A Random Walk Through Today's Wall Street Journal
Another takeover of an industry: He wants to stop
commissions, he see’s selling anything on commission is unscrupulous since
everyone is business is crooked and all consumers are naïve and stupid. He’ll
fix everything as he wants it.
Brokers Brace for Tighter Standard
on Retirement Accounts
Firms say change will drive up compliance costs and could
force them to drop middle-class clients
“The Obama administration is changing the structure of the
stock brokerage industry to better control it in the future. This will make
bigger firms even bigger and destroy much of the competition. Obama wants to
eliminate all commission-based sales. He thinks all sales people are dishonest
and his way: fees, are the only way to protect the helpless consumer.
“Thousands of small brokerages are
bracing for a tighter rule governing investments they recommend to retirement
savers, a change they say will drive up compliance costs and could force them
to drop middle-class clients.
“The idea of the regulation, which
could be released this month by the Labor Department, seems unobjectionable
enough—that brokers would follow a ‘fiduciary’ standard when making investment
recommendations. Currently, brokers’ advice only has to be ‘suitable,’ which
critics say is a weaker standard that allows the sale of expensive products
that eat into returns.
The rule’s opponents, including many in the brokerage industry, say it will increase their costs and make providing
investment advice to small-balance retirement accounts less profitable.
Already, anticipation of the rule is
pushing some companies to scale back their business in the brokerage area. The
associated compliance costs were a key motivator, among other factors, behind
American International Group Inc.’s decision in January to sell its brokerage
unit, AIG Advisor Group.
About $3 trillion of more than $7
trillion in individual retirement accounts is expected to be affected by the
rule, according to research firm Morningstar Inc. About $19 billion in revenue
related to those IRA assets could be affected, and operating margins on IRA
assets could fall up to 30%, Morningstar said.
* * *
Obama Administration Hits Medicare
Payment Target Early
“Shift in the way payments are made emphasizes quality of
care over quantity”
Obama believes all providers of healthcare are dishonest and
will change that according to his own politics or beliefs…having never touched
the private sector or the industry. He is changing it to his hope. Yes,
consumer you are stupid.
“WASHINGTON—Obama
administration officials said Thursday they were almost a year ahead
of their target to change the way Medicare pays hundreds of billions of dollars
to providers for treating older Americans.” This is his definition of ‘quality
of care’ or that of Harvard Elites.
“The Department of
Health and Human Services had wanted the federal insurance program for seniors
to make 30% of its payments to doctors and hospitals on the basis of the
quality of care they provide, rather than the quantity, by the end of 2016.
That was seen as a step toward hitting 50% by 2018, beyond the lifespan of the
Obama administration.”
Of course all
definitions are political and based on the need to make political achievement
for Obama’s Legacy rather than actually providing better care and lower prices.
More bureaucrats rarely achieve those two goals. Obama said of his headguy: “You
get bragging rights this year!” He said. “You’re proof that the law works.” And
“We’ve been moving Medicare to a payment model that rewards quality of care
over volume,” clearly ignoring that an aging population will force “volume.”
* * *
Government
bureaucracy (not) at work:
Home Builders Slowed by Permit
Delays
“Housing market is starting to heat up, but understaffed
city governments are failing to keep pace”
“Bradley Gaskins,
chairman of the codes and standards committee of the American Institute of
Architects, said the group’s members are seeing permit approvals take six to
eight months in hot markets such as Florida and California, versus the typical
two to three months.
“The delays come
as housing affordability is a growing challenge in many cities around the
country. Rents have risen 20% over the past five years, according to data
provider Reis Inc. and home prices have risen 25% during the same period,
according to the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index.
“In Denver, home
prices have shot up more than 40% over the past four years, according to
Case-Shiller, while rents have jumped 25%, according to Reis.”
* * *
The American
political divide brings smaller spending increases demanded by Republicans than
Democrats. But increases anyway. Corruption. Maybe Trump is the answer.
Senators Split on FDA and Medical
Research Funding Bill
“Health panel’s Democrats plan to offer their own version in
unusual move”
“WASHINGTON—Senate
Republicans are moving ahead with their own legislation to relax Food and Drug
Administration approval processes and boost medical-research funding, after
talks to produce a bipartisan bill broke down.
“The legislation
being developed by Senate Republicans would create an NIH Innovation Fund to
pay for certain priorities of the Obama administration, according to Sen.
Alexander. He declined to specify how much would go to this fund, though the
administration is asking for amounts of about $1 billion or more. The
Democrats’ bill calls for $5 billion in annual new funding for the NIH and the
FDA.
“The fund would
pay for Vice President Joe Biden’s cancer “moonshot,” the president’s Precision
Medicine Initiative on genetic health research and help fund the work of young
scientific investigators.”
* * *
Yes, Hillary is
Bernie Light, but Robbing Hood with your money.
Clinton Tax Plan Would Raise $498 Billion but Hinder GDP Growth —
Analysis
“Hillary Clinton’s tax proposals
would raise $1.1 trillion over the next decade, and the highest-earning 1% of
households pay more than 77% of the tab.”
“That would actually reduce revenue by $374
billion over the decade because the higher rates would encourage taxpayers to
hold onto assets rather than sell them and pay taxes…”
* * *
Obama is giving away over ONE
TRILLION of taxpayer dollars. Is no one insanely angry? Or does no one know of
this? He’s increasing his bureaucracy to give it away.
The Feds and Students vs. Taxpayers
“Obama is encouraging loan recipients to claim they were
misled by colleges. Guess who will pay.”
