Economy
Related: About this forumSTOCK MARKET WATCH -- Monday, 15 April 2013
[font size=3]STOCK MARKET WATCH, Monday, 15 April 2013[font color=black][/font]
SMW for 12 April 2013
AT THE CLOSING BELL ON 12 April 2013
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Dow Jones 14,865.06 -0.08 (0.00%)
S&P 500 1,588.85 -4.52 (-0.28%)
[font color=black]Nasdaq 3,294.95 0.00 (0.00%)
[font color=green]10 Year 1.72% -0.02 (-1.15%)
30 Year 2.93% -0.03 (-1.01%)[font color=black]
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[font size=2]Market Conditions During Trading Hours[/font]
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[font size=2]Euro, Yen, Loonie, Silver and Gold[center]
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Market Data and News:[/font][/font]
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Economic Calendar
Marketwatch Data
Bloomberg Economic News
Yahoo Finance
Google Finance
Bank Tracker
Credit Union Tracker
Daily Job Cuts
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Economic Blogs:[/font][/font]
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The Big Picture
Financial Sense
Calculated Risk
Naked Capitalism
Credit Writedowns
Brad DeLong
Bonddad
Atrios
goldmansachs666
The Stand-Up Economist
The Automatic Earth
Wall Street on Parade
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Essential Reading:[/font][/font]
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Matt Taibi: Secret and Lies of the Bailout
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[font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Government Issues:[/font][/font]
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LegitGov
Open Government
Earmark Database
USA spending.gov
[/center][font color=black][font size=2]Handy Links - Videos:[/font][/font]
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Charlie Rose talks with Roubini
Charlie Rose talks with Krugman
William Black: This Economic Disaster
Bill Moyers with Kevin Drum and David Corn
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[font color=red]Partial List of Financial Sector Officials Convicted since 1/20/09 [/font][font color=red]
2/2/12 David Higgs and Salmaan Siddiqui, Credit Suisse, plead guilty to conspiracy involving valuation of MBS
3/6/12 Allen Stanford, former Caribbean billionaire and general schmuck, convicted on 13 of 14 counts in $2.2B Ponzi scheme, faces 20+ years in prison
6/4/12 Matthew Kluger, lawyer, sentenced to 12 years in prison, along with co-conspirator stock trader Garrett Bauer (9 years) and co-conspirator Kenneth Robinson (not yet sentenced) for 17 year insider trading scheme.
6/14/12 Allen Stanford sentenced to 110 years without parole.
6/15/12 Rajat Gupta, former Goldman Sachs director, found guilty of insider trading. Could face a decade in prison when sentenced later this year.
6/22/12 Timothy S. Durham, 49, former CEO of Fair Financial Company, convicted of one count conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, 10 counts of wire fraud, and one count of securities fraud.
6/22/12 James F. Cochran, 56, former chairman of the board of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and six counts of wire fraud.
6/22/12 Rick D. Snow, 48, former CFO of Fair, convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud, one count of securities fraud, and three counts of wire fraud.
7/13/12 Russell Wassendorf Sr., CEO of collapsed brokerage firm Peregrine Financial Group Inc. arrested and charged with lying to regulators after admitting to authorities he embezzled "millions of dollars" and forged bank statements for "nearly twenty years."
8/22/12 Doug Whitman, Whitman Capital LLC hedge fund founder, convicted of insider trading following a trial in which he spent more than two days on the stand telling jurors he was innocent
10/26/12 UPDATE: Former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta sentenced to two years in federal prison. He will, of course, appeal. . .
11/20/12 Hedge fund manager Matthew Martoma charged with insider trading at SAC Capital Advisors, and prosecutors are looking at Martoma's boss, Steven Cohen, for possible involvement.
02/14/13 Gilbert Lopez, former chief accounting officer of Stanford Financial Group, and former controller Mark Kuhrt sentenced to 20 yrs in prison for their roles in Allen Sanford's $7.2 billion Ponzi scheme.
03/29/13 Michael Sternberg, portfolio mgr at SAC Capital, arrested in NYC, charged with conspiracy and securities fraud. Pled not guilty and freed on $3m bail.
04/04/13 Matthew Marshall Taylor,fmr Goldman Sachs trader arrested, charged by CFTC w/defrauding his employer on $8BN futures bet "by intentionally concealing the true huge size, as well as the risk and potential profits or losses associated."
04/04/13 Matthew Taylor admits guilt, makes plea bargain. Sentencing set for 26 June; faces up to 20 years in prison but will likely only see 3-4 years. Says, "I am truly sorry."
04/11/13 Ex-KPMG LLP partner Scott London charged by federal prosecutors w/passing inside tips to a friend in exchange for cash, jewelry, and concert tickets; expected to plead guilty in May.
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[font size=3][font color=red]This thread contains opinions and observations. Individuals may post their experiences, inferences and opinions on this thread. However, it should not be construed as advice. It is unethical (and probably illegal) for financial recommendations to be given here.[/font][/font][/font color=red][font color=black]
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Demeter
(85,373 posts)Such a fall guy, putz, pigeon, gullible fool. And those are the appellations that DON'T assume evil intent, just stupidity.
AnneD
(15,774 posts)we exchanged a dumb stupid for a smart stupid. Anyway you slice it we are still with stupid...say that might make a good t-shirt slogan. We will put it over a picture of lemmings falling off the cliff.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)I'M LESS WORRIED ABOUT THE JUNK FOOD, MORE ABOUT WHAT MONSANTO IS DOING TO "REAL FOOD"...
http://www.alternet.org/food/monsantos-next-target-democracy?akid=10303.227380.Yv2zxV&rd=1&src=newsletter821675&t=4&paging=off
Big Food’s greatest fear is materializing. A critical mass of educated consumers, food and natural health activists are organizing a powerful movement that could well overthrow North America’s trillion-dollar junk food empire. Savvy and more determined than ever, activists are zeroing in on the Achilles heel of Food Inc. -- labeling. But as consumers demand truth and greater transparency in labeling, it isn’t just Big Food whose empire is vulnerable. The biotech industry, which makes billions supplying junk food manufacturers with cheap, genetically engineered (GE) ingredients, has even more to lose. Monsanto knows that if food producers are forced to label the genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in their food products, they’ll reformulate those products to meet consumer demand for GMO-free alternatives. That’s why companies like Monsanto, DuPont and Dow, along with Coca-Cola and Pepsi, last year spent more than $46 million to defeat Proposition 37, California’s GMO labeling initiative. The junk food and biotech industries narrowly (48.5% - 51.5%) prevailed in California, but they know it’s only a matter of time before one or more states pass a mandatory GMO labeling law. More than 30 state legislatures are now debating GMO labeling bills. And consumers have broadened the fight beyond just labeling. Five counties and two cities in California and Washington have banned the growing of GE crops. In addition, given the near total absence of FDA regulation, 19 states have passed laws restricting GMOs.
How is the biotech industry fighting back? By attacking democracy. Experts say the laws are on the side of consumers. But consumers will no doubt still have to defend democracy against an increasingly desperate, and aggressive, industry bent on protecting the highly profitable business of genetically engineered food. The battle lines have been drawn. Will we cede our food sovereignty rights to a profit-at-all costs corporatocracy? Monsanto’s lobbyists are out in force in Washington, Vermont, Connecticut, and several dozen other states. They’re lobbying politicians behind the scenes and planting misleading articles in the press. Attacking pro-labeling anti-GMO proponents as anti-technology Luddites. They’re repeating ad nauseum their propaganda claims that GE foods and crops are perfectly safe and therefore need no labeling, that transgenics are environment- and climate-friendly, and that genetically modified crops are necessary to feed the world.
One of Monsanto’s major propaganda points, designed to discourage state officials from passing GMO labeling laws, is that state GMO labeling is unconstitutional. Monsanto has repeatedly stated that it will sue any state that dares to label. This threat of a lawsuit was enough to convince lawmakers in Vermont and Connecticut in 2012 to back off from labeling, even though there were sufficient votes, and overwhelming public sentiment, to pass these bills. The same scenario is unfolding again in Vermont, where the Governor is refusing to endorse a popular labeling bill that could easily pass through both houses of the legislature. Biotech industry lawyers claim that Federal courts will strike down mandatory state GMO labeling for three reasons: 1)because Federal law, in this case FDA regulations, preempts state law; 2) because commercial free speech allows corporations to remain silent on whether or not their products are genetically engineered and; 3) because GMO labeling would interfere with interstate commerce.
