in Iowa: Buttigieg has emerged as the major alternative to Biden among moderate voters the former…
Democrats took full control of the Virginia legislature for the first time in more than two decades while the race for governor in deeply Republican Kentucky was too close to call despite a last-minute boost from President Donald Trump. And in Virginia, Democrats flipped control of the state Senate and House, gaining outright control of state government in a…
According to Richmond Fed Reserve Bank President Thomas Barkin, conflicting signals have made it difficult to get a handle on the true health of the U.S. economy. The U.S. central bank recently cut interest rates for the third time in 2019. Fed Chair Jerome Powell has described the cuts as insurance against ongoing risks from slowing global growth and the impact…
Industry executives are stepping up lobbying efforts to persuade Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to take action on the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act.
Republicans currently have a slim majority in both the state House and Senate. Democrats are looking to cement control of the state by taking control of both the Executive Mansion and the General Assembly for the first time in more than two decades. Virginia Republicans, who have generally tried to keep Trump at an arm’s distance, are hoping the specter of…
—Gaining momentum in the final three months before the Iowa caucuses, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg offered sharply different messages this weekend as they inched closer to a confrontation over the direction of the Democratic Party. During a frenetic three-day stretch of campaigning in Iowa, two other top contenders sought to prove their staying…
Who will pay for Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s plan to provide “Medicare for All”?
—Democrats swept a rules package for their impeachment probe of President Donald Trump through a divided House, as the chamber’s first vote on the investigation highlighted the partisan breach the issue has only deepened. Yet the roll call also accentuated how Democrats have rallied behind the impeachment inquiry after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spent…
The stock market is more concerned with the U.S.- China trade war, the strength of the global and U.S. economy, interest rates and corporate profits than the impeachment inquiry. For instance, on Thursday, analysts pinned the market’s drop largely on a weak report on business activity in the Midwest and worries about the trade war with China.
The Federal Reserve cut short-term interest rates Wednesday for a third time this year to try to support the economy. But it signaled that it plans no further cuts unless it sees clear evidence that the economic outlook has worsened. For now, Chairman Jerome Powell sounded a bullish note about the economy in a news conference afterwards.
Its move strikes a sharp contrast with Facebook, which continues to defend running paid political ads, even false ones, as a free speech priority. Facebook has taken fire since it reiterated in September that it will not fact-check ads by politicians or their campaigns, which could allow them to lie freely. During Facebook’ s conference call for earnings, which…
The U.S. economy grew by nearly 2 percent between July and October– slower than the first two quarters of 2019, but better than expected, the Commerce Department said in its quarterly report Wednesday. It projects U.S. growth of 3 percent for the rest of the year. Wednesday’s report was released hours ahead of an interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve.
