Bank of Canada already cautious on how indebted households will respond to higher rates
The ratio of household credit market debt to personal disposable income in the third quarter climbed to 171.1%
Canada’s household debt levels have surged this century, fueled by an extended period of rock-bottom interest rates, and are among the highest on an adjusted basis among members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Canada recovered faster than other major industrialized economies following the 2008-09 global recession, as its financial system didn’t require a bailout and commodity prices rose.
.. As a share of U.S. economic output, household debt in America was about 66% in the third quarter versus a high of around 87% in early 2009
Trump’s Deutsche Bank Records Subpoenaed by Mueller
The subpoena requested documents and data about the president’s accounts and other dealings
Since 1998, the lender has led or participated in loans of at least $2.5 billion to companies affiliated with Mr. Trump,.. Deutsche Bank kept doing business with Mr. Trump after other banks pulled away, and even after Deutsche Bank itself became embroiled in a nasty legal battle over 2005 loans worth more than $600 million to build the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago. After Mr. Trump missed loan payments in 2008, he and Deutsche Bank sued each other. They settled out of court in 2009... Deutsche Bank this year faced repeated document requests from Democratic lawmakers scrutinizing the administration’s ties to Russia.
The Democrats lacked Republican support to compel Deutsche Bank to provide the information. Deutsche Bank lawyers have said U.S. bank-secrecy rules prohibited the lender from revealing details about its clients or their business with the bank without a subpoena or other formal request from Congress.
Republicans Feel Triumph, Fear Tragedy
Tax plan, Mueller’s Russia probe help produce two potential divergent paths
.. The Republican establishment’s bargain with Mr. Trump always has been essentially this: It is worth putting up with his excesses and an undercurrent of mutual mistrust because ultimately he would promote and then sign the Republicans’ long-sought tax cut.
.. Republican plans to make Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi rather than Mr. Trump the unpopular face of the election year succeed... Trump voters decide the party and the president they supported in 2016 don’t share their common-sense aversion to running up big bills and leaving them for the kids... Meantime, a failure to agree on a new spending bill forces a government shutdown just before Christmas, and the GOP fails to put the blame off on Democrats. That instantly sullies Republicans’ newfound reputation for governing effectively... Corporate leaders don’t make the kinds of job-creating investments Republicans predict. Meanwhile, the tax cut’s stimulative effect overheats an economy already near full employment, pumps up an overextended stock market and compels the Fed to keep raising interest rates. The bubble bursts.The Obamacare infrastructure also collapses in 2018, and Republicans now are the party bearing the blame for health-market chaos.
.. Trump world financial entanglements with Russians gave the Kremlin leverage over the eventual president, and it’s shown Mr. Trump obstructed justice to stop investigators from finding out.
McCain could save the country from this terrible tax bill
In 2010, he told Fortune magazine that the nation was “sleep-walking toward a debt crisis,” and he foresaw calamity on a grand scale. “Within a few years a sale of government bonds will fail,” he said. “The capital markets will go crazy, and the Fed and Treasury will run to Capitol Hill demanding a giant bailout.” Wow.
He offered much the same view in 2011. “We face a crushing burden of debt, which will take down our economy,” Ryan predicted. “It will lower our living standards.”
.. When it comes to the middle class, by the way, this proposal doesn’t even deserve to be called a tax cut. According to the Tax Policy Center, it would leave about half of taxpayers paying more by 2027.
Republicans are lying coming and going. They hold down the sticker price of the bill and minimize its impact on the deficit by having the middle-class tax cuts (but not the corporate reductions) expire. But they insist that future Congresses would keep the middle-class tax cuts in place.
So they are either lying about the deficit or misleading the middle class.
.. As soon as Republicans shovel every dollar they can to the people who pay their party’s bills, he’ll dust off those old the-sky-is-falling quotes and warn about the deficits he helped to bloat. He’ll tell us how urgent it is to slash Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and programs for the needy (although he’ll try to bamboozle us again by claiming to be only “reforming” them)... What can stop this duplicitous raid on the federal treasury? A mobilization at the grass roots