Latest news with #JimParrott
CTV News
3 days ago
- General
- CTV News
‘We are not just activists, we're warriors': Pride festivities kick off in Waterloo, Ont.
Waterloo marked the start of Pride Month with a community event celebrating inclusivity. CTV's Karis Mapp has more. People were encouraged to show their true colours under a beautiful, blue sky as a special event kicked off Pride Month festivities in Waterloo. Celebrants gathered in Waterloo Public Square, which was transformed into a dancefloor and vendor market on Wednesday morning. The event was hosted by the City of Waterloo and Uptown Business Improvement Area (BIA). 'We're very excited, as the City of Waterloo, to be celebrating Pride,' Divya Handa, the city's director of reconciliation, equity, accessibility, diversity and inclusion, told CTV News. 'The last few years have been a little bit difficult for our Rainbow community, but we want to show that we are not taking a step back,' Handa said. 'We are not stopping this journey. We are not pausing. We're not considering pausing. We're here for full support.' For some members of the community, those tough times are vivid memories. Jim Parrott, co-facilitator of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) and the former executive director of Spectrum, recounts what it was like when he first met his husband back in 2000. The couple persevered through a time when homosexuality was not widely accepted and they became the first same sex couple to legally be married in Waterloo. 'We're not just activists, we're warriors,' Parrott said. 'We have been walking hand-in-hand in public for 25 years. We do get yelled at, but we think it's important to be transparent and to be visible. And we do that because so many people are not able to do that.' Although Wednesday's celebration was all about inclusivity and support, Parrot worried the future may be more uncertain. 'It's wonderful to see all these things happen. But at the same time, I still worry that things might go backwards,' he said. 'It's wonderful to see that we've got the support of the cities and other institutions. So, I'm very happy but also a little bit nervous.' Part of his apprehension stems from divisive attitudes across the border. 'A few years ago, things seemed to be improving. We started to see more and more legislation passed at this phase, but unfortunately, about 6 or 7 years ago, we started seeing things get worse,' Parrott reflected. 'That to some extent was correlated with the rise of Donald Trump in the United States, unfortunately, [we] saw a lot of problems. And the people who are most seriously impacted are trans folks.' Numerous events will be held throughout June to recognize Pride Month in Waterloo Region.
Politico
4 days ago
- Business
- Politico
The lose-lose housing market
Presented by Editor's note: Morning Money is a free version of POLITICO Pro Financial Services morning newsletter, which is delivered to our subscribers each morning at 5:15 a.m. The POLITICO Pro platform combines the news you need with tools you can use to take action on the day's biggest stories. Act on the news with POLITICO Pro. Quick Fix The housing sector in recent years has been a tale of two markets: It was the best of times (for homeowners), it was the worst of times (for would-be home buyers). Now, it's lackluster times for everyone. What was supposed to be a rebound in the market after sales last year hit their lowest rate in 29 years isn't materializing. Listings are piling up as houses stay on the market longer. And while that dynamic would normally bring more buyers off the sidelines, economic uncertainty and high mortgage rates have kept them sitting on their hands. 'In some localities, the inventory is back up to pre-Covid rates, but the buyers aren't there because of high mortgage rates,' said Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors. 'If mortgage rates remain high, prices will go to 0 percent growth or in some markets decline.' The interest rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage is 6.89 percent, up from 3.22 percent in January 2022. Nearly 2 million homes are for sale, but sellers outnumber buyers by 34 percent, according to Redfin – the biggest gap in 12 years of tracking that data. Redfin now projects that home prices will fall by 1 percent this year. 'It will take [mortgage] rates coming down to have a political impact,' said Jim Parrott, a nonresident fellow at the Urban Institute and a former senior White House economic adviser in the Obama administration. 'If we spend much of the [2026] election year stuck around 7 percent, then housing affordability will become as big a problem for the GOP as it was for Democrats in the last election,' he said. 'Even if prices have leveled or begin to come down by a point or two. It was a brutal problem for Biden, and it will soon become a brutal problem for Trump.' The standoff between sellers and buyers poses a kind of double whammy to perceptions of the housing market, which typically have a big influence on people's views of the broader economy. Prospective buyers don't feel like the market is any better for them despite the slowing growth of home prices – prices have risen so much in recent years that a slight drop is negligible. Prospective sellers feel like the market is worse for them since their values are on the cusp of declining and they have to trade in a low mortgage rate for a much higher one when they sell. Nobody is happy. 