Landlord lobby brags about blocking executive order on housing crisis
Also: layoffs expand beyond Big Tech following record corporate profits
It’s not every day you see lobbyists admit to having steered a politician away from doing something good: it’s just bad PR for both parties. But that’s exactly what the landlord lobby group National Apartment Association did on Wednesday, gloating that its “advocacy helped avert an executive order.” Amid a housing crisis that has seen skyrocketing rents, Biden considered an executive order protecting renters from eviction and even punishing landlords for price gouging. A quick and easy remedy for one of the most salient political issues facing Americans today, but I guess that’s what $2.1 million in lobbying buys you. That and a “watered down” Renters Bill of Rights.
FEEL LIKE THIS SHOULD BE A BIGGER STORY
Here come the layoffs. Corporate layoffs have expanded beyond Big Tech companies to encompass the likes of IBM, Dow, and SAP, per a little-noticed report by the Wall Street Journal. The layoffs evince “a shift in sentiment inside executive suites” with regard to employment, the report states, an ominous sign of where the economy might be trending.
Always read the financial press; their op-ed sections suck but the hard reporting is like actionable intelligence for the investor class, which can be quite useful. For example, the report references a private warning from Capital Economics to its clients that there is “mounting evidence of [economic] weakness below the surface.” That’s quite a different tone than what you’ll find in the popular press, which is pretty exuberant about the economy — “Biden’s economy dodges recession,” a typical headline from Politico yesterday.
While it’s true that employment still remains quite high, the growth is starting to trend downward, the predictable effect of the Federal Reserve’s aggressive interest rate hikes. The question is how much farther it will slide, which is hard to ascertain given the lag time between rate hikes and their effects on employment.
Free speech for me but not for thee. Elon Musk’s Twitter caved to pressure from India to censor a BBC documentary critical of prime minister Narendra Modi, reported my colleagues at The Intercept. Elon’s who, me? response to the story was priceless: the man who promises he can build a civilization on Mars wants you to be more realistic about what’s possible for him to fix on Twitter.
Spending ‘boom’ by the rich on luxury goods. Spending on luxury goods has skyrocketed, reports FT, which says a lot about who all this belt tightening — see the wave of layoffs I described above — is really for. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Israel refuses U.S. request for missiles to Ukraine. Here’s the government we give $3.8 billion in military aid to each year, refusing to send missiles we sent them to Ukraine. One of the most comical aspects to this is that Israel doesn’t even need the missiles, having purchased them in the 1960s to defend against airstrikes from Egypt and Syria.
Meanwhile we just finished conducting “Juniper Oak,” the biggest U.S.-Israel joint military exercise ever — as if to underscore our unconditional support. This during the bloodiest raid Israeli forces have conducted on the West Bank in years, nine Palestinians.
Just humiliating.
Debt ceiling disaster is closer than it appears. Things are about to get gnarly with the debt ceiling. A lot of people seem to assume that the crisis will be averted for the simple reason that is has been in the past. But as congress wizard Dan Schuman pointed out, one of the concessions won by Republican hardliners led by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) was House rules changes that make it far easier to prevent a deal that would avert a debt default.
Good thing Biden’s Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, disparaged arguably the best way out of this mess — minting a trillion dollar coin — as “a gimmick.” And what would you call the made-up debt ceiling?
Democracy Dies in Low Rent Opinion Pieces. After laying off 20 newsroom employees, The Washington Post announced the hiring of seven opinion writers, including senior employees from conservative orgs like the American Enterprise Institute and National Review. Here’s a taste of one of these luminaries’ contributions to the discourse:
Meet the new boss, worse than the old boss. President Biden’s new chief of staff, Jeff Zients, is the consummate corporate Democrat. Multiple companies owned or overseen by Zients have been forced to pay millions of dollars in settlements for alleged Medicare and Medicaid fraud. Was Rick Scott not available for the job? You can find a useful overview of Zients’ background compliments of my Intercept colleagues here.
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