2023-11-06 18:52

WASHINGTON, Nov 6 (Reuters) - U.S. Supreme Court justices on Monday appeared divided over whether the federal government can be sued over errors related to consumer credit reports as they considered a case involving a Pennsylvania man who accused an Agriculture Department agency of making mistakes that hurt his credit status. The justices heard arguments in an appeal by President Joe Biden's administration of a lower court's ruling that a legal doctrine called sovereign immunity does not shield the U.S. government from liability in lawsuits concerning credit reporting inaccuracies. The administration is seeking to block plaintiff Reginald Kirtz's lawsuit against the Rural Housing Service, an agency that furnishes loans to help lower-income Americans get housing in rural regions. Kirtz brought the suit seeking monetary damages under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, a 1970 law intended to ensure fair and accurate credit reporting. Questions posed by the justices indicated they were split over the matter. Kirtz has said his loans were repaid in full, but that the government lender and a separate private lender continued to wrongly report that his accounts were past due even after he complained about the discrepancies. These false reports were then passed along to the credit reporting agency TransUnion and damaged Kirtz's creditworthiness, according to Kirtz. Biden's administration argued that the suit should be dismissed under the doctrine of sovereign immunity, which generally shields the U.S. government from liability except in instances in which it has been waived by law. At issue is whether Congress waived sovereign immunity in the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The original 1970 version of the law allowed credit bureaus to be sued over inaccuracies but not the government. Congress in 1996 expanded the law to permit lawsuits against "persons" that give credit information to credit reporting agencies. Nandan Joshi, Kirtz's lawyer, on Monday urged the justices to find that "persons" includes government agencies, noting that the law defines persons as: "any individual, partnership, corporation, trust, estate, cooperative, association, government or governmental subdivision or agency, or other entity." Liberal Justice Elena Kagan suggested the case could be resolved in Kirtz's favor by applying "statutory interpretation 101." "The necessary logical implication of what Congress has done is authorize a suit against people, persons, as defined in the definition section," Kagan said. "Then you go to the definition section, and then you discover that what Congress has done is authorize a suit against natural persons, enterprises and governments." Other justices suggested that a waiver of the government's sovereign immunity must be spelled out more explicitly by Congress, with some appearing skeptical that lawmakers had intended to take that step. "You said at the beginning ... that Congress knew what it was doing when it amended the act, but I don't think it realized that it was imposing this liability," conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh told Joshi. Kavanaugh noted that an analysis done at the time by the Congressional Budget Office - a non-partisan agency that forecasts the cost of legislation - did not contain an estimate of litigation costs that would follow if sovereign immunity were waived. The Fair Credit Reporting Act requires such "persons" governed by the law to investigate disputes about the accuracy of credit information given to reporting agencies. According to Kirtz's lawsuit, the Agriculture Department failed to investigate his dispute about the accuracy of credit information its agency gave to credit bureaus. A federal judge in Pennsylvania in 2021 granted the Biden administration's request to dismiss the case, ruling that the law "does not contain such an unambiguous waiver of sovereign immunity." The Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year reversed that decision. https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-supreme-court-split-over-government-liability-credit-report-errors-2023-11-06/

2023-11-06 18:22

LONDON, Nov 6 (Reuters) - The Bank of England might wait until the middle of next year before cutting interest rates from their current 15-year high, the BoE's Chief Economist Huw Pill said on Monday. Pill said pricing in financial markets - that currently points to a first rate cut to Bank Rate in August 2024 - "doesn't seem totally unreasonable, at least to me." "It is at that point you might consider or reassess, if nothing new has happened, where we are going to have to be," Pill said during an online presentation organised by the BoE. "But, of course, it is very unlikely that nothing will change over that nine-month period." Last week the BoE held its benchmark rate at a 15-year high of 5.25% and said it was not thinking about cutting it as it continued to bear down on inflation which stood at 6.7% in September, lower than a peak of 11.1% in October 2022 but still more than three times its 2% target. Pill said the central bank would continue to lean against the risk of inflation staying too high. "But if we have the restrictive policy for too long, then the danger is...we trigger a recession, we trigger an excessive slowdown in the economy," he said. Britain's economy is likely to flat-line over the next two years and grow by less than 1% in 2026, according to the BoE's latest forecasts. Many analysts think the economy is already entering a recession. Pill said slowing the economy to fight inflation was "not easy" and he said the Monetary Policy Committee was "very aware" of the impact of its decisions on people on lower incomes. https://www.reuters.com/markets/rates-bonds/bank-englands-pill-says-central-bank-may-be-able-reconsider-rates-stance-next-2023-11-06/

