Hillary v. The Left
Hillary Clinton interview causes friction with left. Politico: "Progressives are wincing over Clinton’s foreign policy comments in a blockbuster interview with The Atlantic, saying her statements are excessively hawkish and reminiscent of her past support for the war in Iraq ... for many liberals, whose enthusiasm will be important if she runs again for president in 2016, her comments simply felt like code for Bush-era interventionism."
Sen. Bernie Sanders teases primary challenge in ABC/Yahoo! interview: "I’m not quite sure that the political process is one in which we anoint people ... What is her agenda? I don’t know. You don’t know. She hasn’t said."
No Obamacare Death Spiral
Health insurance premiums remain stable. The Hill: "Premiums on Obamacare’s health insurance exchanges will rise by an average of 7.5 percent next year ... Data compiled by the Health Research Institute (HRI) at PricewaterhouseCoopers found modest changes in premiums for 27 states and the District of Columbia, with the increases mostly falling short of dire predictions for ObamaCare’s second year ... Consumer advocates are urging people on the exchanges to prepare to comparison shop if they want to avoid price increases of any magnitude. Experts are also waiting on state insurance regulators to deliver the final verdict on some of the higher proposed rate increases."
No "death spiral." Bloomberg's Joshua Green: "One of the scariest claims was that premiums were going to shoot up because only the sick and the old would sign up. The danger, of course, was that this would set off the so-called death spiral, where high prices prompt people to drop their coverage until eventually the whole project collapses in failure and shame ... [Today's news] is quite a bit different than the scenario the Hill laid out in March. A 7.5 percent average increase is somewhat smaller than the 100 percent increase the newspaper was predicting only five months ago."
Breakfast Sides
Fed official worries about global growth. NYT: "The official, Stanley Fischer, who took over as vice chairman of the Fed in June, noted that although the weak recovery might simply be fallout from the financial crisis and the recession, 'it is also possible that the underperformance reflects a more structural, longer-term shift in the global economy.' ... he warned of three pronounced headwinds that have held back growth in the United States: a still anemic housing market, cuts in federal government spending and weaker global growth that reduced demand for American exports ... Some traders were encouraged that it appeared that the Fed was in no rush to raise interest rates."
Obama predicts Supreme Court vacancies. Time: "Speaking to a group of donors to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee on a break from his vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, Obama said he needs Democrats to hold a majority this year to fill vacancies to the high court ... 'we’re going to have Supreme Court appointments, and there are going to be a whole host of issues that many people here care about that are going to be determined by whether or not Democrats retain the Senate.'"
