MORNING MESSAGE
The
pharmaceutical corporation Pfizer will acquire pharmaceutical corporation
Allergan in a deal valued at $160 billion. My colleague Richard Eskow called
this combination of Pfizer (the maker of Viagra) and Allergan (the maker of
Botox) “a merger of false desire and false beauty.” ... the resulting merged
company will make and sell products in the same places it makes and sells them
now. The same executives will occupy the same buildings. It will receive the
same taxpayer-funded U.S. services, infrastructure, courts and military
protection that it receives now. But the company will now claim it is “based” in
tax-haven Ireland and thereby dodge U.S. taxation.
Pfizer Merger Prompts Tax Reform Talk
Dem
candidates oppose Pfizer merger. The Hill: “The $160 billion deal, announced
Monday, would be the largest-ever corporate inversion … Clinton said that in the
coming weeks she will ‘propose specific steps to prevent these kind of
transactions …’ … Sanders added that the Obama administration should exercise
its authority to halt the merger … O’Malley called the merger ‘fundamentally
unfair.'”
Republicans
use merger to push corporate tax reform. The Hill: “‘So let’s stop the
political hand-wringing and get to work creating a U.S. tax code that’s built
for growth,’ said new House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, meanwhile, said it was Republicans to
blame for blocking legislation on inversions.”
Jared
Bernstein laments the “cramped tax debate” in the W. Post: “If you’re a
Republican running for president, you can’t raise taxes. If you’re a Democrat
running for president, you can’t raise taxes on 97 percent of households … [We]
need more revenue than we’re set to collect simply to keep up with population
growth, demographics and interest on the debt.”
Conservatives For Bernie?
Some
Republicans are switching registrations to vote for Sanders. The Atlantic:
“These Republicans for Sanders defy neat categorization. Some are fed up with
the status quo in Washington … Others have voted Republican for years, but feel
alarmed by what they see as the sharp right turn the party has taken … Sanders’s
promise to wrest power away from Wall Street and return it to the American
middle class taps into the same vein of populist anger that fueled the rise of
the Tea Party.”
Sanders
gets support from rapper Killer Mike. The Hill: “The rapper endorsed Sanders
for president in June after the candidate cited his support for restoring the
Voting Rights Act … Killer Mike also touted Sanders’ stance on health care being
a right of every citizen, ending the war on drugs, and that education should be
free for every citizen.”
Ethanol
rule could hamper Clinton in Iowa. Politico: “The [upcoming] decision,
concerning how many billions of gallons of the corn-based biofuel must be
blended into the nation’s gasoline supply, threatens to create a political bind
for Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, who may have to decide once again
how far to distance herself from President Barack Obama…”
Breakfast Sides
Stress
tests may get tougher. NYT: “A senior official at the Federal Reserve … said
on Monday that the Fed was discussing changes to the test that could make it
harder for banks to pass … banks would have to have a higher amount of minimum
capital left after suffering the theoretical losses envisioned in the stress
tests.”
China
and US talk trade. NYT: “…the United States and China said on Monday that
they had made progress on sticking points, including preventing the theft of
trade secrets and opening the Chinese market more broadly to American
multinationals. [But there was a lack of larger breakthroughs on bigger issues —
like negotiations for a broad trade deal…”
Progressive
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