These claims simply don’t hold up. State GMO labeling, and other food safety and food labeling laws, are constitutional. Federal law, upheld for decades by federal court legal decisions, allows states to pass laws relating food safety or food labels when the FDA has no prior regulations or prohibitions in place. There is currently no federal law or FDA regulation on GMO labeling, except for a guidance statement on voluntary labeling, nor is there any federal prohibition on state GMO or other food safety labeling laws. In fact there are over 200 state food labeling laws in effect right now in the U.S., including a GMO fish labeling law in Alaska, laws on labeling wild rice, maple syrup, dairy quality, kosher products, and laws on labeling dairy products as rBGH-free. It is very unlikely that any federal court will want to make a sweeping ruling that would nullify 200 preexisting state laws. U.S. case law does indicate that commercial free speech in certain instances allows corporations to remain silent about what’s in their products. However federal courts have consistently ruled that when there are compelling state interests -- health, environment, economic -- states can require corporations to divulge what’s in their products or how they were produced. When it comes to GMOs, states can clearly make the case for compelling state interests, according to Consumer Union’s senior scientist, Michael Hansen. Hansen says: “...there is a compelling state interest in labeling of genetically engineered foods and that is due to the potential human health and environmental impacts of genetically engineered foods.” Hansen also argues that Codex Alimentarius, a collection of internationally recognized standards, codes of practice, guidelines and other recommendations relating to foods, food production and food safety, guarantees nations the right to implement mandatory labeling of GMO foods. The standards support the argument that GMO labels do not constitute a restriction of free trade, as long as they are applied to both domestic and international producers. Similarly state GMO labels, as long as they do not discriminate against particular producers, but rather apply to all producers -- state, national, and international -- do not constitute a restriction of interstate commerce. The U.S. government, under massive global pressure, has signed on to the Codex Alimentarius, which serves "as a risk management measure to deal with the scientific uncertainty" associated with genetically engineered foods. And according to Hansen, there most certainly is significant scientific uncertainty about the potential health impacts of genetically engineered foods.”
MORE AT LINK
Ronnie Cummins is founder and director of the Organic Consumers Association. Cummins is author of numerous articles and books, including "Genetically Engineered Food: A Self-Defense Guide for Consumers" (Second Revised Edition Marlowe & Company 2004).
Katherine Paul is director of development and communications at the Organic Consumers Association.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)North Carolina now has over 1,100 clean energy companies that have contributed $3.7 billion in annual gross revenue -- but that hasn't stopped conservative attacks...the North Carolina House Commerce Committee narrowly passed a bill that would repeal the state’s successful renewable energy standard. Currently, 29 states and the District of Columbia have adopted Renewable Energy Standard’s (RES) to encourage electric utilities to expand the power they generate from renewable sources such as solar and wind.
In 2007, North Carolina became the first state in the Southeast to adopt such a standard — Senate Bill 3 passed both chambers with overwhelming bipartisan support and requires state utilities to supply 12.5 percent of renewable energy by 2021. Since then, clean energy companies have generated billions in revenue and have created thousands of in-state jobs — all while reducing pollution and saving ratepayers money.
But now, North Carolina has joined the growing list of states in which organizations like the Heartland Institute and the American Legislative Council, or ALEC, and Koch-backed Grover Norquist have been lobbying against renewable energy policy, and pushing “model legislation” to undo these standards. House Bill 298, called the “Affordable and Reliable Energy Act,” was introduced by known ALEC member Representative Mike Hager, and aims to fully repeal the energy standard.
The nearly two-hourly long committee hearing concluded with an 11-10 vote on the RES repeal, barely escaping committee with two key Republicans voting against it. The Raleigh News and Observer reported that Representative Ruth Samuelson, a Republican from Charlotte who is the Republican conference leader, said the bill went too far. Samuelson said the law has helped develop an alternative energy industry that has benefited rural communities — and she is absolutely right...
MORE
WHAT IS IT WITH THESE CORPORATE CLOWNS? DO THEY REALLY THINK THEY ARE DOING THEMSELVES ANY FAVORS? THE BLOWBACK IS GOING TO BE ETERNAL...CORPORATIONS ARE GOING TO GO THE WAY OF T REX.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Of course it’s a benefit cut. Of course it’s a tax hike, for everyone but the wealthy...The “chained CPI” proposal in President Obama’s budget continues to draw much-deserved fire, which is only likely to increase as more information about it becomes known. Here are ten embarrassing facts about the chained CPI which the White House and its defenders would prefer to see overlooked:
1. Of course it’s a benefit cut.
Chained-CPI defenders say it’s not a benefit cut, just a slowdown in the rate of the benefit’s planned increases. That’s a silly semantic game unworthy of serious leaders or analysts. The Social Security benefit, as laid out on the Social Security Administration’s website, includes adjustments designed to keep pace with the rising cost of living. Those adjustments aren’t a benefit increase. They’re designed to prevent the benefit from being decreased as a result of inflation. If you lower that adjustment, you’re cutting benefits. Period.
2. Of course it’s a tax hike.
Same goes for the tax impact of the chained CPI. Our tax brackets were designed to make sure that taxes didn’t go up inadvertently because inflation kicked them into a higher tax bracket. That was done to make sure that people who weren’t earning more in real dollars – which includes many (if not most) of the “99 percent” – weren’t hit with an unearned tax hike. The President has repeatedly promised that there will be no middle-class tax hikes while he’s President. If you substitute the chained CPI for the current formula, as the President has proposed, people will be kicked into higher tax brackets earlier. Then they’ll pay more in taxes, even if they’re not making any more “real” money. That’s a tax hike.
3. And it’s a tax hike for everybody but the wealthy.
In fact, it’s a tax hike on all but the highest levels of income. The richest earnings won’t be affected because they’re already in the highest tax bracket. Got it? So it’s a tax hike on everybody except the richest among us. (Actually, it’s a tax hike for them too, but only on their lower levels of income. The richer you are, the less you’ll see in a tax-rate increase.)
4. You could save much more money in other, better ways.
The White House has said the chained CPI will save $122 billion in benefits over ten years. Leaving aside the fact that Social Security doesn’t affect the deficit (which we’ll discuss shortly), here’s what isn’t being done:
Faced with those numbers, the chained-CPI benefit cut is … well, embarrassing. (Details, and additional alternate deficit reducers, here.)
5. The White House’s proposed “bump” disproves its own argument.
The Administration’s been claiming that the chained CPI is merely a “technical adjustment” designed to make cost-of-living increases more accurate. But it’s just introduced an adjustment for seniors who live longer in order to offset the impact of its reduction over time. But if the chained CPI really measured inflation more accurately, it wouldn’t affect real benefits any more after twenty or thirty years than it did after the first year. Confusing? We explain here. (With pictures and everything. SEE LINK) Bottom line? They know it’s a benefit cut.
6. It’s political suicide for Democrats.
The polls are clear on that question. Voters over fifty hate the chained CPI. It doesn’t matter whether they’re Democrats, Republicans, or independents. They hate it. And older Americans are more likely to vote than other voters (who also hate it, according to earlier polls.) It took the Republicans all of fifteen minutes to portray this move, which they’ve supported for a long time, as a “shocking attack on seniors.” They’re ready to run a reply of their successful 2010 strategy, when they ran to the left of Dems with a “Seniors’ Bill of Rights” – and recaptured the House.
7. The Social Security cut doesn’t reduce the deficit.
Social Security doesn’t contribute to the deficit, since it’s funded separately. In fact, it’sforbidden by law from contributing to the deficit. It doesn’t even belong in these negotiations.
8. That tax hike on everybody except the wealthy will help a little. But …
On the other hand, they’ll be hitting everybody except millionaires and billionaires with tax increases that grow with every passing year. If regressive taxation is something you believe in, then I guess that’s something. Except for our next embarrassing fact …
9. The deficit’s already shrinking rapidly.
The deficit is already shrinking – and “rapidly,” in the words of those radical lefties at Goldman Sachs. The deficit isn’t our most urgent economic problem. It’s not even close. We desperately need jobs, real wage growth, consumer confidence, financial security for the elderly and disabled (which means increasing Social Security) … Sure, deficits need to be addressed after the economy’s been righted, but right now they’re nowhere near the top of the list. In fact, there’s an extremely good chance that the cuts in the President’s budget will make the deficit worse, as austerity cuts have in Europe. The Republican budget would certainly have that effect, since its cuts are far more severe.
10. It doesn’t matter if “the GOP asked you to” do this.
It doesn’t matter if “the GOP asked” the White House to call for this benefit cut and middle-class tax hike,as White House Press Secretary Jay Carney is now saying. The President’s been floating the idea for years. He and his appointees have defended it publicly. And now the President has officially included it in his budget. The Republican budget did not include it. And now they’re using it against the President and his Party. That should surprise no one. To paraphrase the question asked by generations of American mothers: If the Republicans asked you to jump off a bridge … ?
The chained CPI is the wrong answer to the wrong problem at the wrong time. It’s time for the White House to recognize that, cut its losses, and ditch this turkey of an idea. In the meantime Democrats need to walk away from it fast, before they pay a high price for it at the polls.
Richard (RJ) Eskow is a blogger and writer, a former Wall Street executive, an experienced consultant, and a former musician. He has experience in health insurance and economics, occupational health, benefits, risk management, finance and information technology.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Here is a sentence you won’t hear politicians or policy wonks saying in the next few weeks: “We should pay Social Security beneficiaries less in the future and push a lot of people into higher tax brackets.” Here is a sentence you almost certainly will hear: “Let’s adopt chained CPI.”...
