Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
AP’s Today in History for November 3rd
Iran-Contra scandal begins to unfold; Chile’s Salvador Allende takes office; Carol Moseley-Braun is first black woman elected to U.S. Senate; Former pro-wrestler Jesse Ventura elected Minnesota governor.
Breakfast Tune Shane; Persian folk song on five-string banjo
Something to think about, Breakfast News & Blogs below
Experts fear impact of China lifting trade ban on tiger and rhino parts
Jonathan Watts, The Guardian
China’s decision to loosen a 25-year ban on the trade of tiger bones and rhino horn will put pressure on poor foreign nations as well as endangered global wildlife, according to experts on the illegal trade in animals.
Government officials in Beijing say the introduction of quotas for these body parts to be used in traditional Chinese medicine will allow them to manage legal demand, but conservationists say the move will cause more conflict in African and Asian countries that are trying to limit the illegal supply.
The risks of a knock-on effect are already evident in the case of pangolins, a scaly anteater that has become the most illegally-trafficked animal in the world.
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Something to think about over coffee prozac
WALL STREET MOVES TO GUT POST-CRISIS FINANCIAL RULES
Susan Antilla, The Intercept
ON THE CAMPAIGN trail, Donald Trump frequently pledged to “dismantle” the Dodd-Frank financial reforms passed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. On Wednesday, with the Federal Reserve’s release of a proposal to roll back capital and liquidity requirements, he caught his big whale.
Those requirements, imposed by the Dodd-Frank Act, were put in place to ensure that critical financial institutions could weather economic storms. The liquidity ratio was only finalized in September 2014. And yet, just four years later, on October 31, the Federal Reserve announced proposed changes that would reduce liquidity requirements by almost a third for banks such as Capital One and Charles Schwab with assets of $250 billion to $700 billion. Smaller banks would have even fewer restrictions.
In the lone dissent on the Fed’s four-member board, Lael Brainard said she could not support the proposal, which, among other things, would “weaken the buffers that are core to the resilience of our system.”
The proposal was one of a series of dramatic changes pushed forward by the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, which Congress passed in May with bipartisan support. That bill also weakened the Volcker Rule, implemented in 2015 to limit banks’ ability to make speculative proprietary investments — another centerpiece of Dodd-Frank designed to rein in potentially fatal risk-taking by big banks.
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