Conservative Blogger
Tuesday, August 11, 2015
China Moves to Devalue Yuan, U.S. Dollar Bounces
Currencies in Asia tumbled and stocks in China fluctuated after China's central bank devalued its tightly controlled currency.
The central bank's move sent the yuan down 1.6% against the U.S. dollar early Tuesday. The U.S. dollar rose to as high as 6.3299 Chinese yuan from its close 6.2136 late Monday.
The move comes after disappointing Chinese trade data over the weekend cast doubt on the economic health of the world's no. two economy. It also follows the International Monetary Fund's recent announcement to delay its decision on whether to include the yuan in its basket of reserve currencies.
The yuan's fixing against the U.S. dollar was lowered 1.9% Tuesday from the previous day, its biggest-ever move in a single day. The yuan is allowed to trade 2% above or below the People's Bank of China's daily reference rate against the U.S. dollar.
China shares wavered between negative and positive, a day after the market posted its largest daily percentage gain in a month. The Shanghai Composite Index was last down 0.1% while the smaller Shenzhen market was up 0.3%.
A weaker yuan could threaten other economies in the region that compete with Chinese exports, and the move sent other currencies in Asia lower. A weaker yuan could encourage other central banks in the region to devalue their currencies to stay competitive.
The U.S. dollar rocketed to as high as 1170.80 South Korean won, from 1158.20 late yesterday in Asia. The Korean won was last down 0.8% to trade at 1167.50 to the U.S. dollar.
The Thai baht fell 0.4% to trade at 35.20 to the U.S. dollar while the Singapore dollar fell 0.5% against the U.S. dollar.
The New Zealand dollar and Australian each fell by more than 0.5% each against the U.S. dollar.
Stock markets elsewhere in the region were mixed, following hopes of Chinese stimulus after weak data but a rise in U.S. stocks overnight.
The Nikkei Stock Average was up 0.6%, the S&P ASX 200 is down 0.7% and South Korea's Kospi was up 0.8%.
The recovery on Wall Street as well as expectations for further policy from China to support the economy may help Japan shares, said Hiroichi Nishi, general manager of equity division at SMBC Nikko Securities.
Weak economic data lifted expectations that Beijing would boost spending and continue to prop up the market by buying shares. Talk about a possible merger between China's state-shipping giants revived hopes for reform of state-owned enterprises.
Data Tuesday showed the new yuan loans in China hit a six-year high of 1.48 trillion yuan ($238.3 billion) in July, up from 1.27 trillion yuan in June.
A stronger Japanese yen, often a negative for Japanese exporters, capped the Nikkei's gains. The U.S. dollar traded at Yen124.12, compared with Yen124.61 at late Monday in Asia.
While Brent oil was down 0.5% to $50.14 in Asia trade, prices were up from multi-month lows after on a forecast drop in U.S. shale-oil production and rumors of an emergency meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
Christian institutions garnering support in ObamaCare challenge
Those states, along with a handful of other religious rights organizations, filed friend-of-the-court briefs to the Supreme Court supporting Houston Baptist University, East Texas Baptist University, and Westminster Theological Seminary.
Those schools have appealed the Supreme Court to overturn a circuit court ruling that forces them to expand contraception options in their health insurance plans. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the schools’ legal counsel, says the briefs are a major breakthrough.
“This strong show of support for HBU and ETBU (and Westminster Theological Seminary) demonstrates just how important it is that the Supreme Court address the impact of the HHS mandate, particularly on religious groups,” said Diana Verm, Legal Counsel at the Becket Fund, in a statement. “It is especially significant that the 16 state governments are supporting HBU and ETBU at the Supreme Court.”
The case directly challenges the 5th Circuit Court. That ruling said that the schools were forced to offer all 14 types of contraception spelled out in the HHS mandate of ObamaCare within their health insurance plans. The schools only offered 10 types. They say that the mandate violates their religious freedom. According to the statement, all three schools would have to pay millions in IRS fines if they aren’t allowed exemption.
The Becket Fund identified the 16 states to FoxNews.com as: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia.
Other organizations that pledged support include the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Christian and Missionary Alliance Foundation, and all 181 members of the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities.
“Today’s strong support is an indication that the Court is likely to decide in the upcoming term whether religious ministries, like religious for-profits, will receive protection from the Mandate,” the statement said.
Verm told FoxNews.com that many businesses have been exempted from the mandate, and that all religious institutions should be afforded the same opportunity.
"The Supreme Court has already issued five preliminary orders in favor of religious organizations facing this choice, and we expect it to protect HBU and ETBU as well," she said.
Fox News host Megyn Kelly addresses Trump 'dustup'
Fox News Channel’s Megyn Kelly refused to apologize Monday to GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump after he accused her of asking an unfair question during last week’s Republican presidential debate.
