Warren Dings Obama
Sen. Warren praises, criticizes Obama's Wall Street record in Salon interview: "When I think about the president, for me, it’s about both halves. If Barack Obama had not been president of the United States we would not have a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Period ... At the same time, he picked his economic team and when the going got tough, his economic team picked Wall Street ... Not families who were losing their homes. Not people who lost their jobs. Not young people who were struggling to get an education."
TNR foresees "The Gutting of Dodd-Frank" if GOP takes Senate: "...the more serious threat to the regulations will come in the guise of moderate tweaks—nefarious 'nothing to see here' amendments that Republicans will use on complicated or delayed provisions. The regulation of financial institutions that are not banks, for example, was difficult to explain to the public and rally support around, but it was absolutely critical in targeting the likes of AIG. It now appears to be at risk. The Volcker Rule, which outlaws some of the banks’ riskiest behaviors, could also be vulnerable. It has an implementation deadline of July 21, 2015, and Republicans will do whatever they can before then to tweak or delay it."
Weak Global Economy Could Influence Fed
Global economy bad. WSJ: "Pick your region, or your big developed country, and chances are good its key economic arrows are pointing down, not up ... The sturdiest pillar in Europe by far, Germany, is showing sudden signs of exhaustion. For very different reasons, Japan, Brazil and Russia are all on the ropes. The world’s biggest growth engine for more than a decade, China, is also cooling off ... Obama has taken to boasting lately about the gap between the U.S. and other economies ... The world’s economic woes, though, can easily wash back onto American shores..."
Global weakness could prompt Fed to extend stimulus. Bloomberg: "'If foreign growth is weaker than anticipated, the consequences for the U.S. economy could lead the Fed to remove accommodation more slowly than otherwise,' Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer said in a weekend speech at the International Monetary Fund’s annual meetings in Washington."
Trade not the answer, says HuffPost's Robert Kuttner: "...the main remedy being promoted by the U.S. government and its European allies is a trade and investment deal known as T-TIP ... it is a distraction from the true causes of sluggish economic performance. Trade barriers are not a pressing problem because most trade between the U.S. and Europe is already quite free. Not even T-TIP's supporters contend it will have more than a trivial effect on growth."
Austerity Not Helping Ebola Crisis
"Ebola Vaccine Would Likely Have Been Found By Now If Not For Budget Cuts" reports HuffPost: "'NIH has been working on Ebola vaccines since 2001. It's not like we suddenly woke up and thought, "Oh my gosh, we should have something ready here,"' [NIH Director Dr. Francis] Collins told The Huffington Post on Friday. 'Frankly, if we had not gone through our 10-year slide in research support, we probably would have had a vaccine in time for this that would've gone through clinical trials and would have been ready." ... Several Democratic lawmakers have in fact introduced legislation that would increase NIH funds by up to $46.2 billion in 2021. But there is no indication that such a bill will move..."
Gov. Bobby Jindal defends budget levels, in Politico oped: "...the CDC has received significant amounts of funding. Unfortunately, however, many of those funds have been diverted away from programs that can fight infectious diseases, and toward programs far afield from the CDC’s original purpose."