'I don't think the typical buyer is going to feel like it's more accessible for them to buy a home just because values went down by 1 percent,' said Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather. 'Sellers are always late to realize that the market has shifted,' she said. 'I think that they may be even more in denial this time around, because they have these super cheap mortgages, and they might not want to budge on price, because it's only worthwhile for them to sell if they can get enough money to justify giving up the mortgage.' And while falling home prices would in some ways be a balm for a yearslong affordability crunch, it could actually backfire when it comes to solving the root cause of the problem, a shortage of housing supply to meet demand. 'When home prices go down, builders have to pull back on the amount of production they undertake or face a loss in profit margins,' said Rob Dietz, chief economist at the National Association of Home Builders. 'For builders, it does present an additional challenge given that construction costs are still increasing…It will likely hold back increases in supply.' IT'S WEDNESDAY — Send me your thoughts on the housing market at kodonnell@ And, as always, send your tips, suggestions and personnel moves to Sam at ssutton@ Driving the day Rep. David Schweikert speaks at The Hill's 'Invest in America Summit' at 9:05 a.m. … SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler testifies before House Small Business at 10 a.m. … House Financial Services holds a hearing on the future of digital assets at 10 a.m. … OMB Director Russell Vought testifies before House Appropriations at 2 p.m. … The Economy JOLTS jolt — The Labor Department reported that job openings climbed in April despite warning signs that hiring could slow amid tariff-related policy uncertainty. There were almost 7.4 million open positions — the median forecast among economists was closer to 7.1 million — and layoff and discharge rates held relatively steady Artificial intelligence — New research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas found that AI has had little impact on job losses — at least for now. 'There is very little evidence of artificial intelligence taking away jobs on a large scale to date,'Dallas Fed researchers Mark Wynne and Lillian Derr wrote. 'Correlation between AI exposure and the projections of job growth or decline over the next decade remains low.' On The Hill First in MM: Barr, Velázquez introduce bipartisan SEC bill — Reps. Andy Barr (R-Ky.) and Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.) are introducing legislation aimed at boosting small business investing, our Jasper Goodman reports. The bill would increase the threshold for private fund advisers to register with the SEC. 'Access to capital remains one of the biggest challenges facing small businesses, especially in communities that have long been overlooked by traditional lenders,' Velázquez, the top Democrat on House Small Business, said in a statement. Barr said the 'bill is a perfect way for us to unleash the power of the private sector to help fuel the innovations, job opportunities, and industries of tomorrow.' Senate Ag to hold CFTC nom hearing next week — The Senate Agriculture Committee will hold a hearing next Tuesday on Brian Quintenz's nomination to serve as chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the panel announced. The hearing comes as the CFTC is facing a mass exodus of top officials: All four of its commissioners have left or announced plans to leave. 'We'll get him out of committee as quickly as possible,' the Senate Ag Chair John Boozman (R-Ark.) said in an interview with Jasper Tuesday. Waters wants Atkins' input on crypto bill — In a letter to SEC Chair Paul Atkins, the House Financial Services Committee's top Democrat, Rep. Maxine Waters of California, on Tuesday called for a 'comprehensive technical and impact analysis' of proposed legislation outlining how the SEC and CFTC will oversee crypto, Declan reports. An SEC spokesperson said Atkins will respond to lawmakers directly. Crypto Who controls $TRUMP? — A cryptocurrency company is launching a new platform for holding and trading digital assets that is centered on President Donald Trump's personalized crypto token, our Declan Harty reports. There's just one hitch: The Trump family says it has no involvement with the venture, our Declan Harty reports. Magic Eden — a crypto startup best known for operating a non-fungible token marketplace — said Tuesday that it is partnering with the team behind the president's $TRUMP memecoin to create the 'First and Only Crypto Wallet for True Trump Fans.' (Magic Eden CEO Jack Lu, who heralded the news in a post of his own, attended the $TRUMP memecoin dinner last month at Trump's golf club in Virginia.) But the president's sons were quick to interject. While the memecoin is overwhelmingly held by a Trump Organization affiliate as well as another entity called Fight Fight Fight LLC, both Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump eschewed any association with the crypto wallet, as did the Trump Organization itself. 