Written by Econintersect
Early Bird Headlines 16 September 2017
Econintersect: Here are some of the headlines we found to help you start your day. For more headlines see our afternoon feature for GEI members, What We Read Today, which has many more headlines and a number of article discussions to keep you abreast of what we have found interesting.
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U.S.
- The Fed meets in the week ahead, and it is expected to begin shrinking its $4.5 trillion balance sheet, but the announcement has been widely anticipated.
- The market may find the Fed’s comments on interest rates, inflation and the storm impact on the economy more interesting.
- Markets will keep their focus on Washington, as a tax plan is awaited.
- President Trump heads to New York to speak at the United Nations.
- Federal judge blocks Trump from denying funds to sanctuary cities (The Hill) A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s rules requiring so-called sanctuary cities to help enforce federal immigration laws in order to receive funding. U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber issued a nationwide preliminary injunction against the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday after Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced new rules governing DOJ law enforcement grants, The Chicago Tribune reports. The city of Chicago sued the Trump administration last month over the DOJ’s threat to withhold those grants from so-called “sanctuary cities“.
- Equifax Says CIO, Chief Security Officer to Exit After Hack (Bloomberg) Equifax Inc. said two of its senior executives are leaving as the credit-reporting company faces mounting public anger for losing data on 143 million Americans in one of the biggest cyberattacks in history.
The firm’s chief information and chief security officers are retiring immediately, the Atlanta-based company said Friday in a statement that didn’t name the individuals. Mark Rohrwasser was named interim CIO and Russ Ayres was appointed interim CSO, reporting to Rohrwasser, according to the statement.
- Rep. Dana Rohrabacher reached out to the White House to offer a possible deal to get WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange out of legal jeopardy, according to The Wall Street Journal.
- Assange would offer alleged evidence that Russia did not provide hacked emails released by WikiLeaks last year during the presidential election.
- DOJ rolls back program intended to identify problems in police departments (The Hill) (Econintersect: After you read this watch this Tweet: https://twitter.com/JordanUhl/status/908894681416765440) The Department of Justice announced Friday that it’s rolling back an Obama-era program created to help improve trust between police agencies and the communities they serve. The department said it’s making significant changes to an office that investigated and issued public reports about problems it found in individual police departments. DOJ said the changes to the program
“will return control to the public safety personnel sworn to protect their communities and focus on providing real-time technical assistance to best address the identified needs of requesting agencies to reduce violent crime.”
- Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All: How would it work? (CBS MoneyWatch) The message of this article is that “single-payer” systems (like Medicare) are not “single-provider” systems (like the UK NHS). See also next article. Canada is a nearby example of a working single-payer system.
- How a Sanders Medicare-For-All Plan Can Be Affordable and Appeal to Republicans (Forbes) Laurence Kotlikoff decries the inability of “politically affiliated economists” to “provide impartial analysis“. He says they are “putting their politics ahead of their economics“. He proposes what he calls a “correctly designed” Medicare-for-All.
- Public support for ‘single payer’ health coverage grows, driven by Democrats (Pew Research Center) A majority of Americans say it is the federal government’s responsibility to make sure all Americans have health care coverage. And a growing share now supports a “single payer” approach to health insurance, according to a new national survey by Pew Research Center. Currently, 60% say the federal government is responsible for ensuring health care coverage for all Americans, while 39% say this is not the government’s responsibility. There is a strong divide between members of the two major parties.
- Medicare for All (CBS News)
South Korea
- South Korea suffered a failure of one of its homegrown intermediate-range missiles after launching it following North Korea’s latest missile provocation.
- In June, a South Korean presidential spokesman called the missile “a key component in our kill chain.”
- The malfunction of the missile raises questions about whether Seoul is fully prepared to handle a large conflict with Pyongyang.
- It comes as North Korea reportedly has a new submarine nearing completion that can stay underwater longer and fire ballistic missiles.
