Walgreen To Stay, More Inversions To Come
Walgreen responds to pressure, won't leave US to dodge taxes. WSJ: "Walgreen Co. has decided not to relocate its corporate headquarters, people familiar with the matter said, amid complications in pulling off the transaction and a backdrop of heavy political pressure from Washington to end the controversial tax-avoidance move ... The decision ... may calm fears that shoppers would shun Walgreen stores as a form of protest. But it could anger some shareholders who had bet that Walgreen would seek to domicile in a tax-friendly locale like Switzerland."
"Wave" of inversions still expected. W. Post: "Dozens of additional deals are in the works, according to administration and congressional officials, and other companies are quietly contemplating the move ... the potential costs to the U.S. treasury are enormous. One measure, by the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), suggests that the nation stands to lose nearly $20 billion in tax revenue over the next decade ... Senate Democrats are laying plans to highlight inversions by advancing legislation in September to outlaw the practice or sharply limit its profitability."
Obama may take executive action on inversions. NYT: "Treasury Department officials are rushing to assemble an array of options that would essentially wipe out the economic incentive for the deals, [Treasury Secretary Jacob] Lew said. No final decision has been made ... If Treasury pursued unilateral action, there could be at least some retroactive effect because new limits would be placed on the transactions of inverted companies. Inversions could still go through, but depending on when new rules were issued, the tax strategies that made the mergers seem lucrative might be severely limited ... [One] idea would be to limit the degree to which a foreign parent company could load up a United States subsidiary with debt, which can be deducted for tax purposes, and require that any excess be designated as equity, which is not eligible for deductions."
FDIC and Federal Reserve reject 11 bank "living wills" as "not credible." HuffPost: "The official rebuke is likely to fuel the debate in Washington and on Wall Street over whether banks, including Citigroup and Morgan Stanley, remain too big to fail, some six years after the height of the financial crisis and four years after Congress passed a law meant to prevent it from happening again ... Tuesday's joint announcement was the first time a federal regulator officially told the banks that their living wills weren't credible -- a requirement the banks have to meet under the 2010 law overhauling U.S. financial regulation known as Dodd-Frank."
WH Ponders Immigration Exec Order
The Hill details the potential options for an immigration executive order: "Among the least legally controversial would be for Obama to issue a memo instructing prosecutors to focus their efforts only on individuals with ties to organized crime or convicted of serious criminal offenses. Currently, the administration prioritizes the removal of anyone with a criminal conviction — which could include minor offenses, including immigration status crimes ... The administration could also alter the workings of the Secure Communities program, which crosschecks the fingerprints of individuals ... so that fewer individuals who are arrested, and flagged as illegal immigrants, would be detained and deported ... the president could move to expand the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program ... to include the parents of children currently eligible for DACA [or] all parents of U.S. citizens ..."
Big influx in families with children trying to cross border. NYT: "Most of the debate over the illegal influx has centered on about 57,000 unaccompanied minors apprehended since October. But the number of minors with parents has increased even faster, nearly tripling to more than 22,000 so far this year ... Until recently, most families were released to remain in the United States while their deportation cases moved slowly through the courts. But that policy fueled rumors reaching Central America that if parents arrived with young children, they would be given permits to stay. To stop such talk, officials said, they are moving swiftly to expand family detention ... But the administration’s plan has been complicated by the assertions of many migrants who say they are frightened of being sent back into deadly gang violence, setting off required reviews to determine if they have valid asylum claims."
GOP Rep. Fred Upton wins primary with 71% after voting against bill ending Obama program indefinitely deferring deportations for "DREAMers".
China Makes Big Move Away From Coal
Beijing aims to ban coal consumption by 2020. TNR's Rebecca Leber: "For some time, American conservatives have been skeptical that China would do its part on climate change—and they’ve used that assumption as an argument for why the U.S. should not take action on its own. The latest news could mean that skepticism is wrong ... Still, it’s too early to celebrate. One big question is what energy sources Chinese officials use to replace coal..."
Reducing population would ease carbon pollution, notes NYT's Eduardo Porter: "An article published in 2010 by researchers from the United States, Germany and Austria concluded that if the world’s population reached only 7.5 billion people by midcentury, rather than more than nine billion, [we] would deliver 16 to 29 percent of the emission reductions needed over the next four decades to keep the global temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above that of the late 19th century..."
