Category: Regulation

New York’s vaccine czar called county officials to gauge their loyalty to Cuomo amid sexual harassment investigation

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/cuomo-schwartz-vaccine-calls/2021/03/14/18f2e320-8448-11eb-9ca6-54e187ee4939_story.html?fbclid=IwAR1_kucY6IuuqosArhyJ203JxSha3ZcmndHtvDX6URSZod-bqCmgxCZBB0k

Excerpt:

New York’s “vaccine czar” — a longtime adviser to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo — phoned county officials in the past two weeks in attempts to gauge their loyalty to the embattled governor amid an ongoing sexual harassment investigation, according to multiple officials.

One Democratic county executive was so unsettled by the outreach from Larry Schwartz, head of the state’s vaccine rollout, that the executive on Friday filed notice of an impending ethics complaint with the public integrity unit of the state attorney general’s office, the official told The Washington Post. The executive feared the county’s vaccine supply could suffer if Schwartz was not pleased with the executive’s response to his questions about support of the governor.

The executive said the conversation with Schwartz came in proximity to a separate conversation with another Cuomo administration official about vaccine distribution.

Author(s): Amy Brittain, Josh Dawsey

Publication Date: 14 March 2021

Publication Site: Washington Post

Borenstein: Pension cuts for California public employee felons upheld

Mary Pat Campbell
Borenstein: Pension cuts for California public employee felons upheld

Excerpt:

No, California public employees can’t commit felonies on the job and then keep their pensions earned while they were perpetrating their crimes.

“When misconduct turns into outright criminality, it is beyond dispute that public service is not being faithfully performed,” the state Court of Appeal has concluded. “To give such a person a pension would further reward misconduct.”

The February ruling in a “felony forfeiture” case from Contra Costa and a similar December appellate court ruling in one from Los Angeles County correctly reject arguments from two firefighters that they are entitled to their full retirement pay despite their felonious conduct while working.

Author(s): Daniel Borenstein

Publication Date: 12 March 2021

Publication Site: Mercury News

McAfee Indicted for Fraud, Money Laundering Conspiracy Crimes

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.ai-cio.com/news/mcafee-indicted-fraud-money-laundering-conspiracy-crimes/

Excerpt:

John McAfee, founder of cybersecurity software company McAfee, has been indicted on multiple charges stemming from two purported schemes relating to the allegedly fraudulent promotion of cryptocurrencies. Jimmy Watson, who served as an executive adviser on McAfee’s “cryptocurrency team,” was also charged in the indictment.

According to the allegations in the complaint, which was unsealed in Manhattan federal court, the first of the two schemes involved a fraudulent practice called “scalping,” also known as a “pump-and-dump” scheme. As part of the alleged scheme, McAfee, Watson, and other associates allegedly bought large quantities of publicly traded cryptocurrency altcoins at low market prices, knowing that McAfee planned to publicly endorse them on his Twitter account, which had approximately 784,000 followers.

Author(s): Michael Katz

Publication Date: 12 March 2021

Publication Site: ai-CIO

Group Wants Life Underwriters to Post COVID-19 Standards

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2021/03/01/group-wants-life-underwriters-to-post-covid-19-standards/

Excerpt:

The Consumer Federation of America says life insurers should voluntarily disclose the changes they are making in life insurance underwriting procedures and standards as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Washington-based federation says life insurers ought to at least answer basic questions, such as whether they will require applicants to use COVID-19 vaccines, what kinds of tests and test results they’ll require and whether and how standards might vary by applicant age.

Author(s): Allison Bell

Publication Date: 1 March 2021

Publication Site: Think Advisor

DiNapoli: DOH Needs to Step Up Enforcement of Patient Safety Violations

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.osc.state.ny.us/press/releases/2021/03/dinapoli-doh-needs-step-enforcement-patient-safety-violations

Excerpt:

The State Department of Health (DOH) has failed to hold accountable certain health care providers including hospitals, nursing homes and individual nurses, for patient safety violations and use its power under the law to impose stronger fines. Additionally, DOH does not ensure amounts collected are directed to increase patient safety, as required, according to an audit released today by State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli.

“Lisa’s Law was created to make health care in New York safer and give patients the knowledge they need to make informed decisions,” DiNapoli said. “The Department of Health generally has improved the public’s access to health care information. Too often, however, it gives negligent health care providers a slap on the wrist by not issuing financial penalties that can act as a deterrent against future incidents and help fund improvements in patient safety. DOH needs to do better.”

Author(s): Thomas DiNapoli

Publication Date: 10 March 2021

Publication Site: Office of the NY State Comptroller

Cuomo Killing the Disabled and the Elderly: This Time It’s Personal

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://marypatcampbell.substack.com/p/cuomo-killing-the-disabled-and-the

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Excerpt:

But the other problem, of course, was that Cuomo wasn’t the only governor who sent sick people back into nursing homes. In addition to New York, there was also Michigan, California, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

Except it seems Cuomo was the only one who had his staff falsify data. So perhaps the others can get away with just admitting they made decisions that were very unwise.

As it is, the New York state legislature is starting an impeachment investigation, and I assume they’re not going to half-ass it like other impeachments we have heard tell of.

Author(s): Mary Pat Campbell

Publication Date: 11 March 2021

Publication Site: STUMP on Substack

The world is far from hitting its target for carbon emissions

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/03/05/the-world-is-far-from-hitting-its-target-for-carbon-emissions

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Excerpt:

LAST YEAR’S clear spring skies foreshadowed it and the numbers bear it out: covid-19 lockdowns caused a sharp drop in emissions from burning fossil fuels, the largest such drop since the second world war. The latest data, published on March 3rd by the Global Carbon Project, an international consortium of climate researchers, puts industrial carbon-dioxide emissions produced in 2020 at 34bn tonnes, 2.6bn tonnes (7%) lower than in 2019.