Demeter
(85,373 posts)http://www.alternet.org/economy/10-tax-dodges-help-rich-get-richer?akid=10317.227380.-Vf4Np&rd=1&src=newsletter823477&t=4&paging=off
1. No income means no tax.
Imagine two men living in the same town. Joe owns an oil exploration corporation. Pete, a geologist, works for Joe. Pete finds oil, billions of dollars worth, and when he does, Joe gives him a $1 million bonus. Pete pays income taxes on $1 million and keeps looking for oil. Joe, the boss is now a billionaire. Although he has not sold any oil yet, the bank lends him money against the find and he builds a mansion, buys a nice car and lives it up. Even though Joe has become richer by billions of dollars, he pays no income tax. Why? He has no income....The biggest income tax loophole is the definition of income. For most people, what counts as income is simple to see—it’s their salary, and maybe, if they’re lucky, a bonus. Yet for the very wealthy, salary is trivial—if they earn one at all. That’s not where their riches come from. Instead, their money comes from “carried interest” (which we’ll explain more fully below) and from the appreciation of their ownership interests in stock, real estate and other assets. Every year, Forbes and other magazines show how the wealth of hundreds of individuals increases by hundreds of millions from one year to the next. As long as this increase is not defined as income, no income tax is due. And, surprise, surprise: all these things are effectively taxed, if at all, at a much lower rate than the income tax rates that apply to simple salaries and bonuses. It gets even better: increases in the value of shares of stock, and of real estate, aren’t taxed until sold and if never sold, may never be taxed. What about estate tax, you say? After all, it used to be said, “The only things that are certain are death, and taxes.” But now, with good ”advice,” that’s no longer true. Stick with us and we’ll explain how.
2. Why investment managers pay lower tax rates than their secretaries. Some of the wealthiest people in America manage hedge funds, private equity funds, or real estate partnerships, and typically, these investment managers receive a very small salary, relative to their total compensation. But don’t feel too sorry for them—they’re not working for free. Instead, most of their compensation comes in the form of a share of the fund or project they manage. This ownership share is called a “carried interest.” And currently, it’s usually taxed as a capital gain instead of ordinary income... It means that when the manager’s tax bill comes due, he owes the federal government 20 percent in taxes-- the current tax rate on long-term capital gains-- rather than the 39.6 percent rate that applies to ordinary income. This dodge halves his effective tax rate on these earnings. It’s just this loophole that Mitt Romney used to pay less than 15 percent— based on the legal capital gains tax rate at the time—on the millions he cleared while head of Bain Capital. This compares to the nearly 40 percent in federal income tax that a top surgeon, or anyone else whose earnings are defined as ordinary income, pays on his money. Congress has been trying to eliminate this loophole since 2007, but every time they get close to a fix, lobbyists beat them back. After all, no one likes to pay more taxes. But some of us pay more than the favored few.
3. How tax delayed can become tax never paid.Taxes on the appreciation of assets—the value of a company, a stock portfolio, or the increase in real estate held for investment purposes—qualify as capital gains, rather than ordinary income. We’ve already seen the big advantage of calling something a capital gain: it’s taxed at a lower rate. There’s another benefit to how the tax code treats these assets: no tax is due on the increase in the value of these assets until their owner sells them to realize the proceeds. That means, no matter how much one’s wealth increases on paper, one doesn’t need to pay the government a dime in income tax until the property—whether real estate or paper assets -- is sold. Let’s go back to our simple example of the oil entrepreneur. What if he never sells his oil property? No tax is due. He just keeps spending money he’s borrowed against his holdings. Or suppose he trades one piece of real estate for another? Under like kind exchange rules there would also be no tax due, no matter how much the pieces of property are worth. Compare this to how the tax code treats the ordinary married couple who’ve done well with a home purchase, and has to pay capital gains tax on any gain of more than $500,000. Although this might sound like a lot of money, many retirees who live in places where real estate’s expensive have to pay such taxes. They cannot get exclusions for millions and billions. They must pay the tax that’s due. Suppose the billionaire bequeaths his billions to his spouse. Spouses can receive unlimited bequests without estate taxes, and better still, the value for tax purposes is “stepped up” at death so that if everything is sold to realize the gains, no income tax is due as there is no capital gain. The “cost” of the billions was redefined to be value at death. The current US income tax system doesn’t impose taxes on wealth. Nor is much appreciation in assets such as stocks and real estate ever taxed by the estate tax system. The result: tax delayed can become tax never paid.
4. The charity scam. Another way the wealthy avoid paying taxes on their billions is to make charitable donations. If you donate property, you never have to pay income tax on that donation, whatever it costs you and how much it’s worth right now. Well you might say, at least someone benefits from the charity. Whether or not the charitable donation is a scam in whole or in part depends on the answer to that old question: qui bono? Aka, who benefits? That’s where the real scam takes place. And there’s no legal requirement that a charity must spend its wealth. In fact, IRS rules require only that charities spend about 5 percent of their investment assets annually, and all or part of this amount can be spent on salaries and “expenses,” rather than devoted to the charitable purpose the charity purports to be serving. So, what happens with a charitable trust, set up by a billionaire, and controlled by one of the billionaire’s children? The child gets a job and a salary for life. Maybe a mansion to live in and entertain in as a fringe benefit. This is a great gig for the heir. What about the taxes due? No income tax is due on the money the parent donated to set up the charity—even though the parent may have made the charitable donation so as not to pay any tax on an appreciated asset. Similarly, no estate tax is due on this donation, ever. And all the money donated to the charity is protected from divorce, or any creditors because even though the donor’s heir controls the charity, the law says that heir does not “own” the trust. The non-profit sector is a very big tent. It houses genuine do-gooding institutions that contribute to society by deploying resources to improve public health, reduce poverty, and improve the environment. But charitable trusts that just go through the motions so that the lion’s share of benefits is realized by a donor and heirs are also allowed inside. And other types of distortion are rampant, such as charities that promote a certain worldview or political philosophy, often cloaked in some form of intellectual or educational rhetoric. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett got lots of great press in 2010, when they launched the Giving Pledge, committing America’s wealthiest to giving away half their wealth to charity. Since then lots of big names— Michael Bloomberg, Larry Ellison, Carl Icahn, George Lucas, Michael Milken, Peter Peterson, Ted Turner, Mark Zuckerberg-- have all signed on. Sounds great—so philanthropic. Would it be churlish under the circumstances to ask for more details?
5. What is an expense? ...One way to lower taxes is by claiming offsetting expenses. When you go to a baseball game, who rents all those expensive skyboxes? Almost always it’s a corporation. The most expensive restaurants are called expense account restaurants because businesses foot the bill for these meals, and individuals who dine out on the corporate dime aren’t taxed on these benefits. After all, they’re working while they devour vintage wines, eat foie gras, and if they’re lucky, catch foul balls. Of course, there is a limit on how much even pigs can eat. The real tax-free compensation comes from corporate limos, corporate jets, corporate chefs, corporate apartments, and even corporate barbers. Not everyone gets a chance to enjoy these freebies, which are in fact largely limited to the 1 percent at the top of the corporate food chain. So, you cannot deduct the interest payments for the used car you need to get to work, since the tax code says your car isn’t a business expense. Nor can you deduct the price of your daily subway or bus ride to go to and from the office. But you can bet that the Goldman Sachs banker who works late, pays nothing for his free ride home in a corporate limo. That’s considered a business expense for Goldman, and is allowed as a deduction on its corporate tax return. And if you’re a fat cat who rides in a Gulfstream, even better. A corporate jet trip for the offsite meeting in the Caribbean followed by a few rounds of golf is also a perfectly legal tax deduction. Some companies even insist that their CEOs use corporate jets for all their trips, even vacations. Why? “Security,” they say. It wouldn’t do for these folks to have to stand in line with the rest of us, and remove shoes, surrender Swiss Army knives, and discard oversize shampoo bottles before they’re allowed to board an airplane. Good record keeping is all it takes to avoid taxes on what some would say should be treated as untaxed compensation.
6. Catch me if you can. All rules are subject to interpretation. Is this starting to sound familiar? Many tax shelters are created to reduce income or delay the recognition of income by redefining it as something else or offsetting it with cash or non-cash expenses such as depreciation. The way U.S. tax law works is that if the IRS or a court hasn’t said a tax shelter is illegal, you’re free to try it. If you’re caught, the worst that will happen is that you’ll have to pay taxes due, plus interest and perhaps some penalties. And that only happens if you’re caught. The IRS and state tax authorities have no idea of what interpretation is being used—no matter how ridiculous-- unless it is discovered in an audit. Now, how likely is that? Currently, about 1 percent of tax returns are audited in any one year. Even when they occur, audits are seldom all encompassing. Many creative interpretations go unnoticed for years. Other countries follow more sensible rules. They require prior approval of creative tax code interpretations. So, in other words, it’s not legal to follow a certain tax strategy unless the tax authorities declare, upfront, that it is. Such a policy discourages the most aggressive tax avoiders from pushing their luck, and places all tax players on a level playing field. Our system instead encourages companies and individuals to pioneer the most creative tax minimization strategies. Do we really want to be a world leader in such activity?
7. He who pays the piper calls the tune: corporate welfare. Currently, 17,500 registered tax lobbyists work overtime to pack the U.S. tax code with special interest benefits. Big agri, ethanol producers, mine owners, clean energy companies—all line up to demand special tax concessions. Some of them might seem to make sense: allowing drug companies to deduct the costs of research and development into the next big drug blockbuster. But even when they do seem to make sense, there’s a big overall cost to the economy of all these tax breaks. They distort economic activity, moving it away from profit-seeking endeavors to where the biggest tax concessions may flow. A second serious concern is how these tax concessions worsen inequality: how many of those lobbyists do you suppose work on behalf of the ordinary U.S. taxpayer, the two-income family working hard to make ends meet? And when it comes time to draft a new tax law to squeeze out a bit more revenue, where do you think it comes from: the rich whose interests are well-represented in Washington, or the rest of us?