“Apparently Mr. Trump thought the question was unfair and I was attacking him,” “The Kelly File” host told viewers Monday. “I felt he was asked a tough but fair question. We agree to disagree.”
While Trump leads recent polls, the former reality television star has drawn heated criticism from many in his own party for saying Kelly had "blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever" during a TV appearance Friday night.
Kelly, who called Trump an “interesting man that has captured the attention of the electorate,” decided not to respond to personal attacks he’d lodged against her, saying “I certainly will not apologize for doing good journalism.”
“Mr. Trump, I expect, will continue with what has been a successful campaign so far,” said Kelly. “This is a tough business and I think it’s time now to move forward.”
Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes reached out to Trump directly Monday, assuring him he'll be "treated fairly" by the station, Trump tweeted Monday.
"Roger Ailes just called. He is a great guy & assures me that 'Trump' will be treated fairly on @FoxNews. His word is always good!" wrote Trump, whose unorthodox campaign is dominating the race and summertime polls.
In a statement Monday evening, Ailes described the conversation as "blunt but cordial" and said the air had been cleared.
"Donald Trump and I spoke today. We discussed our concerns, and I again expressed my confidence in Megyn Kelly," Ailes said, describing Kelly as "a brilliant journalist" whom he supports "100 percent."
Ailes added that he assured Trump "that we will continue to cover this campaign with fairness & balance."
Trump is scheduled to return to the network Tuesday, with appearances on two of the network's shows, "Fox & Friends" and "Hannity," a Fox News spokeswoman said.
At least 23 arrested on fourth night of demonstrations in Ferguson
Get them off government support and put them to work.
St. Louis County Police spokesman Officer Shawn McGuire said early Tuesday that police were still confirming official totals.
Despite the arrests, there were no reports of injuries or violence. McGuire also said that there were no shots fired and no burglaries, looting or property damage during the protest.
Sunday night's demonstration was thrown into chaos after by gunfire and a police shooting that left an 18-year-old critically injured. Earlier Monday, St. Louis County Executive Steve Stenger declared a state of emergency, which authorized county Police Chief Jon Belmar to take control of police emergency management in and around Ferguson.
By early Monday evening, hundreds of people had gathered. They marched up and down West Florissant Avenue, the thoroughfare that was the site of protests and rioting after Brown was fatally shot last year in a confrontation with a Ferguson police officer.
The protesters chanted, beat drums and carried signs. When some in the group moved into a traffic lane, officers in riot gear forced people out of the street. Some demonstrators threw water bottles and other debris at officers.
Belmar told The Associated Press: "They're not going to take the street tonight. That's not going to happen."
Ferguson resident Hershel Myers Jr., 46, criticized the police response as aggressive and unnecessary.
A military veteran, he added, "It's wrong for me to have to go overseas and fight with Army across my chest, but we can't fight on our own street where I live."
By 1 a.m., the crowd and police presence along West Florissant had been begun to diminish.
In all, approximately 144 protesters were arrested around the St. Louis area Monday. McGuire said that approximately 64 protesters who blocked afternoon rush-hour traffic on Interstate 70 Monday afternoon were arrested. At midday, 57 protesters demanding the dissolution of the Ferguson Police Department were arrested near the federal courthouse in St. Louis.
On Monday morning, prosecutors announced filing of ten felony charges against Tyrone Harris Jr., whom Belmar said opened fire on officers after an earlier shooting on West Florissant late Sunday. The four officers in the van fired back, then pursued the suspect on foot. The suspect again fired on the officers when he became trapped in a fenced-in area, the chief said, and all four opened fire.
Harris was in critical condition Monday after surgery. All four officers in the van, each wearing protective vests, escaped injury. They were not wearing body cameras, Belmar said.
Harris' father called the police version of events "a bunch of lies." He said two girls who were with his son told him he was unarmed and had been drawn into a dispute involving two groups of young people.
Tyrone Harris Sr. told The Associated Press that his son was a close friend of Michael Brown and was in Ferguson on Sunday night to pay respects.
The elder Harris said his son got caught up in a dispute among two groups of young people and was "running for his life" after gunfire broke out.
"My son was running to the police to ask for help, and he was shot," he said. "It's all a bunch of lies ... They're making my son look like a criminal."
Online court records show that Tyrone Harris Jr. was charged in November with stealing a motor vehicle and a gun, as well as resisting arrest by fleeing. A court hearing in that case is scheduled for Aug. 31.
Belmar said the suspect who fired on officers had a semi-automatic 9 mm gun that was stolen last year from Cape Girardeau, Missouri.