2023-11-06 18:00

Nov 6 (Reuters) - Ukraine is ready for "constructive dialogue" with Poland to resolve the situation of Polish truckers blocking crossings at the Ukraine-Poland border over the loss of business, Kyiv's deputy prime minister said on Monday. "Our official position is that blocking the border harms the interests and economies of both countries. It also affects the functioning of the Solidarity Lines which are intended to export Ukrainian agricultural products," Oleksandr Kubrakov said on social media platform X, previously known as Twitter. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/kyiv-says-its-ready-dialogue-with-warsaw-over-polish-truckers-protest-2023-11-06/

2023-11-06 17:12

WASHINGTON, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook said she hopes the central bank's current target interest rate is adequate to return inflation to the Fed's 2% target. The Fed left interest rates unchanged in a range of from 5.25% to 5.5% at its meeting last week, and "we hope that this will be restrictive enough such that we can return to our 2% target over time," Cook said in comments at Duke University. "But we will continue to be vigilant," to ensure the inflation target is reached. https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/feds-cook-says-hopes-current-policy-setting-is-adequate-settle-inflation-2023-11-06/

2023-11-06 15:51

Nov 6 (Reuters) - Slovakia's new government will target a higher share of banks' profits as it draws up a 2024 budget and seeks to cut a soaring deficit, Prime Minister Robert Fico said on Monday. A previous government had scrapped a special bank tax in 2020 which had been in place under a former leftist government led by Fico before his resignation in 2018. Fico is backing its re-introduction as his new three-party government coalition took power last month after a Sept. 30 election and must bring down a deficit expected to be the highest in the euro zone. Fico on Thursday said public finances were in a "cruel" state and that the government was facing a "small miracle" to consolidate, stabilise finances and maintain social standards. "We are planning for record bank profits and we want overall taxation of banks to be significantly higher in 2024 than what was before," he told a news conference shown on the Finance Ministry's Facebook account. Slovakia's top banks include KBC Group's CSOB (KBC.BR), Erste Group Bank's (ERST.VI) Slovenska Sporitelna, Raiffeisen's (RBIV.VI) Tatra Banka and Intesa Sanpaolo's (ISP.MI) VUB. Slovakia's deficit is forecast to jump to up to 7% of gross domestic product in 2023, strained by increased social benefits and spending to help ease the strain of high energy prices. Slovakia is facing a gradual consolidation pace after Fico's SMER-SSD party agreed with coalition partners - the centre-left Hlas and nationalist SNS parties - that budget easing will not come at the cost of social standards. The new budget, which Fico wants ready by the end of November to ensure approval before the year-end, will include measures like an extra pension payment and mortgage loan subsidies. https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/slovakias-new-government-targets-bank-profits-first-budget-2023-11-06/

2023-11-06 15:38

BRASILIA, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Brazil's Finance Minister Fernando Haddad on Monday said the government is trying to precisely identify the impact of revenue shortfalls from past tax changes, admitting they will affect President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's new fiscal rules. Speaking at an event hosted by BTG Pactual, Haddad said tax revenues had fallen short of government expectations since July. He said the government anticipated a shortfall of around 50 billion reais ($10.2 billion) this year, partly as a result of tax changes during prior administrations. Those funds had been factored into estimates for a primary budget deficit below 1% of gross domestic product (GDP) for 2023. Since Lula, a leftist, said the government did not need to eliminate its primary budget deficit in 2024 as outlined under new fiscal rules, there has been growing speculation among that next year's fiscal target may be revised, a matter Haddad has avoided addressing directly. Haddad said the country's corporate income tax collection has been impacted by a "monumental offset" of tax credits following a 2021 Supreme Federal Court decision that excluded a state tax from the base calculation of federal taxes. The effects of this decision retroactively go back to 2017, creating room for extensive tax credit claims by companies. Haddad said the government is now considering how to handle this situation, given the adverse and unpredictable impact of widespread tax credit utilization on tax revenues. "That is the current topic of discussion, nothing else. We are engaged in technical work," he said. "We are dealing with a significant sum that impacts the recently approved fiscal framework." The minister also said the government needed to pass a measure to ensure that state-level tax incentives should not indiscriminately reduce companies' taxable income for federal revenue purposes. Haddad also said there is room for more interest rate cuts by Brazil's central bank, which has delivered three consecutive 50-basis-point reductions that have pushed its key Selic rate to 12.25%. He also said he supported the Senate's ongoing analysis of a broad tax reform affecting consumption taxes, considering it a measure that will enhance the country's productivity. ($1 = 4.9052 reais) https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazils-haddad-says-past-tax-changes-impact-new-fiscal-rules-2023-11-06/