8. You get what you pay for. If you think this discussion is impossibly convoluted and complex and wonder why, you have no further to look than the experts. Our tax preparation and avoidance industry is massive. It bills by the hour. The more complex the tax code, the more complex the avoidance vehicles, the more billable hours. Therefore it’s no accident that the U.S. income tax code, when last we checked, is now nearly 74,000 pages long. More than 1.2 million people are employed as tax preparers—more than the number of police and firefighters combined, according to Face the Facts, a nonpartisan project of George Washington University-- and about 3 million people are involved in ensuring “compliance” with the tax code, including 90,000 IRS employees. Those who can afford it can hire the most astute experts, whose stock in trade is interpreting and defining the tax code to their best advantage. Remember Leona Helmsley? “Only the little people pay taxes.” Leona, you may recall, did do time for tax fraud, but for those who aren’t quite in the Queen of Mean’s class, and get competent advice, there’s usually no penalty.
MORE AT LINK, INCLUDING A SKILLFUL KNIFING OF MITT ROMNEY'S IRA....
Alexander Arapoglou, professor of finance at the University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School, has been a derivatives trader and head of risk management worldwide for various global financial institutions.
Jerri-Lynn Scofield has worked as a securities lawyer and a derivatives trader.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)HOW many millions of hours do you think Americans spend on government paperwork every year? The answer is staggering. It is measured not in the millions of hours, but in the billions — 9.14 of them, to be exact. Suppose that we value one hour at $20 (a conservative estimate). If so, the government imposes an annual reporting cost of more than $180 billion on the American people. That figure is more than 20 times last year’s budget of the Environmental Protection Agency, more than seven times that of the Department of Agriculture, and more than six times that of the Department of State.
Large as they are, the numbers do not capture the frustration experienced by countless individuals and small businesses, which are required to grapple with long, complex and sometimes barely comprehensible forms. Dozens of government agencies impose significant paperwork burdens, but one stands above all others: the Department of the Treasury. That department accounts for 6.7 billon annual hours, which is nearly 75 percent of the total. No other agency accounts for more than 6 percent. The Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Labor, the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency impose big reporting burdens, but in each of these cases, we are speaking of millions of hours, not billions. The Treasury Department is the national paperwork champion for one reason: It houses the Internal Revenue Service. As Congress starts to explore tax reform, it should begin with a project that ought to attract bipartisan support: a focused effort to slash the immense paperwork burden imposed by government in general and the tax system in particular.
There is reason to be hopeful. From 2009 to 2012, I led the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which oversees the Paperwork Reduction Act. (Yes, there is such a thing.) As part of President Obama’s continuing effort to streamline regulatory requirements, we took a series of quiet but aggressive steps to cut pointless red tape. In the last decade, the estimated paperwork burden peaked between 2007 and 2009, and while it remains far too high, we were able to chip away at it...The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is not exactly famous for eliminating regulatory costs, but in 2011 it removed 1.9 million annual hours of unnecessary burdens imposed on employers. In 2012, the Department of Transportation saved truck drivers 1.6 million annual hours by eliminating a requirement to file redundant inspection reports. The Department of Education has undertaken a series of efforts to simplify the process for filing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, removing 5.4 million annual hours of burdens imposed on students and their families. More ambitiously still, government agencies recently identified more than 100 new paperwork-reduction initiatives, which are anticipated to eliminate some 100 million hours in annual burdens.
IN the area of taxation, Congress has imposed a lot of reporting requirements, sharply reducing the ability of the I.R.S. to streamline the system. And yet the I.R.S. has taken important steps to simplify the annual tax process. Its form 1040EZ allows people earning less than $100,000 to file their taxes with a straightforward one-page form. The I.R.S. has also announced a far simpler way to assess the popular home-office deduction. More than three million taxpayers claim this deduction, which has long been time-consuming to calculate. The new approach is eliminating 1.6 million hours in annual burdens. Moreover, the I.R.S.’s ambitious initiative to simplify reporting for capital gains and losses, recently announced though not yet implemented, will allow taxpayers to report summary information without providing unnecessary line-by-line details for each transaction — saving 19 million hours in annual reporting burdens.
Still, the I.R.S. could do far more. It could encourage many more taxpayers to take advantage of its current efforts to allow them to substitute electronic filings for paper ones. It could increase the use of shorter, streamlined forms (some of these are already available), and it could coordinate and consolidate redundant or overlapping requirements. Some economists, including Austan Goolsbee, a former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, have proposed a more ambitious plan: Tax authorities should allow automatic tax returns. They would use the information they already have to send eligible taxpayers fully filled out returns, asking for only a signature and the correction of any errors. California is already using such an approach with a program called Ready Return. For all the talk about tax simplification, Congress has paid disappointingly little attention to paperwork burdens. But Democrats and Republicans should be able to agree that nine billion hours are far too many. Let’s do something about it.
Cass R. Sunstein is a former head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and the author, most recently, of “Simpler: The Future of Government.”
I PREFER TO FOLLOW THE 1%ER'S LEAD, AS EPITOMIZED BY THE FOLLOWING LYRIC FROM "OLIVER!"
IT IS SUNG BY FAGIN, IN HIS DEFINING SOLO "YOU'VE GOT TO PICK A POCKET OR TWO"
In the bank, large amounts
I'm afraid these don't grow on trees,
You've got to pick-a-pocket or two
You've got to pick-a-pocket or two, boys,
You've got to pick-a-pocket or two.
[BOYS]
Large amounts don't grow on trees.
You've got to pick-a-pocket or two.
[FAGIN (spoken)]
Let's show Oliver how it's done, shall we, my dears?
[sung] Why should we break our backs
Stupidly paying tax?
Better get some untaxed income
Better to pick-a-pocket or two...
http://www.allmusicals.com/lyrics/oliver/youvegottopickapocketortwo.htm
AND SO FORTH
Demeter
(85,373 posts)THE words happy and taxes do not often appear together. In fact, death is the word that people associate most often with taxes, according to wordassociation.org.
Like facing death, contemplating taxes focuses us on what we stand to lose, rather than what we stand to gain. But while some people mitigate the pain of thinking about death by imagining the pleasure of a heavenly afterlife, does anyone have a trick for decreasing the pain of paying taxes?
An emerging body of research offers hope for squeezing some happiness out of tax season. While paying any bills, from rent to maxed-out credit cards, is far from pleasant, there’s something about taxes that really irks Americans. One study showed that people were more willing to drive 30 minutes out of their way to buy a “tax free” product than they were to make that same drive for a product that was merely “discounted” — even when the discount saved them more money.
Why the hatred? One reason is that it’s not easy for people to see how taxes provide benefits. One survey that asked Americans whether they had used any government social programs found many saying they hadn’t — when in fact, a majority had taken advantage of tax deductions for mortgage interest or child care. Fifty-three percent had taken out student loans, and 40 percent had benefited from Medicare. Clearly, the government has a marketing problem...
OR SOMETHING...LIKE MAYBE ALL THOSE "BENEFITS" ARE NOTHING OF THE KIND, BUT A FORM OF CHEATING THE PUBLIC OF ANY CHANCE AT EQUALITY IN THE ECONOMY...WITH THE 1%!
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Around the globe, people are happier in countries with progressive taxes because they are satisfied with the services those tax dollars provide, from education to public transportation. Yet Americans fail to see their taxes as anything but wasted....
BECAUSE THE US CITIZEN'S TAXES ARE WASTED!
TAXES ARE WASTED ON BAILING OUT THE BANKSTERS, NOT JUST AT HOME, BUT GLOBALLY.
TAXES ARE WASTED BLOWING UP PEOPLE FIGHTING FOR THEIR LIVES IN COUNTRIES TOO POOR TO COMPARE EVEN TO APPALACHIA, WHICH AT LEAST HAS WATER AND ARABLE SOIL.
TAXES ARE WASTED GIVING CORPORATE WELFARE TO GLOBAL CORPORATIONS THAT ARE DESTROYING THE DOMESTIC ECONOMY WITH PROFITEERING, WHILE THEY HIDE THEIR TAXABLE INCOME OVERSEAS.
TAXES ARE WASTED SUBSIDIZING HEDGE FUND FINANCIERS, BILLIONAIRES, AND OTHER NATIONAL PARASITES.
AND THERE ARE SO MANY OTHERS THAT I CANNOT EVEN BEGIN TO THINK ABOUT...
Hotler
(11,421 posts)They say everything has to start at home or with yourself. The folks over in Jonestown are the ones that need to get a clue. If they would wise up DU might become a force.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)APRIL 15 is dreaded as the deadline for filing income tax returns, but in fact every day is tax day for most working people. That’s because more than half of all Americans pay more in payroll tax than in income tax. That includes nearly everyone in the bottom half of the income distribution. We don’t file annual payroll tax returns because payroll taxes have one rate and they aren’t adjusted for individual differences that affect taxpaying ability. Your bill remains the same regardless of how many children you support, your medical or education expenses, or your charitable contributions. No standard deduction or personal exemption either: payroll taxes apply to the first dollar. Since they were introduced in 1937, payroll taxes have risen from two cents to more than 15 cents for every wage dollar earned. Although the tax is technically split between employers and employees, economists agree that workers suffer the whole cost of the tax. Without it, workers could expect to have higher wages, not just lower taxes. The social insurance rhetoric surrounding the payroll tax might lead you to think that you are paying for your future retirement benefits. That’s not how it works, though: current taxes pay for current benefits. The Social Security “trust fund”? That’s an accounting mechanism, not an actual pot of money. Workers saw their take-home pay rise for two years on account of a partial payroll tax holiday, but that expired at the end of 2012, when there was virtually no support in the fiscal cliff negotiations for extending it, even though it was good for the economy.