The police chief drew a distinction between the shooters and the protesters.
"They were criminals," he said of those involved in gunfire. "They weren't protesters."
Gov. Jay Nixon agreed, saying in a statement that such "reprehensible acts must not be allowed to silence the voices of peace and progress."
Monday, August 10, 2015
With Social Security disability fund going broke by 2016, Congress set for partisan, election-year showdown
The 11 million Americans who receive Social Security disability face steep benefit cuts next year unless Congress acts.
Social Security's trustees say the disability trust fund will run out of money in late 2016, a presidential election year, which would trigger an automatic 19 percent cut in benefits.
GOP lawmakers see the funding crisis as an opportunity to improve a program that they believe is plagued by waste and abuse. Democrats sat that the program’s modest benefits keep millions of disabled workers and their families out of poverty.
Lawmakers from both political parties would like to resolve the issue this year, protecting beneficiaries from steep cuts before presidential politics consumes the capital. But a deal remains elusive as Social Security approaches its 80th birthday on Friday.
President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act on Aug. 14, 1935. The disability program was added in 1956.
The average monthly payment for disabled workers and their families is $1,019. That comes to $12,228 a year. A 19 percent cut would lower the average annual benefit to less than $10,000.
Social Security is self-financed by a 12.4 percent tax on wages up to $118,500. Workers pay half and employers pay half. Social Security also gets revenue from taxes on benefits and interest on the program's two trust funds.
Last year, the wage tax generated $756 billion. By law, the tax revenue is divided between the disability trust fund and Social Security's much larger retirement fund. The retirement fund gets about 85 percent of the money, and the rest goes to disability.
Over the past 20 years, the fund balances have gotten out of whack. The retirement fund has enough money to pay full benefits until 2035, according to the Social Security trustees. But they disability fund is projected to run out of money in fourth quarter of 2016.
Congress could redirect tax revenue from the retirement fund to the disability fund, as it has done in the past. The last time was in 1994.
If Congress redirects the tax revenue, the retirement fund would lose one year of solvency, so both the retirement program and the disability program would have enough money to pay full benefits until 2034.
Republicans say that simply redirecting the tax revenue would be taking money from retired workers to pay disabled workers -- robbing one fund to finance another.
Also, Republicans say they want changes in the disability program to reduce fraud and to encourage disabled workers to re-enter the workforce.
Democrats say they too want to reduce fraud and to encourage disabled workers who can work to re-enter the workforce. But they accuse Republicans of manufacturing a crisis by refusing to redirect tax revenue between the trust funds.
Congress faced with passing a long term Transportation bill after August recess
When is a highway bill not about a highway bill?
When it’s about Iran, de-funding Planned Parenthood and sanctuary cities.
And when it’s about an obscure Washington institution called the Export-Import Bank, Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals, the tax code, the federal deficits and the August congressional recess.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, is fond of saying members of Congress conduct policy in a political setting. And the calisthenics over the past few weeks on the highway bill attests to his thesis.
“Republicans don’t know how to get a transportation bill done,” charged House Democratic Caucus Chairman Xavier Becerra, California, a few weeks ago.
Federal highway dollars expired at the end of July, and Congress again rushed to plug the dyke. For starters, the House approved a five-month bill to keep federal transportation programs afloat in mid-July. Then the Senate crashed through a six-year, bipartisan bill authored by Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., and the top Democrat on the panel, Sen. Barbara Boxer, California.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., championed the effort, scheduling a rare Sunday session to help expeditiously complete the legislation before sending it to the House just before the start of the lengthy August recess.
But other issues intruded. Major bills often assume the mantle of “Christmas trees” right before major congressional recesses. That’s because lawmakers attempt to adorn those bills with every possible legislative bauble and ornament available. That’s where de funding Planned Parenthood came in. There was sanctuary cities tinsel. Export-Import Bank bubble lights and garlands for the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Call it Christmas in July.
But McConnell knew better than to be distracted by the shiny objects if he was going to wrap up his longer-term bill. He permitted but two decorations on this tree: one important to Democrats and one crucial for Republicans.
One amendment would reauthorize the Export-Import Bank, which helps American firms conduct business abroad and that expired in June. The other would repeal the Affordable Care Act.
Neither has anything to do with funding highway construction programs. But sometimes that’s the cost of doing business in the United States Senate. And, the spare ornamentation might actually help senators complete the bill and not find other distractions.
Conservatives such as Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, immediately flayed McConnell.
He decried the ObamaCare de-funding effort as a “show vote” -- particularly since stripping dollars for the health care program didn’t have the support to clear a procedural hurdle let alone become part of the highway bill.
Meantime, it was clear from the outset that the Ex-Im Bank commanded enough yeas to clear the procedural threshold and be attached to the legislation.
