Republicans struggled forward with the effort to make the Obama administration go away.  In 2010, the Democrats passed the so-called Dodd-Frank Act.  That legislation led to the imposition of about 28,000 new regulations on banks and credit unions, greatly increasing compliance costs.  As a result, many small institutions have been absorbed into larger institutions with deeper pockets.  The Dodd-Frank Bill created an Orderly Liquidation Authority for banks that do fail.  It created a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.[1]  All of these were wildly unpopular with Republicans.  House Republicans passed the Financial Choice Act.   It exempts banks from many of the Dodd-Frank restriction in return for a requirement that they maintain large cash reserves.  The bill now goes to the Senate.  There it is likely to be subjected to a substantial re-write.[2]  Meanwhile, Republican senators have been trying to create a less-horrible version of the American Health Care Act (ACHA) previously passed by Republican representatives.[3]  The Senate plan postpones cuts to Medicaid for seven years[4] and maintains—at a lower level—the subsidies to low-income earners.[5]

Elsewhere, the World Economic Forum[6] (the folks who bring you Davos) reported that many Western countries—but the United States most of all—are suffering from a huge gap between the savings needed for retirement and actual savings for retirement.[7]  The American gap amounted to $28 trillion in 2015 and is projected to reach $137 trillion in 2050.  Cat food-salad sandwiches and living in an ElderCommune being unlikely to appeal as the “golden years,” one might anticipate a fight among Baby Boomers as the lower 80 percent seek to draw on the savings of the upper 20 percent.[8]

All of these were important developments for good or ill.  However, Americans seem to have focused more tightly on the controversies surrounding President Donald Trump.  To begin with, former FBI director James Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee (which has been investigating possible collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign) that the president made him uncomfortable in several private conversations, that he had made detailed notes of these conversations, and that he had arranged for these notes to be leaked to the press after his dismissal in hopes to triggering the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the man who had fired him.  Next came Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his porous memory.  Sessions told generally hostile former colleagues that he fired Comey for reasons unrelated to the FBI’s investigation of the “collusion” investigation.[9]   To round-out the week in suitable fashion, New York City’s “Shakespeare in the Park” series ran a version of “Julius Caesar” with a Trump look-alike in the title role.  Back in 2013 a square-state theater company used “Caesar” to imagine Barack Obama slain by right-wingers.  Now a right-winger is portrayed as meeting his death at the hands of women and minorities.[10]

[1] Just for fun, let’s imagine a Consumer Information Protection Bureau with its own “fiduciary  rule” requiring newspapers and other print media and television networks to “act in the best interests of their clients.”

[2] “Issue of the week: Dodd-Frank under fire,” The Week, 23 June 2017, p. 34.

[3] “Trumpcare: The GOPs secret plan,” The Week, 23 June 2017, p. 17.

[4] Actually, this is pretty clever.  Seven years from 2017 would be 2024.  Given the way that the parties alternate in the White House, a Democrat would be walking in the front door just as the Medicaid cuts took effect.

[5] One federal court has held that those subsidies are illegal because the original Affordable Care Act (ACA) made no provision for appropriating the money to pay for the subsidies.  The Obama administration appealed this decision.  The case has not yet reached the Supreme Court.  When/if it does, that will be the end of all subsidies and the whole system of “mandated” insurance for poor people who don’t have employer-supplied medical insurance will collapse in a heart-beat.   Republicans hope to use this as leverage.  Democrats have been blaming the “uncertainty” caused by the Republican repeal-and-replace effort among insurers for the collapse of the health-care market-places.

[6] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Economic_Forum

[7] “Retirement: Will Boomers work forever?” The Week, 23 June 2017, p. 32.

[8] See Richard Reeves “America’s hidden class system,” The Week, 23 June 2017, p. 12.

[9] “Comey: did he damage Trump?” The Week, 23 June 2017, p. 6; “Sessions denies collusion as Trump eyes Mueller,” The Week, 23 June 2017, p. 4.

[10] “Julius Caesar: Assassinating Trump on stage,” The Week, 23 June 2017, p. 17.