Payroll taxes produce 40 percent of total federal revenue, but they are largely invisible. This is unfortunate because they play an important role in the overall balance of the federal tax burden, which falls much more heavily on income from work. Income from investments is not subject to the payroll tax, and it is also more lightly taxed than wages under the income tax. Because people with high incomes earn a much greater percentage of their total income from investments — and, crucially, because much of that investment income is wealth accumulation that has not been liquidated — tax law favors the rich far more than most people realize. The money that has been gained on investments that have appreciated but have not yet been sold is not taxed and may permanently escape tax under current law.
This might sound reasonable — why should I pay taxes before I cash out? — but it is actually where the tax system is especially inequitable. Poor people with no savings cannot benefit from the tax preferences for investment, and middle-income workers often pay tax at a higher rate than rich investors, a problem made famous by Warren Buffett. The ideal level of progressive taxation in our federal system is a vexing issue of philosophy and economics, and reasonable people can (and certainly do) differ about how graduated the rates should be. But even if we cannot agree about what would be fair, we should still be troubled by the substantial disparity in the taxation of individuals at the same income level. At every income level, workers pay significantly more tax than their counterparts who earn an equal amount through their investments.
At $70,000 total income, the worker pays almost $20,000 in federal taxes, roughly half in payroll tax and half in income tax. The investor with $70,000 in capital gains pays less than a fifth of that. This is not just an abstract discussion; it means that the 25-year-old trust funder is paying less in tax than his counterpart who fixes computers for a living. Tax fairness depends on overall burdens, not just who does and who doesn’t pay how much income tax. The federal tax system has become overwhelmingly skewed to burden work. Why? Because the link between payroll taxes and retirement security is political fiction. The average person retiring today cannot expect to collect in Social Security what he paid in taxes. Removing or raising the $113,700 earnings cap over which you do not have to pay payroll taxes would reduce the tax’s regressivity, but it would not address our unequal treatment of earners with different sources of income.
April 15 is as good a time as any to think about how we can readjust the federal tax burden so that both workers and investors pay their fair share to finance the many and varied federal programs — including retirement security — that we deem worthy of our tax dollars.
Linda Sugin is a law professor at Fordham University.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)WHERE INDEED? HAVE YOU LOOKED IN THE CUSHIONS OF THE COUCH?
http://prospect.org/article/wheres-change
Democrats keep telling their growing coalition to wait and the economic policies they've been hoping for will come. Unfortunately, the Obama administration's agenda can't back up that promise...If demography is destiny, Democrats—and the progressive interests that they are supposed represent in the two-party system—are the wave of the future.
But the American dream is about upward mobility. Ultimately, “The economy, Stupid” trumps identity politics. If the Democrats are not the champions of expanding jobs and incomes for the majority of voters who work for a living—whatever their gender, color, or sexual orientation—their claim to being the natural majority party will amount to little.
So it made political sense that Barack Obama began his 2013 State of the Union with this economic challenge:
He went on to outline a second-term agenda that most liberals welcomed as finally revealing the true, audacious Barack Obama. “Incredibly ambitious,” enthused Ezra Klein in The Washington Post. If Obama's plans were enacted, Klein wrote, “America would be a markedly different country." Would it? Even if Congress were to whisk the president’s entire economic agenda into law, the impact such an improbable feat would have on “our generation’s task” of reversing the decline of real wages and incomes is nearly nil. The root causes of the long-term slide in real wages and incomes are: 1) inadequate demand both here and abroad for what American workers produce; 2) financial deregulation, which has diverted American capital away from domestic production and toward short-term speculation; 3) the 30-year corporate war against trade unions.
Barack Obama’s agenda will not change any of these conditions...
NOT TO MENTION THE GROWING INEQUALITY THAT IS THE RESULT...
MORE AT LINK
Demeter
(85,373 posts)...Obama is not stupid. Neither are his economic advisers. They understand how a modern economy functions. They know that reducing government deficits in an anemic economy will increase unemployment. They know globalization, financial deregulation, and the corporate war on workers is eroding American living standards. They also know that there are alternatives. There is by now wide agreement among independent, Democratic-leaning economists on the elements of a serious national recovery program of short-term stimulus, long-term investment, and other policies to increase the demand for and the wages of working Americans. (See, for starters, the “Back-to-work" budget of the House Progressive Caucus, the Prosperity Economics plan endorsed by the AFL-CIO and a wide variety of groups, and the writings of Nobel Laureates Joe Stiglitz and Paul Krugman.) There is no dearth of ideas. So what explains the unwillingness of this administration to present a plan that might actually “reignite” the middle-class prosperity the president needs for his legacy and his party needs for its future?
The most obvious answer is that Democratic leaders are afraid to threaten the economic power and ideological comfort of the country’s corporate rich, who finance the Democrats’ campaigns and careers, and whose hired help populates the upper reaches of the party’s policymaking. To take them on, the president would have to launch and sustain a populist educational campaign to undo the myths about big government and deficit spending that have so confused the electorate. But that is too much heavy political lifting for a White House whose economic advisers will go back to Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and other financial firms, as well as the Washington lobbying groups that serve their interests. Easier to put his faith in the perennial happy-face projections of the CBO than tackle that crowd. Hope, it turns out, is a strategy—of sorts.
But do the decision-makers of the Democratic Party think that they can sustain a political majority with no serious strategy for dealing with the eroding living standards of a majority of the electorate? Judging by their behavior, that is exactly what they think—and it’s not irrational. If you assume their demographic advantage and that Republicans will remain deeply fractured by their lunatic fringe for some time, Democrats do not actually have to deliver on their promise to reignite middle-class living standards. They can win national elections just by being the socially liberal and economically conservative option. The party’s leaders have plenty of reason to think they have the loyalty of their activist base in their pocket. Yes, there is grumbling among unions, environmentalists, and the liberal bloggers about Obama’s centrist instincts, his Wall Street advisers, and his political judgment. But it is just grumbling. After the election, progressives vowed to hold the party’s “feet to the fire.” But on the very first test—the opportunity for the Senate Democrats to end the conservative abuses of the filibuster abuses—they let the party leadership slip comfortably off the hook.
For a variety of reasons, the Democratic left lacks the independence, strength and hard edge of the Republican right. There is nothing on the progressive side of our politics like the Tea Party—which now even gets its own network slot, separate from the GOP, to respond to the president’s State of the Union. The Republican establishment is afraid of their right. Neither the White House nor the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committees are afraid of their left. The message from the Democratic establishment to its base is: “Chill out—your turn will come.” If you accept their rosy scenario, they make a plausible, if cynical, case to liberals for patience: Since time is now on the Democratic side, Obama’s compromised improvements in government programs can be built on later. How much later? Who knows? So far American voters certainly have been willing to wait—and in the meantime, suck it up. A few short years ago, it was unimaginable that a president could be re-elected after four years in which the unemployment rate averaged almost 9 percent. So if the people are OK with four years of rough times, why not six, or eight? Disappointed and debt-ridden 20- and 30-somethings did not rally around Occupy Wall Street’s call for active dissent; they have adjusted to hard times by working more hours, delaying marriage, and milking each other’s networks in a desperate effort to find a career. Nor have the middle-aged breadwinners whose lives have been shattered by corporate brutality taken to the streets. Their elders, whose hopes for retirement have evaporated, seem resigned to working until they drop.
There are a few clouds in the Democratic leadership’s happy, self-justifying scenario of how they capture the future. One is that in the absence of more stimulus, the economy might tank, with the Democrats taking the blame. Another is that the electorate’s seeming passivity might mask a seething and volatile anger, which when it finally explodes will demand truly radical change. At that point, the Democratic Party, with an atrophied and co-opted left wing, could find itself unable to respond, while the far more organized right wing of the Republican Party, having developed a more sophisticated outreach to economically frustrated minorities, single women and immigrants, could fill the populist vacuum.
Democrats who dismiss these possibilities should keep in mind how quickly the political odds can change...
STILL MORE
Hotler
(11,421 posts)Demeter
(85,373 posts)It is "by invitation only" and limited to 2500 invitees, and while
Prime Minister David Cameron's office said the list — drawn up by Thatcher's family, her Conservative Party and the government — includes representatives of 200 states and organizations with whom Britain has normal diplomatic relations.
Invitees include the ambassador of Argentina, with whom Britain, under Thatcher, fought a 1982 war over the Falkland Islands.
Most countries will be represented at the funeral by ambassadors or other officials. Downing St. said the only current and former world leaders invited were those who had a "close connection to Baroness Thatcher."
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/margaret-thatcher-funeral-89953.html#ixzz2QUdBUtwN
Sec. of State Kerry is still on his Magical Mystery Tour, drawing a pentagram (Pentagon?) around North Korea, and getting the Asians firmly under the US foot....er, umbrella.
