October 15, 2024 | Premium Service | Our trip to Washington last week was more than a little productive and included several surprises. The gap between what is reported by the mainstream media – all of the mainstream media – and the reality on the ground is growing even as the November election approaches.
Homestyle Deserts, Peekskill, NY
The big media continues to spew reports about the close presidential election contest, but in Washington Democrats are largely and notably silent. Republicans are quietly anticipating a win for the White House and the Senate. And as usual, much of what is occurring in Washington under President Joe Biden makes so sense at all.
For example, CFPB Director Rohit Chopra may be about to kill the new Basel III capital rule for large TBTF banks. After the mugging of FDIC Chairman Jelena McWilliams in 2021, this latest tantrum is most unseemly. Chopra refuses to support the revised proposal offered by the Federal Reserve Board and Biden OCC, and is supporting the Republican members of the FDIC board in opposing the rule. This situation illustrates why former President Trump wanted to revise Executive Order 12866 to force agency heads to report up to the White House on policy issues where Congress has not provided explicit instructions.
In opposing Basel III, Chopra is doing the bidding not of President Biden, but rather Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). Yet it must be said that the big banks are very happy to have no revision to Basel III at all. If Chopra does not relent soon, then the Basel bank capital process will fail and an entirely new Basel III rule will need to be crafted in Trump II. While Warren flexes her political muscles, she may be dooming the Basel Accord to eventual death in the US.
Going from the sublime to the ridiculous, the crowd of aspiring cabinet members for Trump II is growing. In this regard, we note that Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick is not the chairman of the Trump II transition team, contrary to what you may have read in the New York Post last week. In fact, the veteran New York investment banker is one of almost a dozen Trump transition chairs. While VP Kamala Harris is already vetting cabinet members, Trump has yet to appoint a transition manager and reportedly will not do so until after the election.
Lutnick's bizarre comments to the media last week reportedly caused astonishment and anger in Palm Beach and on Capitol Hill, where he is barely known to most members of the GOP congressional leadership. Lutnick's gratuitous comment about members of the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 being "radioactive" also caused considerable angst on Capitol Hill. Stay tuned.
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