his Justice Department quietly indicated last week that it would not defend major parts of the Affordable Care Act that pro-Trump forces, having failed to kill it in Congress, are now trying to kill through lower courts. And this includes the requirement that insurance companies guarantee access to coverage without bias against people with pre-existing medical conditions.
The implications? Senator Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who voted against repealing Obamacare, put it best: The decision not to defend key provisions of Obamacare — in a suit filed by Texas’ attorney general and 19 other states — “creates further uncertainty that could ultimately result in higher costs for millions of Americans and undermine essential protections for people with pre-existing conditions, such as asthma, cancer, heart disease, arthritis and diabetes.”
.. Trump just picked a fight with our closest NATO allies, including Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — who Trump’s team said “stabbed us in the back” after Trudeau’s mild-mannered defense of his own country’s trade policy on dairy imports. This after Trump has had nary a word of censure for Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who stabbed us in the chest with the biggest cyberattack on our democracy ever.
.. But in the case of climate change — where an overwhelming majority of scientists in Trump’s own government say human-induced climate change is 100 percent real and we need to join with the other major industrial powers in the Paris climate agreement to reduce carbon emissions to avoid the unmanageable aspects of climate change and manage the unavoidable ones — Trump chose to scrap Paris, throw away any insurance and move to revive coal... Sure, if climate change turns out to be a hoax, it won’t matter that we have a president who doesn’t believe in science. And sure, if we get consecutive years of exceptionally high growth, and no recession, maybe we’ll grow out of the massive increase in the national debt Trump took on with his corporate tax cuts.Maybe China, Canada and our European allies will indeed bend to our will on trade and it really will be easy to win multiple trade wars at once. Maybe if another 9/11, or global recession like 2008, never materializes we won’t need allies and we really can cozy up to Putin. And, sure, if health care costs miraculously drop on their own, it won’t matter that Trump destroyed Obamacare without putting anything in its place, let alone something better and cheaper, as he vowed.
Why you can’t fix retirement without fixing wages
Millennials needn’t worry about retirement, Alicia Munnell, 75, writes, as long as they “are willing and able to work longer than their parents and grandparents did.”
It may not be surprising that younger Americans, who will largely be responsible for cleaning up the financial wreckage the boomers are leaving behind, are not particularly enthusiastic at the prospectof working longer and harder for the same quality of life enjoyed by previous generations.
.. the proximate causes of millennials’ financial difficulties, such as the Great Recession and the dot-com bubble: “Millennials entered the labor market during tough times.
.. The “good news,” as she calls it, is that retirement is a long way off and that simply by working into their 70s, millennials will be able to make up a lot of lost ground.
.. Between 1989 and 2016, the real median income of houses headed by people younger than 35 increased by just 4 percent. That’s just about enough to keep pace with overall inflation.
.. The problem is, however, that many prices have been rising much more rapidly than the pace of inflation. Prices are rising fastest for the things that are absolute necessities: Health care. Food. Housing. Education. Things you literally need to survive. As a result, households have to take on more debt to make ends meet.
.. Overall compensation has been largely stagnant since the 1970s, even as productivity has increased. Median household debt has roughly doubled since 1989.
.. By asking millennials to work to age 70 you’re treating the symptom, not the underlying disease.
.. Selling American elites, who tend to be older and wealthier, on the notion that the young just need to work harder is easy. But the idea that workers urgently deserve an across-the-board pay raise — a raise that would come, often, from higher payments from those same older and wealthier people — is a much tougher sell.
Why corporate America loves Donald Trump
American executives are betting that the president is good for business. Not in the long run
MOST American elites believe that the Trump presidency is hurting their country. Foreign-policy mandarins are terrified that security alliances are being wrecked. Fiscal experts warn that borrowing is spiralling out of control. Scientists deplore the rejection of climate change. And some legal experts warn of a looming constitutional crisis.
.. Bosses reckon that the value of tax cuts, deregulation and potential trade concessions from China outweighs the hazy costs of weaker institutions and trade wars.
.. the investment surge is unlike any before—it is skewed towards tech giants, not firms with factories. When it comes to gauging the full costs of Mr Trump, America Inc is being short-sighted and sloppy.
.. The benefits for business of Mr Trump are clear, then: less tax and red tape, potential trade gains and a 6-8% uplift in earnings.
.. During the Obama years corporate America was convinced it was under siege when in fact, judged by the numbers, it was in a golden era, with average profits 31% above long-term levels.
Now bosses think they have entered a nirvana, when the reality is that the country’s system of commerce is lurching away from rules, openness and multilateral treaties towards arbitrariness, insularity and transient deals.