And nobody in the US press is leaping at the chance to hobnob with the mourners...publicly. I guess we will just have to wait and see who actually turns up.
Maybe they won't announce for fear of being droned by the Third World...
What a shame, all that power and majesty, and no freedom to flaunt it!
Demeter
(85,373 posts)TEARS APART THE PROPAGANDA PRAISE AND LOOKS AT THE FACTS
A PICTURE WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS:
Demeter
(85,373 posts)It was a long time coming, this correction, but it seems way overshot. Is this a global manipulation to buy enough of the yellow stuff to send the German hoard back at bargain basement prices?
Only the simultaneous drops in silver and oil futures keeps my paranoia in check.
Of course, if I were running the Treasury, I'd be out bargain-hunting. Not beating up the Eurozone.
Warpy
(111,256 posts)and producing the go-go stock market. I wonder what's provoking the whole thing, they can't tempt middle class people into a bubble market these days because the middle class is tapped out and surviving on working class incomes.
Using the stock market as another bleed off scheme is not going to work. It's too massive and hard to manipulate, unlike commodities.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)What on earth is going on?
DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)
westerebus
(2,976 posts)COMEX vault was a little light on inventory.
News story Cyprus would have to sell 5 billion Euro's worth of gold.
FMOC minutes advance release to the inside insider's.
SS officially on the table.
Short squeeze set up to take out 1525 support line.
BANG! 1525 gone. Everybody sells.
GAME>SET>MATCH.
When staying even is getting ahead = the new normal.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)I SMELL A VAMPIRE SQUID, MYSELF
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/gold-falls-sharply-copper-hit-after-china-data-2013-04-15?siteid=YAHOOB
Gold futures tumbled by more than $90 on Monday, deepening their descent after entering bear-market territory last week, while prices for industrial metal copper also slumped following economic data from China that fell short of expectations...Gold last week lost 4.7%. The losses roughly matched gold’s heavy drop on Friday, when it lost $63.50, or 4.1%, to $1,501.40 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. Friday’s settlement price marked a 20.5% drop for the most-active contract from the record settlement of $1,888.70 an ounce reached on Aug. 22, 2011.
Traders and analysts have cited numerous reasons for gold’s breakdown. Sentiment has suffered due to recent cuts to price forecasts for the precious metal and outflows from gold exchange-traded products. Among those calls, Goldman Sachs, last week lowered its average gold-price forecast for 2013 to $1,545 an ounce, a level it took out last Friday.
“Any traders who were anticipating a near-term bounce in the precious metal today would have been caught out in a big way as it broke below Friday’s low of $1,481, and didn’t look back,” said Stan Shamu, market strategist at IG Markets in Melbourne in a note to investors. “The drop only halted at $1,426, which was a resistance zone in December 2010 and March 2011.”
Shamu said gold’s tumble has largely been blamed on potential central-bank sales to shore up fiscal shortfalls. “This is after ECB President Mario Draghi put pressure on Cyprus to sell its excess gold reserves to help fund the bailout and plug a €6 billion gap. Although Cyprus is yet to decide how it’ll fund the gap, these comments have rattled investors and caused the selloff.”He said this has also triggered a “breakdown of the gold/quantitative easing relationship we’d gotten used to, where poor U.S. economic readings lead to prolonged QE expectations and in turn a weaker U.S. dollar and stronger gold price. This drop officially puts gold in a bear market.” MORE AT LINK
Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)
Roland99
(53,342 posts)AnneD
(15,774 posts)and drooling....
I bought in so low that I am still up. I buy for the long term. I can't understand the prices going down esp with all the fiat money being printed. It is hard to get gold and silver in some places. I think there is big time price manipulation. Then again, it just might be my paranoia kicking in.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)...In 2005, Experiment Station researchers were unnerved to learn that a bacterial disease called citrus greening had arrived in Florida citrus groves. Citrus greening, also called huanglongbing or yellow dragon disease, is carried by an insect called the Asian citrus psyllid. It cannot, as yet, be cured; while infected trees may not show symptoms for months or years, they eventually begin to produce yellow foliage and misshapen, bitter fruit that drops prematurely to the ground. Researchers consider greening a mortal threat: it is so damaging to fruit crops that in 2003, the U.S. classified the bacteria that causes it as a bioterror tool.
Greening, thought to have originated in Africa or South Asia, has been identified in more than forty countries—including Brazil, Florida’s main rival in the global orange-juice business. But the 2005 Florida cases were greening’s first appearance in the United States. “We had to put everything else in the freezer, quite literally,” Michael Rogers, an entomologist at the Experiment Station who had been planning to research Australian mites, said. “All our funding and all our attention suddenly went to greening.” Eight years on, citrus researchers have few answers. The bacteria that causes greening in Florida, Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus, has never been successfully grown in a lab, so researchers can’t examine it closely enough to learn its vulnerabilities. Introductions of Asian wasps that prey on the psyllid have so far been of limited use, and antibiotic and heat treatments are still in the experimental stage.
For now, Rogers and others advise growers to monitor their groves, immediately remove any infected trees, and apply pesticides repeatedly and aggressively. Pesticides are a familiar weapon in Florida citrus groves: when McPhee visited, he saw crews battling pests with “a liquid arsenal ranging from a fine mist of petroleum to parathion, a deadly nerve gas developed by German scientists during the Second World War.” But in the case of citrus greening, pesticides are unreliable protection at best. Psyllids reproduce at a feverish pace, and it only takes one insect to infect a tree. Some growers, hoping to avoid the high cost of pulling up sick trees and replacing them with those grown in insect-proof facilities, have resorted to dosing infected trees with extra nutrients in hopes of prolonging their lifespan, a controversial strategy that researchers fear may contribute to the disease’s spread.
So far, greening is thought to have shrunk commercial citrus production in the state by about a third, from eight hundred and fifty thousand acres under production in 2002 to five hundred and twenty thousand today. (During the state’s real-estate collapse, some growers discouraged by the spread of greening and unable to sell their land simply abandoned their groves, leaving psyllids to multiply unchecked.) This spring, greening is being blamed for an unprecedented “fruit drop,” in which eighteen million boxes worth of oranges and grapefruit fell prematurely. Growers have hired extra pickers to try to save some of the fruit, but losses are estimated at a hundred and thirty-eight million dollars, and more are expected as Valencia oranges continue to ripen in coming weeks...Some citrus experts predict that unless greening is contained, Florida citrus crops will be gone within five years... And the damage won’t be limited to Florida: the disease has now been identified in California and Texas, and Arizona is watching for its first case...
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The U.S. labor force is shrinking. Back in 2007, 66 percent of Americans had a job or were actively seeking work. Today, that number is at 63 percent and falling.
My colleague Jim Tankersley had a smart story on this trend over the weekend, but I’ll also add in this chart from Derek Thompson. It breaks down the labor force decline by age group and offers one of the clearest illustrations of what’s happening:
Labor force participation rates for younger workers, ages 16 to 54, has been dropping sharply for a number of reasons — some good, some terrible. Younger people are more likely to stay in school than they used to. But the terrible economy is also keeping some people at home. The decline of manufacturing has left many older workers unable to find new jobs. And, as we’ve seen, some workers are moving to disability programs.
On the flip side, the labor force participation rate for older workers, age 55 and up, has been rising of late. People who were near retirement saw their savings evaporate after the financial crisis, so some of them are now working longer to repair the damage.
But when you combine those together, you get a net drop. Older Americans are still very unlikely to work. And so, as the United States ages, and more Baby Boomers shift into that 55-and-older cohort, the overall labor force participation rate drops. As Bill McBride explains here, “The recent decline in the participation rate was mostly expected, and most of the decline in the participation rate was due to changing demographics.”
Demeter
(85,373 posts)The answer comes down to (in order of importance): demographics, college attendance, the Great Recession, and the decline of manufacturing...
EXPLANATORY TEXT AT LINK
Warpy
(111,256 posts)That's what happens when old folks need part time cashier jobs to help them eke out survival on Social Security, alone.
They want us to work until we drop dead on the job. Yet they throw us out of the kind of work that supports us at or before our 55th birthdays.
It's a great country if you're white, male, upper middle class, and never get old.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Larger than their parents, in any event.
That would definitely apply in my family.
westerebus
(2,976 posts)fixed it for you...
Demeter
(85,373 posts)YOU'LL JUST HAVE TO READ IT...TOO MUCH DETAIL TO EXCERPT
OF COURSE, GIVEN THE NATURE OF THE DOCUMENT, YOU COULD JUST SKIP IT. IT'S DOA. STILL, THERE MIGHT BE A COUPLE OF GOOD IDEAS TO RECYCLE WHEN TIMES ARE MORE FAVORABLE...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/10/12-things-that-may-get-lost/
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Just hours after proposing a budget that would replace automatic spending cuts required by law, President Barack Obama on Wednesday set in motion the next $109 billion of the reductions to military and domestic programs for the year starting on October 1. The White House announced that Obama signed the sequester order, which directs that total discretionary spending for fiscal year 2014 be cut by $91 billion to a total of $967 billion - the lowest level since 2004.
