The right’s playbook for crypto, climate

From: POLITICO's Morning Money - Friday Aug 18,2023 12:02 pm

Aug 18, 2023

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QUICK FIX

Conservatives gearing up for a Republican White House are already crafting plans to overhaul cryptocurrency regulation and reverse President Joe Biden’s climate finance initiatives.

The agency-by-agency playbook is coming together as part of a wide-ranging presidential transition roadmap — dubbed Project 2025 — that’s being organized by the Heritage Foundation.

On crypto, the plan calls for the SEC and the CFTC to pursue something they’ve resisted for years: A joint rule defining when a digital asset will be regulated as a security or a commodity.

It sounds boring, but it could be a boon to the crypto industry, which has long sought to escape the SEC’s “regulation by enforcement” and its leadership’s prevailing view that many digital tokens are de facto investment products requiring stricter oversight. The plan would also prevent the Federal Reserve from issuing a government-run central bank digital currency.

“There is a legitimate role for regulation of cryptos, but we don’t want the government using regulation to crowd them out,” Stephen Moore, a Heritage Foundation fellow and former Trump Federal Reserve candidate, told MM.

On climate, Project 2025 wants the next GOP Treasury secretary to gut initiatives aimed at addressing a host of economic policies tied to global warming. Among the tentative mandates: shuttering the department’s “climate hub,” which Secretary Janet Yellen set up to coordinate climate-related work across Treasury. The plan also calls on officials to rein in the Fed’s incorporation of environmental and social factors into its work, including on financial stability.

Whether Project 2025’s vision becomes reality will hinge on personnel, and the focus is broader than just influencing a GOP president’s nominees for top jobs. The New York Times has reported that former President Donald Trump and his allies are looking at ways to further concentrate power at the White House and control independent agencies, including by making it easier to remove career civil servants.

“Fixing the federal bureaucracy so it’s not undermining the achievement of a conservative agenda is really critical, as we learned in the Trump administration,” Moore said.

Happy Friday — What’s sizzling on National Fajita Day? Send tips: Zach Warmbrodt, Sam Sutton.

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Driving the day

What’s Biden’s Superman story? — The president continues to get little credit for his handling of the economy, with a new AP-NORC poll showing only 36 percent approval on that issue.

How can he break through? More stats on the Inflation Reduction Act? Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Institute, has another idea: Identify villains and pick fights.

“Imagine a Superman movie where all Superman does is fly around Metropolis and never fights anybody,” he said. “That’s such a boring movie. If you want to position yourself as a hero, you have to have a villain in the story.”

Green’s group has been working with the administration and Democratic lawmakers to organize a series of local-focused events in which officials, bolstered by stories from consumers, highlight Biden’s war on “junk fees.”

Part of Green’s pitch is that the White House should spend more time talking about popular positions that, according to polling, most voters don’t even know Biden has.

“Everybody has a junk fee story,” Green said. “You don’t have to tell people what a surprise fee is for them to understand the issue, unlike perhaps a random tax credit or something like that.”

Oversight & Investigations

Citi subpoenaed — The House Judiciary Committee has issued a subpoena to Citigroup as the panel investigates the extent to which banks shared data with the FBI around the time of the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021.

Housing

A painful stat — WSJ reports that the average mortgage rate has hit 7.09 percent, its highest level in more than 20 years. It’s poised to keep slowing the housing market, with buyers priced out and potential sellers staying put.

Crypto

Trump holds crypto — CoinDesk reports that the former president had $2.8 million in a cryptocurrency wallet as of early August, according to filings. He also earned nearly $4.9 million in licensing fees from his NFT collection.

Fed shutters bank tied to FTX — Sam reports that the Fed is ushering along the wind-down of a small Washington bank that was partly owned by Sam Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund, Alameda Research. The Fed alleges that Farmington State Bank was part of an effort to issue stablecoins but didn’t get approval from regulators. Bank of Eastern Oregon is buying its loans and deposits.

Regulatory Corner

Goldman staffs up amid Fed scrutiny — Bloomberg reports that Goldman Sachs is hiring several hundred new staffers to help address concerns from authorities, including the Federal Reserve. Goldman executives have privately described growing pressure from the Fed over the past year, according to the story.

U.K. warns banks on cash access — The U.K. government is preparing to impose fines on banks that don’t give customers options to make deposits and withdrawals within a three-mile radius, according to the FT.

“People shouldn’t have to trek for hours to withdraw a tenner to put in someone’s birthday card — nor should businesses have to travel large distances to deposit cash takings,” said Economic Secretary to the Treasury Andrew Griffith. “These are measures which benefit everyone who uses cash but particularly those living in rural areas, the elderly and those with disabilities.”

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