Word: bille
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...problem with the credit-card industry isn't just credit-card companies - it's you too. This week the Senate takes up a bill that would seriously clamp down on some of the industry's most unsavory practices, a piece of legislation that President Obama has said he wants on his desk by the end of the month. The bill, which builds on rules issued by the Federal Reserve Board and other agencies at the end of last year, would do away with interest-rate hikes on existing balances, prohibit issuers from putting customer payments toward lower-rate balances first...
...What we need to do, that argument continues, is frame information about how much credit cards cost in a way that really drives the point home. In 2007, a group of Senators introduced a bill that would have required credit-card companies to state on each billing statement how long it would take a person to pay off his balance and how much it would cost in principal and interest should he make only the minimum required payment each month. (That's another psychological trip-up: having a low minimum payment printed on the statement in a big font ratchets...
Last week, while the financial world was obsessing over stress tests for fragile banks, the environmental and agricultural worlds were watching the results of the Obama Administration's stress tests for renewable fuels. An outgrowth of the 2007 energy bill, the tests were supposed to document whether corn ethanol and other biofuels designed to replace fossil fuels would accelerate or alleviate global warming overall. But like the much-criticized bank checkups, these stress tests don't seem particularly stressful...
...This is why Congress included the stress tests along with a huge biofuels mandate in its 2007 energy bill, throwing a bone to environmentalists who were freaking out that the alternative fuels they had championed for years were in fact ecological calamities. The law - supported by then-Senator Barack Obama - required life-cycle analyses that would calculate direct and indirect emissions...
Montana has passed a law allowing local gun manufacturers to sidestep federal regulations as long as the weapons they make are sold within the territory of the state. "It's a gun bill, but it's another way of demonstrating the sovereignty of the state of Montana," Democratic Governor Brian Schweitzer said, according to the AP, as he signed the bill into law in mid-April. "I like big guns, I like little guns, I like pistols, I like rifles, and I would like to buy a gun that's made in Montana...