Press Releases

Week in Review


 

Washington, March 4, 2016 -

Committee Passes Bills Supporting Main Street Growth and Economic Freedom

The Financial Services Committee approved 10 bills on Wednesday that aredesigned to help grow our economy and provide hardworking Americans with greater economic freedom,” said Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) in his opening statement.

One of those bills would “require financial regulators to tailor rules to ensure they are appropriate for small banks,” the American Banker reported in its coverage.  Another bill approved by the committee would “reform flood insurance with a shot of private sector innovation,” The Hill reported.  “The bill also had broad support from homebuilders, insurance companies and fiscal hawks, who said it would reduce spending and taxpayer risk while giving the housing and insurance industries clearer guidance.”

To view information about all the bills approved by the committee this week, please click here.

Task Force Focuses on Helping Developing World Fight Terror

Many nations simply do not have the means or technical knowledge to combat terror financing, nor is there an international coordinating body to help them, witnesses told the Task Force to Investigate Terrorism Financing at its hearing on Tuesday.  The lack of consistency among various national and international agencies involved in fighting terrorist financing was identified as an area of concern.

“Combating terror finance is and must continue to be an international effort.  The countries of today’s world are more interconnected than they’ve ever been before, especially when focusing on the financial system and the global trade system.  With this much integration, the weakest link in the system becomes the target for exploitation by criminal organizations and terrorist groups,” said Task Force Chairman Michael Fitzpatrick (R-PA).

One of the panel’s witnesses, James Adams, a former World Bank official, warned that developing countries’ systems could make them “preferred targets for criminal and terrorist actors. Gaps in bank supervision capacities and weak technical skills make these countries attractive targets; moreover governance and corruption issues within government bureaucracies can often undermine even the efforts of honest governments in these areas.” 


MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

Rep. Keith Rothfus - Man-Made Headwinds Against the Economy

Nearly seven years after the Great Recession ended, persistent anemic economic growth should force us to ask: since a monetary policy unprecedented in expansionary scope has failed to produce even average GDP growth, what went wrong?

Weekend Must Reads

AEI | Rebuilding our moral consensus

The answer is not for left and right to compromise away their core principles in the name of implementing some least-common-denominator policy agenda.   On the contrary, we must continue the fierce, rigorous competition of ideas and theories about how to achieve these objectives.

Wall Street Journal |The Transformation of Economics

Like most economics professors, I have spent my academic lifetime examining the economic and public-policy effects of issues involving the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services—what is known as political economy. There is, however, a “political economy” to the very act of producing and disseminating economic knowledge and examining public policies. And that political economy and my assessment of it has changed over a career spanning more than half a century.

Investor’s Business Daily Bernie's Bitter Class-Clingers a Function of Bad Obama Economy

2016: Exit polls from Saturday’s Democratic primary in South Carolina show Bernie Sanders continues to steal Hillary Clinton’s youth vote — which is no accident. Millennials are most hurt by the weak Obama recovery that Clinton defends.

In the News

Wall Street Journal | Hiring in U.S. Rebounds, but Wage Growth Slips

Reuters |U.S. regulators vote to keep MetLife's high-risk tag

Morning Consult |House Financial Services Committee Advances 10 Bills

The Hill |Flood insurance reform bill clears committee

Morning Consult |House GOP Task Force to Focus on Limiting Costs of Financial Regulations

Wall Street Journal |The Next Dodd-Frank Headache for Banks: Living Wills

American Banker |House Reg Relief Bill Heads for Key Vote

Bloomberg BNA |House Panel Oks SEC Forum, Risk Retention Bills

Business Insurance |Flood insurance bill approved by House committee

Insurance Journal |House Committee Passes Private Flood Insurance Bill

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