Tag: Market Regulation

Posted inPolicy Topics

2023 was a bad year for banking and 2024 could be worse

by Marco Rosaire Rossi

After the Great Reces­sion, law­mak­ers promised that the reforms they insti­tut­ed secured America’s bank­ing sec­tor. How­ev­er, as long as the Unit­ed States sticks to a pre­dom­i­nate­ly pri­vate bank­ing sec­tor — one that can­not oper­ate counter-cycli­cal­ly nor ded­i­cate financ­ing to social needs — that promise of long-term secu­ri­ty is elusive.

Posted inEconomic Security, Legislative Advocacy, Policy Topics

U.S. Senate passes $1.1 trillion, giveaway-stuffed “cromnibus” bill in late night vote

by Andrew Villeneuve

Ear­li­er this evening, fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, the Unit­ed States Sen­ate passed the mas­sive appro­pri­a­tions bill that has become known as the CRom­nibus, send­ing the leg­is­la­tion to Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma, who is pre­pared to sign it with­out delay. The final vote was fifty-six to forty; four sen­a­tors did not vote. The […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics

AT&T throws in the towel, abandons scheme to buy T‑Mobile from Deutsche Telekom

by Andrew Villeneuve

For once, fed­er­al reg­u­la­tors have done their job and stood up to Wall Street: AT&T said late on Mon­day after­noon that it had with­drawn its $39 bil­lion takeover bid for T‑Mobile USA, acknowl­edg­ing that it could not over­come oppo­si­tion from the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion to cre­at­ing the nation’s biggest cell­phone ser­vice provider. The com­pa­ny said in […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics

I‑1183, if implemented, could generate $81 million plus in annual sales for Costco

by Andrew Villeneuve

Ever since Cost­co and its exec­u­tives first start­ed mak­ing noise about dereg­u­lat­ing and pri­va­tiz­ing our state’s liquor con­trol sys­tem, it’s been appar­ent that their dri­ving moti­va­tion for push­ing pri­va­ti­za­tion is because they want our state’s liquor stores’ busi­ness for them­selves — not because they think “get­ting the state out of the liquor busi­ness” (which is […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics

Washington’s minimum wage to rise to $9.04 an hour beginning in January

by Andrew Villeneuve

Wash­ing­ton State’s min­i­mum wage will rise thir­­ty-sev­en cents an hour to $9.04 begin­ning in Jan­u­ary, the Depart­ment of Labor & Indus­tries announced today. Ini­tia­tive 688, which vot­ers over­whelm­ing­ly passed in 1998, requires the Depart­ment of Labor & Indus­tries to adjust the min­i­mum wage annu­al­ly to account for infla­tion. (I‑688, which NPI’s Steve Zemke was involved […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics

U.S. Department of Justice files suit to block AT&T/T‑Mobile merger

by Andrew Villeneuve

This news may come as as a nasty shock to Wall Street (which is used to sweet-talk­ing reg­u­la­tors into get­ting what it wants) but to us, it is a very pleas­ant and wel­come sur­prise: The Depart­ment of Jus­tice today filed a civ­il antitrust law­suit to block AT&T Inc.’s pro­posed acqui­si­tion of T‑Mobile USA Inc. The […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Humor & Satire, Policy Topics

Costco to Washington State Legislature: “Have we got a deal for you…”

by Steve

From: Cost­co To: Mem­bers, Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture RE: Your finan­cial trou­bles Dear law­mak­ers, As one of Washington’s largest pub­­licly-trad­ed com­pa­nies, Cost­co feels an oblig­a­tion to self­less­ly assist its state in weath­er­ing the ongo­ing fis­cal storm that has had such a dev­as­tat­ing impact on cit­i­zens and con­sumers alike. Last year the vot­ers of our state rejected […]