Obama was required by law to sign the order after submitting his budget request to Congress. The appropriations committees in the House of Representatives and the Senate are holding hearings this week over how to divide the dwindling discretionary funding pie for programs ranging from education to weapons development to national parks. Little has been done to stop the initial $85 billion in cuts that went into effect on March 1 and threatens to prompt temporary layoffs for hundreds of thousands of government workers and defense contractor employees. If left in place, the sequester would force about another $1.1 trillion in across-the board spending cuts over a decade.
The Republican budget, authored by Representative Paul Ryan and passed by the U.S. House of Representatives last month, keeps the sequester savings in place, and maintains the same $967 billion spending cap now ordered by Obama for fiscal 2014. But Obama's budget, like the one passed by Senate Democrats, proposed to replace the sequester, largely through tax increases on the wealthy and spending cuts elsewhere, including health, and a lower inflation gauge for cost of living increases associated with tax brackets, Social Security, and other program.
The budgets represent a starting point for talks in the next few months over deficit reduction as a new debt limit increase deadline looms by August.
kickysnana
(3,908 posts)The budget includes what it boasts is “a comprehensive and balanced legislative proposal” to cut $20 billion in Postal Service spending over 10 years, while increasing the flexibility of the Postal Service in changing business practices.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Most Borrowers to Get $1,000 or Less as Part of a $9.3 Billion Settlement Between U.S. and Banks...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324504704578412872212265056.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection
The vast majority of borrowers being compensated for mortgage-related abuses will get $1,000 or less apiece, a sobering coda to a protracted attempt to help those who may have been placed into foreclosure as a result of banks' mistakes.
About 4 million borrowers will share $3.6 billion in cash as part of a settlement between federal regulators and banks accused of foreclosure-processing mistakes. U.S. regulators said Tuesday that banks wrongfully took away homes from 1,082 borrowers who were members of the U.S. military. Another 53 borrowers were found to have lost their homes despite not actually defaulting on their loans. Those 1,135 individuals will receive checks of $125,000.
Most borrowers, however, will see far less, with about 80% receiving checks ranging from $300 to $1,000, according to data released by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve.
Because the foreclosure review was shut down by regulators, it isn't clear in many cases how badly the borrowers were wronged, if at all....
Demeter
(85,373 posts)if you are feeling taxophobic.
Tansy_Gold
(17,860 posts)Will stick the check in the mailbox tomorrow.
I try to remind myself I'm glad I make enough to have to pay taxes at all . . . . except in this country you don't have to make very much for that to be true.
Warpy
(111,256 posts)My taxes went out on Friday. The quarterlies will go out tomorrow.
The paperwork keeps getting more and more insane with every passing year, most of it qualifies as hazing for those of us who aren't multinational corporations.
Tansy_Gold
(17,860 posts)I'm self-employed, with three separate, though related, businesses to account for. With few exceptions, the income and expenses for those three activities do not overlap, so they're easy to keep track of during the year on three separate spreadsheets. It's all combined for tax purposes on one Schedule C. From there it's on to Schedule SE and then the 1040. I spent more time on figuring out if I even qualified for the Earned Income Credit than on any other single part of the process and as much time on that and the calculation of the EIC amount as on the entire Schedule C -- which included combining income and expenses from three activities. And I do not use any of the EZ forms.
Just another penalty for being working and poor.
Warpy
(111,256 posts)but the amount of paper required for chickenfeed deductions of twenty to forty bucks apiece is daunting, to say the least.
It's all the damned paperwork that gets me down. Just take the amount off the 1099s and use that, don't make me research back 8 years month by month for the cost plus basis. And the foreign tax? Take that off the 1099, too, it's not like you research all the piddling little taxes country by country to check up on them. It's not like they check up on anyone, not even the people with thousands or millions in foreign taxes.
Fuck them, fuck the lot of them with a chainsaw. Sideways.
Being poor was a lot less complicated. Income? Diddly squat. Taxes? Written in stone and too high for a sucker doing hard labor. Refund? Yeah, enough to catch up on a few bills.
being poor is NOT "a lot less complicated."
I'd gladly spend a full day on my tax return (instead of two hours) in exchange for an extra $10,000 in income. And to have enough to be required to file quarterly? Hell, I'd give 'em one day every three months for that, too.
Refund? What's that?
Warpy
(111,256 posts)from a soulless corporation, like I did.
I know entrepreneur taxes are awful, especially in the salad days before the businesses start to generate enough of a living that you can dump the whole thing in a CPA's lap.
Tansy_Gold
(17,860 posts)You think no one else ever worked for an underpaid living for a soulless corporation?
The last real, full-time job I had -- with a master's degree, no less -- paid $7.25 an hour. Soulless corporation? Uh, yeah. Major retailer, soulless, heartless, bloodless. I currently make slightly less than that as an "independent contractor" working for another soulless, heartless, bloodless corporation. I don't even have the benefits of being an employee.
But low pay and EZ tax forms don't make life uncomplicated. It's the daily -- and nightly -- worrying about whether the bills will get paid. Whether the car will be repossessed or break down and which will come first. Whether the next paycheck will cover the electric bill, the car insurance, and leave enough for groceries. Whether the next credit card payment will be the minimum or maybe an extra $10 toward the balance that you didn't want but had to add to because that was the only way to pay the doctor bills.
And being really poor is even worse, because then there's not even a credit card to pay the doctor bill, or even a car to get you to the next minimum wage job.
You inherited and were lucky, and so you complain about the time it takes to find all the deductions. So why bother? Why not just fuck the deductions and pay tax on the gross income? That would be really uncomplicated.
I spent 45 minutes trying to figure out the "Earned Income Credit," that little benefit that goes to low-income working people. My EIC was roughly equal to two weeks pay at my part-time, less-than-minimum-wage independent-contractor "job."
Of course, the EIC is only available to people under 65. So I won't even get that benefit next year. I'll save 45 minutes and lose a chunk of money. But my life will be less complicated.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)China's economy, the world's second-largest, has slowed and performed worse than many analysts expected in the first three months of the year.
Annual growth was 7.7% in the January to March quarter, compared with 7.9% in the previous three months. Analysts had forecast a figure closer to 8%.
China wants to spur growth after it hit a 13-year low in 2012.
Other key data on Monday also came in lower than market expectations, raising questions over the outlook for growth.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)The troika of international creditors to Greece has said the country's economy will start growing again next year and it will be able to contain its debts.
The troika, which includes the European Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF), said the next slice of financial support would be released soon.
The release of the funds follows a review by the troika.
They said Greek debt was containable.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Or flick a switch, and let the presses roll?
Or maybe, just flog it out of the peasantry?
Eyes rolling wildly...I am by appellation....Demeter
Demeter
(85,373 posts)Grieg was enamored of the poetry of Aasmund Olavsson Vinje (1818-1870) and began to study a volume of his works in 1877. The composer was always moved by the subjects of love, nature, and loss. Vinje's transcendent ability to express powerful emotions in these realms greatly inspired him. This song's text conveys the feelings of a dying man who sadly ponders that this spring will be his last. Many consider this masterful song among the very finest Grieg ever wrote. At about five minutes, it is one of the composer's longer songs. But it is also substantial in scope, and its thematic wares contain a rare depth of expression, its piano writing a subtle, gentle beauty. The main theme is lovely and forlorn as it soars so gently and sadly. The mood grows more tense as the song proceeds, and then a ravishing variant of the theme is heard about midway through. A reprise of sorts follows, and then the song ends sadly, the piano's lovely music seeming to slowly fade like the dying man in the text. Once again, one hears passages here in which Grieg augurs Rachmaninov's melancholy but beautiful lyricism.
~ Robert Cummings, Rovi http://www.answers.com/topic/v-ren-last-spring-song-for-voice-piano-op-33-2
Song : Soprano Bodil Arnesen,Norway
Official Homepage : http://www.bodilarnesen.com
Music : E.Grieg
Lyric : A.O.Vinje
Video : Bodil Arnesen
"Videoremix" AliceBorolin http://www.soria-moria.biz
......
Enno ein Gong fekk eg Vetren å sjå for Våren å røma;
Heggen med Tre som der blomar var på, eg atter såg bløma.
Enno ein Gong fekk eg Isen å sjå frå Landet å fljota,
Snjoen å bråna og Fossen i Å å fyssa og brjota.
Graset det grøne eg enno ein Gong fekk skoda med Blomar;
enno eg høyrde at Vårfuglen song mot Sol og mot Sumar.
Eingong eg sjølv i den vårlege Eim, som mettar mit Auga,
eingong eg der vil meg finna ein Heim og symjande lauga.
Alt det, som Våren imøte meg bar og Blomen, eg plukka,
Federnes Ånder eg trudde det var, som dansa og sukka.
Derfor eg fann millom Bjørkar og Bar i Våren ei Gåta;
derfor det Ljod i den Fløyta eg skar, meg tyktes å gråta.
In English :
Yet once again cruel winter I've seen to springtime surrender;
Buds springing forth on each flower and tree proclaim nature's splendor.
Once more the earth 'neath the sun's warming rays; the ice-sheet is smashing;
Rivers are flowing to sparkling azure bays, and waterfalls crashing.
See, in the meadows the flowers bloom again, awakening from slumber;
Hear, from the tree-tops the songbirds in the glen are singing of summer.
Yet once again o'er the fast-leafing trees the sunbeams are dancing,
Butterflies waft in the undulant breeze, their hues so entrancing.
