August 16, 2018

Even Corporations Think Donald Trump Is a Little Too Nice to Corporations

Donald Trump wants to loosen the Volcker Rule, which regulates whose money banks can gamble with, but it turns out that even Wall Street doesn’t want him to do this:

“I can’t imagine this aspect of the proposal being preferable to the original and current Volcker 1.0 regime,” said Gregg Rozansky, a senior vice president at the Bank Policy Institute, an industry trade group representing the nation’s largest banks. “It could raise prices for student loans, credit cards or auto loans,” he added.

This comes on the heels of the auto industry asking Trump to back off on his repeal of Obama’s mileage standards. And the agriculture industry complaining about Trump’s tariffs. Hell, even the coal industry is leery of Trump’s proposal to force people to buy energy from designated coal plants.

It’s one thing to be slavishly pro-business, but it’s quite another to be so abject and incompetent about it that even big business wants you to slow down a bit. Which reminds me: have I shown you a chart of corporate profits lately? I have? Well, it can’t hurt to see it again, I suppose:

That nice little blip at the end starts in the final quarter of 2017, right when the Republican tax cut kicked in. Happy days!

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We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

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