“Last
month President Obama announced the creation of a ‘Student Aid Enforcement Unit’
that could end up costing taxpayers billions of dollars and reduce access to
career training in the U.S. Housed in the Education Department, this unit
follows the president’s complaint last year that many schools—especially
career-training, for-profit schools—rely heavily on federally funded loans yet
do not reliably graduate students equipped for jobs.
“The Student Aid Enforcement Unit will greatly increase the
use of two little-known Education Department regulations, first enacted in
1994. The ‘borrower defense’ permits students to claim they owe nothing on
their student loans because they enrolled based on a school’s misleading
assertions about job-placement and graduation rates. The ‘closed school’
regulation relieves students from their debt when a school they are attending
shuts down. Federal education loans that are forgiven become liabilities of the
government, i.e., the taxpayers.
“Now that students are being
encouraged to claim that they were misled, a small industry has already taken root, with online forms asking students if they feel they have
been misled and then detailing how they can file for relief from loan
repayment. Class action law suits are also being readied and filed to discharge even more
student loans.
“Certainly, the federal government has a
responsibility to protect students from bad schools engaged in deceptive
practices, especially since the federal government provides over $100 billion
in loans each year to students enrolled in public, private and proprietary
college and universities.
“The
expansion of the application of borrower-defense regulations—from a handful of
cases over 20 years to potentially thousands annually—has opened the door for
any students, from any institution, nonprofit or for-profit, to claim they were
lured to the school by deceptive practices. As the new Student Aid Enforcement
Unit (which adjudicates the claims based on state laws) overflows with
claimants alleging unfulfilled promises of employment, postgraduate education
or a rewarding career, taxpayers will be left holding the bag.”
* * *
No
comment needed.
President Obama Created Donald Trump
“After the cool, weak and endlessly nuanced Obama, no wonder
voters are going for a strong, blunt leader.”
“President Obama doesn’t get enough
credit for his accomplishments. I know this because he often tells us it is so.
I happen to agree that he doesn’t get enough credit. No, not for slowing the
rise of the oceans or healing the planet, as he immodestly claimed he would,
even before taking office. He has succeeded handsomely, though, in living up to
his vow to be a transformative president, like Ronald Reagan, and not an
incremental one in the Bill Clinton mold. Mr. Obama has accomplished many
changes—they just aren’t the ones we were waiting for.
“Mr. Obama has alienated allies like
Israel while encouraging adversaries like Iran and Cuba. He has fostered
Americans’ record-breaking dependence on government programs and record-low
participation in the workforce. He has expanded the power, size and expense of
the federal government in unprecedented ways, all at the expense of Americans’
freedom, standard of living and economic well-being.
“But the president truly doesn’t get
enough credit for creating one of the most polarizing forces in American
politics today. No, not Hillary—that is more Bill’s doing. Let’s be honest:
There would be no Donald
Trump, dominating the political scene
today if it were not for President Obama.
“I believe that voters tend to act
in open-seat presidential elections to correct for the perceived deficiencies
of the incumbent. In 1980, after four years of President Carter’s telling us to
turn up the thermostat and wear a cardigan, while the Soviets invaded
Afghanistan and the Iranians invaded the U.S. Embassy, the fed-up American
people elected a cowboy to the White House who made it clear that the evil
empire’s days were numbered.
“After eight years of President
Reagan’s supply-side economics and broadsides against welfare queens, we got a
kinder, gentler President H.W. Bush. After four years of international
diplomacy without the “vision thing,” we got a loquacious Arkansas governor
promising to invent a third way forward focused on the economy at home. After
eight years of Clintonian empathy and skirt-chasing, we got a plain-spoken
President George W. Bush, who promised to restore integrity to the Oval Office.
After Hurricane Katrina and post-Hussein Iraq, we got the professorial
President Barack Obama, who seemed to many to promise competence.
“After seven years of the cool, weak
and endlessly nuanced “no drama Obama,” voters are looking for a strong leader
who speaks in short, declarative sentences. Middle-class incomes are stagnant,
and radical Islam is on the march across the Middle East. No wonder voters are
responding to someone who promises to make America great again. You can draw a
straight line between a president who dismisses domestic terrorist attacks as
incidents of workplace violence and a candidate who wants to ban Muslims from
entering the country.
“Mr. Obama likes to bemoan the
increasing partisan divides across the country, as if he were merely a passive
observer at best and a victim at worst. Uncharacteristically, the president is
being too modest. He has created the very rancor he now rails against. Imagine
how different things would be if Mr. Obama had pursued a stimulus bill that
included targeted tax cuts and infrastructure spending balanced with gradual
entitlement reforms—instead of a stimulus that merely dusted off congressional
Democrats’ wish list of pork-barrel projects and ideological experiments.
“Imagine if Mr. Obama had actually
worked with Republicans in an open process to bring down health-care
costs—instead of pushing through, on a partisan vote, the largest expansion of
government-welfare programs in a generation. Or if he had listened to the
message that voters sent in the first midterm election by putting Republicans
in charge of Congress—instead of petulantly relying on executive orders, and
using an eraser and whiteout on the Constitution, to shove the Environmental
Protection Agency and other federal agencies deeper into Americans’ lives.
“Over the past seven years America
could have been transformed in an inspiring way if its education system had
been opened up, if its energy policy had been liberated, if the entire approach
to governing had been overhauled. President Obama chose the opposite approach,
favoring a closed education system that fails millions of children and an
energy policy that chains the economy to his green agenda.
“President Obama loves to construct
straw men so he can contrast his heroic self against them. But Donald Trump
needs no characterization; he is capable of being absurd on his own, no outside
help required. Without President Obama, there is no Donald Trump. Mr. Trump
often diagnoses the ills Mr. Obama has caused, but his prescriptions are just
as often wrong. America deserves better.”
Mr. Jindal is the former governor of
Louisiana.