All springtime's joys that I saw once again are soon gone forever;
Therefore I ask from a heart suffused with pain: shall I see them never?
So be it then; ah, the memories that teem, all sorrow must banish;
Joy has been mine past my spirits fondest dreams, and all. all must vanish.
One day I surely must go to that place of glory unending,
There in the homeland of beauty and grace my longing transcending.
All of springs bounty so richly bestowed, each radiant flower,
Souls of our fathers come down from their abode to share earths sweet hour!
Hear how the wind in the tree-tops above is moaning and crying;
Hear! From each willow and each gray mourning dove: a sound as of sighing.
Translation by William H. Halverson
Fuddnik
(8,846 posts)While I was trying to get my first cup of coffee down, I thought His Royal Rosconess was just bouncing around in the back yard, playing.
Nope. He caught a snake. About a 4-footer. I'm assuming it was a black snake. I don't see any wounds, and he's not sick.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Goldman Sachs paid its chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein, $21m last year – and granted him a further $5m in bonus shares in January.
The Wall Street bank handed Blankfein $13.3m (£8.7m) in restricted shares and a $5.7m cash bonus on top of his $2m annual salary last year.
His total 2012 pay was $9m more than in 2011, and the highest since the $68m he received in 2007, before the financial crisis struck.
The payout, disclosed in a filing with the US regulator the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), makes Blankfein, 58, the world's best paid banker
xchrom
(108,903 posts)"Wall Street got drunk" was George W Bush's typically incisive take on the main cause of the emerging financial crisis in July 2008. Two years later the governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, explained in his Mansion House speech that "the role of a central bank in monetary policy is to take the punch bowl away just as the party gets going" (something that he admitted had not occurred). But perhaps the wrong intoxicant was being blamed. The controversial former drug tsar David Nutt told the Sunday Times this weekend that cocaine-using bankers with their "culture of excitement and drive and more and more and more ... got us into this terrible mess".
I'm inclined to agree. Cocaine is (I'm reliably informed) a drug that results in intense bouts of over-exuberance as well as a tendency to talk extremely convincingly about stuff you know nothing about. Everyone accepts that a credit bubble occurred in the mid-noughties and that it was a direct result of what the former US Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan has referred to as "irrational exuberance". It could also be argued that traders would be better able to sell absurdly complicated financial weapons of mass destruction after taking a confidence-boosting narcotic such as cocaine. Furthermore, surely only cocaine-ravaged buffoons would actually buy billions of dollars worth of mortgage-backed securities when they were so clearly doomed to explode the minute the property boom stalled.
I certainly saw my fair share of sniffly noses and gurning jaws at City bars every Thursday night. I also heard overconfident gibberish being spouted by brash wide-boys throughout my 12-year banking career. There were also lots of stories about some of the big swingers in New York enjoying a line or 10 of an evening. Bernie Madoff's office was apparently known as "the North Pole" such were the gargantuan quantities of "snow" to be found there and most bankers are aware of the published allegations that Jimmy Cayne (former CEO of Bear Stearns) had an anti-acid medication bottle that was filled with cocaine.
Dr Chris Luke, an A&E specialist based at Cork University Hospital, Ireland, who has studied the effects of cocaine on bankers, has stated that "prominent figures in financial and political circles made irrational decisions as a result of megalomania brought on by cocaine usage". He concludes that "people were making insane decisions and thinking they were 110% right … which led to the current chaos."
Hotler
(11,421 posts)Look, right there in front of your face is a reason to arrest the bankers. Arrest them on drug charges.
snot
(10,524 posts)xchrom
(108,903 posts)BEIJING (AP) -- Iceland on Monday became the first European nation to strike a free trade deal with China, offering hope for its recession-battered economy while giving Beijing a leg up in its drive for expanded influence in the Arctic.
The China-Iceland free trade pact will lower tariffs on a range of goods and is expected to boost seafood and other exports from the remote Nordic state to the world's second-largest economy. It comes at the start of a five-day visit to China by Icelandic Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir that highlights her country's attempts to diversify an economy that was badly mauled by the bursting of a massive financial bubble in 2008.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang told Sigurdardottir the agreement was "a major event in China-Iceland relations."
"It also signals the deepening of our relationship, especially our economic relationship which has been lifted to a new height," Li said during talks following a formal welcoming ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in the center of Beijing.
When you sup with the Devil, use a long spoon!
xchrom
(108,903 posts)ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- Greece cleared an important hurdle in its drive to receive its next batch of bailout loans after international debt inspectors said Monday they had reached an agreement over the country's economic reforms - including the firing of thousands of civil servants.
The review by delegates from the International Monetary Fund, European Commission and European Central Bank - known collectively as the troika - is part of a regular process under which Greece receives installments of its multibillion-euro bailout.
"Greece is being stabilized and our position is being bolstered," Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said in a televised address Monday afternoon. "Late last night we reached an agreement for the disbursement of the next installment of (EURO)2.8 billion ($3.65 billion), and the road has opened for the May installment of 6 billion."
Greece has been dependent on some 270 billion euros in bailout loans and other rescue packages since 2010. In return, successive governments have pledged to overhaul the Greek economy and imposed stringent spending cuts and tax hikes.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades has a new idea for winning frightened investors back to his country. He wants to offer Cypriot citizenship to foreigners who have lost more than €3 million ($3.91 million) as part of Cyprus' one-time forced levy on bank accounts. The president made the announcement in a speech to Russian businesspeople in Limassol on Sunday.
Anastasiades said his government is currently drafting a number of measures in order to limit the "damage to the Russian business community." And it was no coincidence that the president gave the talk in Limassol, Cyprus' second biggest city, which is often referred to by the nickname Limassolgrad because of the large number of Russians living there.
Rating agency Moody's estimates that Russian customers have deposited a total of €31 billion ($40.5 billion) in Cypriot banks. Those holding accounts with deposits in excess of €100,000 on the island will soon be hit with a one-time deposit tax that could reach as high as 60 percent in some instances, as part of the terms agreed with the European Union for the country to obtain a bailout package and avert bankruptcy. Experts believe the move will strongly diminish the country's attractiveness for investors and that its economy will shrink dramatically.
Given the visa restrictions imposed on Russians, obtaining citizenship from an EU member state could indeed be an attractive proposition -- one from which Anastasiades would like to profit.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)The disposable income of Irish households rose by 2.5 per cent last year as a result of higher wages and increased profits of the self-employed.
Figures published by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) today show households’ gross disposable income rose to €86.27 billion last year, up from €84.19 billion in 2011.
The institutional sector accounts, which bring together information on the financial activities of households, businesses and the Government, show household expenditure increased by €424 million to €77.92 billion in 2012.
Household savings, which are primarily used to pay down debt and fund property investment, rose by €1.77 billion to €11.1 billion.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Citigroup Inc reported a higher-than-expected 31 per cent rise in first-quarter profit today as revenue from its securities and investment banking business swelled.
The third-largest US bank said net income rose to $3.8 billion, or $1.23 per share, in the period -- the first full quarter under chief executive Michael Corbat -- from $2.9 billion, or 95 cents per share, a year earlier.
"During the quarter, we benefited from seasonally strong results in our markets businesses, sustained momentum in investment banking, continued year-over-year growth in loans and deposits in Citicorp, and a more favorable credit environment," Mr Corbat said in a statement.
Under Mr Corbat Citigroup partly recovered from its embarrassing failure last year under former CEO Vikram Pandit to win approval from the Federal Reserve after a stress test for its plan to distribute capital.
DemReadingDU
(16,000 posts)4/15/13 Wealth tax to pay for EU bail-outs By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Wealthy households would face new taxes on property and other assets under German plans to prop up the struggling eurozone.
Senior advisers to Chancellor Angela Merkel are pushing for better-off households to pay towards the cost of any future bail-outs for the weaker members of the single currency. The proposals, from members of Germany’s council of economic experts, raise the prospect of taxes being imposed on property in a country like Spain if its government was forced to seek a bail-out. The council, known as the “Five Wise Men”, is often used to test new policies that are later adopted officially.
Senior figures in Germany are now arguing that some richer home owners in countries like Spain, Portugal and Greece have so far avoided paying their fair share to rescue the euro, leaving Germany paying too much.
Taxes on property or other assets would mark a significant change in Europe’s approach to funding bail-outs for eurozone members. Until now, the cost of rescue packages for countries like Ireland, Greece and Portugal has fallen largely on people who invest money in either those countries’ bonds or – in the case of Cyprus – bank accounts.
Prof Peter Bofinger, an adviser to Mrs Merkel, said that levies on bank accounts are the wrong way of funding bail-outs, because rich people are able to shift their money out of the country. “The resourceful rich just move their money to banks in northern Europe and avoid paying,” Prof Bofinger told Der Spiegel, a German magazine.
Instead of taxing cash, European Union governments should in future target property and other, less mobile assets, he said.
more...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9993790/Wealth-tax-to-pay-for-EU-bail-outs.html
Roland99
(53,342 posts)Nasdaq 3,242 -53 1.61%
S&P 500 1,567 -22 1.38%
GlobalDow 2,122 -23 1.05%
Gold 1,370 -130 8.69% <<--- Zoinks, Scoob!
Oil 88.58 -2.69 2.95% [/font]