Clearly, 2020 was an unusual year and emissions have already started to rebound. What is more, the drop came at a huge cost to economies and societies. Yet, in order to meet the Paris agreement’s goal of limiting global warming to between 1.5°C and 2°C above pre-industrial levels, more big cuts will be needed for the rest of the decade. “We need a cut in emissions of about the size of the fall [from the pandemic] every two years, but by completely different methods,” said Corinne Le Quéré, of the University of East Anglia, one of the lead researchers on the study.

Publication Date: 5 March 2021

Publication Site: The Economist

Warren’s Wealth Tax Enriches Foreign Billionaires

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/warrens-wealth-tax-enriches-foreign-billionaires-11615227317

Excerpt:

According to estimates conducted for Ms. Warren by University of California-Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, only about 100,000 families, or “less than 1 out of 1,000,” would pay the tax, which they estimate would raise “around $3 trillion over the ten-year budget window 2023-2032, of which $0.4 trillion would come from the billionaire 1% surtax.”

Yet Tax Foundation economists discovered a surprising consequence when we ran the proposal through our general equilibrium tax model last year. The model showed that despite being a massive tax, raising nearly $300 billion a year, the tax had only a modest impact on gross domestic product. How can that be?

The model predicted that wealthy U.S. citizens would sell their assets at fire-sale prices to pay the tax. Because the U.S. is an open economy, many of these assets would be bought by foreign investors at the discounted prices. Thus, while a wealth tax wouldn’t shrink the U.S. economy much, it would change who owns U.S. assets. What Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg sell, Jack Ma, Carlos Slim and the sultan of Brunei might buy — and they’d be exempt from the U.S. wealth tax.

Author(s): Scott A. Hodge

Publication Date: 8 March 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

Exposing Corporate Climate Denial

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.dailyposter.com/p/exposing-corporate-climate-denial

Excerpt:

Meanwhile, investor efforts to require political spending disclosures at individual companies were halted on many occasions by large asset managers like BlackRock and Vanguard, which have regularly used their immense shareholder voting power to shield companies from transparency.

Now with a new SEC chairman, transparency advocates see an opportunity for progress. 

“People want to know who companies are bankrolling,” said U.S. Rep. Andy Levin (D-Mich.). H.R. 1, the democracy reform package passed by House Democrats earlier this month, includes a bill from Levin to repeal the Republican measure blocking the SEC from requiring companies to disclose their political spending. 

Author(s): Julia Rock

Publication Date: 10 March 2021

Publication Site: Daily Poster

Fed Policy Is Smothering Private Lending

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/fed-policy-is-smothering-private-lending-11615250626

Excerpt:

The 25 largest U.S. banks currently hold 45.7% of their assets in loans and leases, according to Fed data released Friday, down from 54.1% this time last year. Meantime, their year-over-year holdings of Treasury and agency securities increased 33.5%. This reflects more-stringent borrowing standards and diminished loan demand. But it also reveals a subtle yet persistent change in how banks operate.

Banks have pulled back from making risky loans in favor of engaging more directly with the Fed — avoiding the type of lending that spawned stricter regulatory standards after 2008 while readily accommodating the Fed’s expressed satisfaction with an “ample reserves” regime. Bank lending to small businesses has remained low throughout the postcrisis years, with the largest declines in small-business lending at large banks, as shown in a 2018 report commissioned by the Small Business Administration.

The switch is understandable. The cost of regulatory compliance is a huge disincentive for banks, and selling government-backed securities to the Fed and piling up reserves can turn out to be a profitable business model.

Author(s): Judy Shelton

Publication Date: 8 March 2021

Publication Site: Wall Street Journal

The end of LIBOR to be anything but simple

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.pionline.com/investing/end-libor-be-anything-simple

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Excerpt:

LIBOR, which has been plagued by cases of bank manipulation, is set at different currencies, including the U.S. dollar, British pound sterling and euro. New LIBOR-based contracts will cease at the end of 2021, but in November, the Intercontinental Exchange Inc. announced that the ICE Benchmark Administration, which administers LIBOR, would explore ceasing the most utilized U.S. dollar LIBOR tenors in June 2023 instead of late 2021. On March 5, Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority confirmed the 2021 and 2023 cessation dates for LIBOR, although it retains the option for a synthetic calculation if needed.

The extension to June 2023 would allow more time for outstanding contracts to mature, thereby reducing the chance of potential disruptions, U.S. regulators said in a December statement.

But the majority of contracts extend beyond mid-2023.

Author(s): Brian Croce

Publication Date: 8 March 2021

Publication Site: Pensions & Investments

Libor Enters ‘Final Chapter’ as Global Regulators Set End Dates

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-05/libor-s-end-now-within-sight-as-u-k-s-fca-sets-final-dates

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Excerpt:

Regulators kicked off the final countdown for the London interbank offered rate Friday, ordering banks to be ready for the end of a much maligned benchmark that’s been at the heart of the international financial system for decades.

The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority confirmed that the final fixings for most rates will take place at end of this year, with just a few key dollar tenors set to linger for a further 18 months.

Author(s): William Shaw, Silla Brush, Alex Harris

Publication Date: 5 March 2021

Publication Site: Bloomberg