This week, we’ve got our eyes on Congress, Wall Street, the “#1 Corporate Power Tool,” school districts and more!
For better or worse, Washington D.C. is a city of awash with acronyms. And this week, there are a few capital letters that the medical device industry would rather you not pay any attention to: MDUFA. Literally, MDUFA stands for Medical Device User Fee and Modernization Act, but in actuality these letters simply mean danger for consumers. A lot of the coverage of MDUFA has focused on the prescription drug aspect. However, the story is about more than drugs. Medical device safety is at a crossroads, and Congress could really mess things up. Here is where MDUFA stands now. We recently wrote a report, which documented the average number of high-risk recalls of medical devices in 2011 was more than double than in recent years. We also documented the keen interest the medical device industry seemed to have in weakening already lax regulations. This week Congress will vote on MDUFA and we urge them to put patient safety ahead of corporate profit.
Today, amid the news coverage of JPMorgan Chase’s $2 billion loss in derivatives bets, Public Citizen published a report, many weeks in the making, that expounds on the historical lessons of derivatives deregulation and the urgency to implement the rules called for in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. Read a copy of the press release which links to the report entitled: “Forgotten Lessons of Deregulation: Rolling Back Dodd-Frank’s Derivatives Rules Would Repeat a Mistake that Led to the Financial Crisis.” The report explains how America’s top financial policymakers deregulated the financial derivatives market in the 1990s and provides a detailed account of how deregulation led to the ensuing housing bubble, financial crisis and Great Recession.
The report comes as members of Congress have introduced nine bills that would weaken the derivatives provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010.
All seven bills moving in the U.S. House of Representatives have been approved by committees, and three have passed the full House. Two bills that would exempt overseas transactions from Dodd-Frank’s derivatives provisions may be voted on as soon as Thursday in the House Agriculture Committee. Other bills would exempt trades by supposedly “small” players, reduce transparency requirements and strike down a provision to ban derivatives trading by federally insured banks. At least three other bills would impose impediments for agencies to promulgate rules concerning financial services in general.