.. so far this month 200-odd listed American firms have discussed the financial impact of tariffs on their calls with investors. Over time, a mesh of distortions will build up.
.. American firms have $8trn of capital sunk abroad; foreign firms have $7trn in America; and there have been 15,000 inbound deals since 2008. The cost involved in monitoring all this activity could ultimately be vast. As America eschews global co-operation, its firms will also face more duplicative regulation abroad. Europe has already introduced new regimes this year for financial instruments and data.
.. The expense of re-regulating trade could even exceed the benefits of deregulation at home. That might be tolerable, were it not for the other big cost of the Trump era: unpredictability. At home the corporate-tax cuts will partly expire after 2022.
.. Bosses hope that the belligerence on trade is a ploy borrowed from “The Apprentice”, and that stable agreements will emerge. But imagine that America stitches up a deal with China and the bilateral trade deficit then fails to shrink, or Chinese firms cease buying American high-tech components as they become self-sufficient
.. Another reason for the growing unpredictability is Mr Trump’s urge to show off his power with acts of pure political discretion.
- He has just asked the postal service to raise delivery prices for Amazon, his bête noire and the world’s second-most valuable listed firm.
- He could easily strike out in anger at other Silicon Valley firms—after all, they increasingly control the flow of political information.
- He wants the fate of ZTE, a Chinese telecoms firm banned in America for sanctions violations, to turn on his personal whim.
.. When policy becomes a rolling negotiation, lobbying explodes. The less predictable business environment that results will raise the cost of capital.
.. Mr Trump expects wages to rise, but 85% of firms in the S&P 500 are forecast to expand margins by 2019
.. Either shareholders, or workers and Mr Trump, are going to be disappointed.
.. In a downturn, American business may find that its fabled flexibility has been compromised because the politics of firing workers and slashing costs has become toxic.
.. American business may one day conclude that this was the moment when it booked all the benefits of the Trump era, while failing to account properly for the costs.
How technology has redefined the job of the repo man
No longer tethered to a tow truck and able to use big data to find targets, the repossession industry is booming at an unexpected time. Although the U.S. economy recently entered its second-longest-ever period of expansion, the auto loan delinquency rate last year reached its highest point since 2012, driven by souring subprime auto loans. It’s evidence of how the economic recovery has not been evenly felt, with some of Americans’ biggest purchases — automobiles — being fueled by unsustainable borrowing rather than rising wages.
.. “So much of America is just a heartbeat away from a repossession — even good people, decent people who aren’t deadbeats,” said Patrick Altes, a veteran agent in Daytona Beach, Fla. “It seems like a different environment than it’s ever been.”
.. Relentless scanned 28 million license plates last year, a demonstration of its recent, heavy push into technology. It now has more than 40 camera-equipped vehicles, mostly spotter cars. Agents are finding repos they never would have a few years ago.
.. The company’s goal is to capture every plate in Ohio and use that information to reveal patterns. A plate shot outside an apartment at 5 a.m. tells you that’s probably where the driver spends the night, no matter their listed home address. So when a repo order comes in for a car, the agent already knows where to look.
.. for a while, the job remained mostly the same. He’d prowl around in a tow truck, armed with paper orders and a map, just praying the target vehicle was parked where it was supposed to be.
That all changed in recent years.
.. “Don’t make someone’s bad situation worse.” So he avoided hospital parking lots. But he loved shopping malls, especially the last row of lots, where the employees park. Discount stores were another target.
“For getting a live hit, this is the place to be,” he said earlier, weaving his way past rows of cars outside a Dollar General.
.. In the old days, agents picked up mostly entry-level cars — Chevy Chevettes and Dodge Neons.
.. The only cars still rarely seen are Subarus and Volvos — the unflashy favorites of the urbane upper middle class.
.. More than 4 percent of auto loans were at least 90 days late at the end of 2017 — the highest rate in five years. That number jumps to almost 10 percent for subprime auto loans alone
.. Affordability is one factor. The average new car price has soared 20 percent over a decade, to $35,500, while wages have been sluggish.
.. April was always slow because people made car payments with tax refunds.
.. Repo agents are responsible for the majority of the billions of license plate scans produced nationwide. But they don’t control the information. Most of that data is owned by Digital Recognition Network (DRN), a Fort Worth company that is the largest provider of license-plate-recognition systems.
.. officials in Alameda, California, this year put on hold a contract to buy Vigilant’s technology over worries the scans could be used for federal immigration enforcement.
.. Half of Relentless’s repos are found within the first two days.