'The Trump Organization has zero involvement with this wallet product,' Trump Jr. wrote on X, while revealing that World Liberty Financial, another Trump-backed crypto venture, has a similar product in the works. '@EricTrump and I know nothing about it.' A Magic Eden spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment about the Trumps' posts. Still, despite the unusual back-and-forth over the partnership, the wallet products from both Magic Eden and World Liberty represent the latest sign of the Trump family's deepening entanglements in crypto — a connection that has already sparked outrage in Washington. At the regulators First in MM: Free market advocates want to free the betting markets — More than a dozen conservative and free-market groups want the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to not restrict what types of products prediction — or betting — markets can offer, Declan reports. In a letter, set to be sent Wednesday, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Americans for Tax Reform, the Center for Freedom and Prosperity and 13 others plan to call on the Wall Street regulator to 'adopt a policy of permissionless innovation toward prediction market venues.' Fed lifts Wells Fargo asset cap: The Federal Reserve on Tuesday announced that it was lifting a landmark penalty against Wells Fargo that regulators imposed in the wake of the massive fake account scandal exposed nearly a decade ago, Michael Stratford reports. The Fed board voted unanimously to lift the unprecedented restriction that had prohibited the nation's fourth-largest bank from growing any larger than it was at the end of 2017, capping its assets at nearly $2 trillion. In a statement, the Fed said that its decision to lift the asset cap reflected 'the substantial progress the bank has made in addressing its deficiencies and that the bank has fulfilled the conditions required for removal of the growth restriction.' Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf hailed the end of the penalty as a 'pivotal milestone' for the bank that reflects the changes the company has made. But Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, blasted the Fed's decision. 'The entire Federal Reserve Board, including appointees of both parties, should be embarrassed,' Warren said in a statement. 'Wells Fargo has a long history of violating the law, and there's no evidence that it has changed.' Warren called on the central bank to release to the committee 'the bank's exam reports for the last five years.' — Meanwhile, the Senate today will vote today on Trump's pick to serve as the Fed's next vice chair for supervision. The Senate is slated to take a procedural vote this morning on Fed Gov. Michelle Bowman's nomination before moving to a final confirmation vote around 6 p.m. tonight. Treasury gears up for tax implementation: Trump's domestic policy megabill is still winding through Congress, but the Treasury Department is already laying the groundwork to implement its sweeping tax provisions. Deputy Treasury Secretary Michael Faulkender said Tuesday that 'work is already underway' to prepare to implement what's likely to be hundreds of pages of new tax law on a potentially tight timeline. He said Treasury and IRS had already begun forming 'implementation teams' to figure out how to draft regulations, issue guidance and change IT systems. Odds and Ends First in MM: New payments group — A coalition of payments companies — along with the Financial Technology Association — have launched a new industry group that is pushing for regulatory changes that would open up federal payment systems to digital startups. In addition to the FTA, the Alliance for Secure and Accessible Payments counts DaySmart, Intuit, Kajabi, Plaid, Ramp, Remitly, Shopify, Stripe, Wise and Xero among its members. Fly-in — Members of Impact Capital Managers —a network of over 150 private capital firms — are headed to the Hill today to meet with GOP members of Senate Finance. The industry group will focus on the impact that energy tax credits have had on local economies, and how the 'big, beautiful bill' passed by the House could negatively affect energy projects that have benefited from those credits. [50 Cent] G-G-G-G-G-G GSIB Surcharge — The Financial Services Forum, which represents the largest banks in the U.S., published a blog post and white paper contending that a 'widening rift between the U.S. and non-U.S. surcharge methodology … clearly disadvantages U.S. banks and their customers relative to their foreign peers and harms the U.S. economy.' Jobs report Eric Ettorre has joined Treasury as a senior adviser to the Office of International Trade and Development. He was previously trade counsel for Ways and Means and handled tariffs, customs and China, among other portfolios for Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.). Sophia Kim, a former spokeswoman for the New York State Department of Financial Services and the U.S. Small Business Administration, has joined the Council on Foreign Relations as director of media relations and communications strategy. Kim is also an SKDK alum.
