Each morning, Bill Scher and Terrance Heath serve up what progressives need to effect change on the kitchen-table issues families face: jobs, health care, green energy, financial reform, affordable education and retirement security.
MORNING MESSAGE: The 99% Spring Takes On Verizon
OurFuture.org's Dave Johnson: "Big companies like Verizon use threats of layoffs to force their workers to take pay and benefit cuts, and use the money to pay huge amounts to their executives. This is why the middle class is being 'hollowed out.' So the 99% Spring movement will be protesting outside of Verizon's shareholder meeting in Huntsville, Alabama on Thursday ... like it came to the GE shareholder meeting last week ... These companies threaten to move jobs to other countries or just lay people off and make the remaining workers do their jobs, and then when they have forced the workers to give in the executives get huge raises. Note that Mitt Romney didn't patent this method. This was how he got rich, but he's not the only one who has been doing it."
Currency On Table As Geithner, Clinton Visit China
Geithner, Clinton in China this week, look for faster end to currency manipulation. Politico: "Treasury delayed submitting a semi-annual report to Congress last month on whether China, among other trading partners, should be labeled as a currency manipulator, saying in a statement it would wait until after the negotiations ended. Geithner also recently praised China for taking 'very significant and very promising' steps to let market forces play a greater role in setting the exchange rate ... Geithner has since responded by talking a bit tougher ..."
Romney trying to make China currency a line of attack against Obama. Bloomberg: "The yuan’s 23 percent rally against the dollar in the past five years doesn’t impress Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who vows on the campaign trail to brand China a 'currency manipulator.'"
NYT reports, "to hear leaders in Beijing, the problem is solved." "In March, China’s premier, Wen Jiabao, said the Chinese currency may 'have reached its equilibrium level.' ... While its current-account surplus with the United States, $318 billion last year, was somewhat bigger than it was in 2007, China actually ran a big deficit with the rest of the world. China’s vast takeover of world markets may be running out of steam ... [But it's] too soon to know whether these changes really mean China is turning a page in its development strategy."
On Economy, Romney = Bush
The Romney policy team is the Bush policy team. Salon's Andrew Leonard: "[Glenn] Hubbard is famous for his role as a chief architect of the Bush tax cuts ... Greg Mankiw is famous for a little flap during the Bush reelection campaign when he annoyed the White House by declaring that free trade and outsourcing of jobs 'was probably a plus for the American economy in the long run.' ... They are campaigning with the explicit promise to return to the economic agenda of Bush."
European May Day protests target austerity. NYT: "...a rising chorus of critics and government leaders, motivated by crushing economic realities and angry voters, has begun insisting that what is needed is growth, not more cuts. That was a message that May Day activists seemed to share regardless of nationality. Even in Germany, where unemployment is at post-unification lows, hundreds of thousands of workers took to the streets."
Post offices may close in two weeks if House fails to pass Senate reform bill. NYT: "... lawmakers there do not appear to be in a hurry to proceed despite a May 15 deadline set by the Postal Service ... The bill passed by the Senate would provide retirement incentives for nearly 100,000 of the service’s 547,000 workers [and] restructure the payments the agency makes into a health benefits fund for future retirees ... The House bill differs substantially from the Senate version. It would create a commission much like the one that recommended military base closings to oversee the shutting down of post offices and processing centers. It would also allow the Postal Service to end Saturday deliveries."
Schism at the Fed?
"Four Fed Policy Makers See No Need" for more stimulus, reports Bloomberg: "The odds of more Federal Reserve stimulus diminished yesterday as four central bankers said it probably won’t be needed and an unexpected acceleration in U.S. manufacturing provided fresh evidence of economic strength ... Three of them are voting members of the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee."
But the Atlantic's Matthew O'Brien sees a "Rebellion at the Federal Reserve" pushing for more aggressive measures: "While most of his colleagues at the Fed have recently taken an even more hawkish turn, [Chicago Federal Reserve president Charles] Evans remains a champion of additional monetary stimulus. And on Tuesday he took an even bigger step: He became the first sitting Fed member to endorse NGDP [nominal Gross Domestic Product] level targeting ... if it's a choice between stagnating NGDP and NGDP that's going up mostly because of inflation, Evans would choose the latter."
Big banks fight new Fed rule. Bloomberg: "Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said a proposed Federal Reserve rule seeking to limit links between banks could cut U.S. economic growth by as much as 0.4 percentage point and eliminate as many as 300,000 jobs ... The bank joined rivals including JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Citigroup Inc. (C) and Morgan Stanley in opposing a rule that would limit financial firms with at least $500 billion in assets from having credit risk to any other exceeding 10 percent of its regulatory capital plus excess loan-loss reserves. That limit is stricter than a 25 percent limit that’s applied more broadly to banks in the Dodd-Frank financial-overhaul law."
DeMarco Accused Of Coverup
Top Dems accuse FHFA's DeMarco of covering up evidence in favor of mortgage principal reductions. W. Post: "Officials at government-backed mortgage giant Fannie Mae concluded years ago that the company could 'reduce its losses substantially' by lowering loan amounts for some troubled borrowers, according to internal documents cited Tuesday by the top Democrat on the House oversight committee ... In the letter, [Rep. Elijah] Cummings and another committee member, Rep. John F. Tierney (D-Mass.), cite documents provided by a former Fannie employee. They accuse DeMarco of withholding key documents from the oversight committee and of failing to mention Fannie’s findings during past testimony..."