The Senate approved the bill -- wishing the House might entertain it before its members fled the Capitol for August. But House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., promptly squelched those hopes.
“We are not taking the Senate bill,” declared McCarthy, fretting about dumping a 1,000-page bill on his members just days before escaping the Beltway.
At that point, the House had already approved an interim highway bill stretching through mid-December. But the House GOP brain trust then rolled out a three-month patch through late October. The House was slated to depart Washington on July 30. But the House quickly approved the three-month measure, and McCarthy cut everyone loose a day early on July 29.
Ironically, even though the House was out of session on July 30, dozens of House members were spotted walking around the Capitol complex that day. Many had important meetings scheduled and didn’t want to cancel them.
Still, McCarthy’s opportune departure gambit achieved four objectives:
First, it jammed the Senate with the House’s short-term highway bills. It was a take-it-or-leave it proposition. Either the Senate would swallow hard-to-pass stopgap plans or highway programs would go belly-up at the end of July. It would be the Senate’s fault and nobody could hang the responsibility on the House.
Secondly, the maneuver absolved the House of having to immediately consider the Senate’s version of the highway measure. Members of Congress from both sides seemed all right with that, despite the bipartisan structure of the Senate legislation. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., noted his opposition of the Senate package and echoed McCarthy’s calendar concerns.
“In the short time that we have available, it would be not possible to consider that bill in any depth,” he said. “Certainly the Senate doesn't expect us to take a 1,000-page bill and just, you know, no questions asked and pass it and send it to the president.”
Third, the House’s decision to skip town on the Senate and its highway measure also protected its members from a nasty political skirmish.
Remember the Ex-Im Bank? Eliminating the institution is a cause celebre for the Republican right. Both the House and Senate let its charter expire at the end of June -- even though there’s sufficient, bipartisan support to renew the institution in both bodies of Congress.
The procedural vote on Ex-Im in the Senate scored a whopping 67 yeas. The vote in favor of the actual amendment racked up 64 ayes. But there’s a conservative, Tea Party-aligned core of House members who are repulsed at the prospect of reauthorizing the bank. They would have immediately balked at the Senate highway bill on those grounds alone. Any potential changes to the Senate’s bill -- including stripping out Ex-Im -- could have protracted the process and prompted the House to send an altered bill back to the Senate.
Fourth, this effort preserves a conservative policy goal. Ex-Im remains mothballed. That empowers House conservatives to return to their districts during the August recess and affirm that the Export-Import Bank is dead.
For now.
Boehner’s long expected the Senate to include a provision to reauthorize the bank in a “must-pass” piece of legislation. A long-term highway bill could constitute such a vehicle.
And even though highway programs are on life support now through late October, the onus is now on the House to author a bona fide highway measure, pass it and huddle in a House/Senate conference committee this autumn to arrive at a final, merged bill to send to President Obama.
Still, even some House Republicans want to salvage the Ex-Im Bank.
The House Rules Committee is the final gateway to the floor for most pieces of legislation. An effort to renew the bank surfaced on a rather obscure, but noteworthy vote on the night of July 28 as the GOP prepped its three-month highway measure for debate the next day.
Rep. Stephen Fincher, R-Tenn., backs the Export-Import Bank and drew up an amendment to extend its life through the fall of 2019. The Rules committee rejected the inclusion of Fincher’s amendment in debate on the emergency highway bill, but only by 7-to-6 vote.
That vote is important because members of the committee serve at the pleasure of the House speaker. The committee is set up in a way to always favor the leadership -- which for now isn’t willing to reauthorize Ex-Im.
And on the vote to include the Fincher amendment, GOP Reps. Steve Stivers, Ohio, Dan Newhouse, Washington, bucked the rest of the Republicans on the panel.
They voted yes along with all Democrats, which triggered the close vote in the Rules committee. It’s been years since the committee has experienced such a tight tally on a major issue -- and significant that not one but two GOPers voted against their fellow Republicans.
At his final press conference before the August respite, Boehner was asked by reporters about a final resolution to the highway bill when lawmakers reconvene in September.
“I’m confident as we get into this fall we’re going to have pretty smooth sailing,” chirped Boehner with a smirk, drawing laughter from the press corps.
Perhaps the “smooth sailing” refers to solving actual highway policy issues. Settling all of the ancillary topics are the real challenge -- because it’s obvious the debate so far about the highway bill hasn’t been about the highway bill.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
-
Tit for Tat ? ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) — A statue of abolitionist Frederick Douglass was ripped from its base in Rochester on the an...
-
NEW YORK (AP) — As New York City faced one of its darkest days with the death toll from the coronavirus surging past 4,000 — more th...
