Sorry for today's lateness. Here are today's Underbuzzed stories.
- I know I've been railing for a while (including in today's Outlook) that Democrats oughtta call the Republican bluff on raising the debt ceiling. Well, no sooner than I posted today's Outlook, I saw on twitter that there's a petition calling on Democrats to do it. You can find the petition here, if you're interested in signing.
- The Obama Administration is making an awful mistake. And it should know better. Under the Bush Administration, several states saw that bank excesses in the mortgage-securitization industry were posing a threat. They tried to stop it. But the Bush Administration knew better. And it actually stopped state agencies from enforcing state regulations that might have nipped the mortgage crisis in the bud. Now the Obama Administration is doing the same thing.
- For months, if not years, both the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and some Republicans have resisted the call (even when it became the law of the land in Dodd-Frank) for restoring the position limits that cap how much speculation is done on oil futures by parties other than buyers and sellers of oil. The basis for this resistance has been the claim that there are no studies linking speculation to the price of oil. That was CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler's stance when he might with Democratic senators last week. Well, even though that's been a disprovable claim for a while now, today we got a big one. An academic study from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst blaming speculators for the high price of gas and calling on the CFTC to do something about it. Independently, a report from PIRG in Illinois estimates that you're paying an extra dollar per gallon every time you fill up because of speculators. What are you gonna tell Sen. Sanders now, Chairman Gensler?
Got your own underbuzzed stories today? Share 'em in the comments, as always.
Follow Senior Producer Jonathan Larsen (@jtlarsen) on Twitter