Tag Archives: Money/Economy/Taxes
Peter Schiff argues with three psychopathic communists on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria’s GPS
Spain: the beginning of the end
No more lifeboats left on EU Titanic
IMF head Christine Lagarde pays no tax, is slight hypocrite
Taxes are for the little people.
Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF, pays no taxes. The Guardian today reveals that:
As an official of an international institution, her salary of $467,940 (£298,675) a year plus $83,760 additional allowance a year is not subject to any taxes. . . The same applies to nearly all United Nations employees.
She receives a pay and benefits package “worth more than American president Barack Obama earns from the United States government, and he pays taxes on it.”
On Friday, the paper reported:
Lagarde, predicting that the debt crisis has yet to run its course, adds: “Do you know what? As far as Athens is concerned, I also think about all those people who are trying to escape tax all the time. All these people in Greece who are trying to escape tax.” She says she thinks “equally” about Greeks deprived of public services and Greek citizens not paying their tax.
“I think they should also help themselves collectively.” Asked how, she replies: “By all paying their tax.”
Anti-democratic, Anti-sovereign banking Union Enveloping EU
A classified draft of next week’s EU summit conclusions is the first step on an emerging “roadmap” to a banking union, pooling debt via eurobonds and political union via EU treaty change over the next 10 years.
The “limite” text – published exclusively by The Daily Telegraph, is secret, restricted for the “eyes only” of diplomats and officials preparing for the 28 and 29 June European Council in Brussels.
Most of the text, the annexed “Compact for Growth and Jobs”, are deals on project bonds and other small scale EU initiatives that FranCois Hollande is trumpeting as a €120bn “growth pact”.
The first draft is relatively uncontroversial because the eurobond and “banking union” issues are currently all too sensitive to be committed to paper for officials.
Other so-called “non-papers” are circulating at a top secret level between national capitals and Brussels. 
(Read more)
Bernanke admits that he is ready–AGAIN–to lend dollars to Europe
The moves in Britain are the latest in a flurry of recent actions taken by European governments and central banks trying to arrest the continent’s more-than-two-year crisis. Late last year, the European Central Bank started doling out more than €1 trillion, or about $1.25 trillion, of cheap three-year loans to hundreds of banks that were at risk of running short of funds. Last week, the Spanish government said it would request up to €100 billion to help its crippled banking system.
In the U.S., Fed officials say they are prepared to reactivate several programs to provide short-term funding to markets if conditions deteriorate. Those programs, originally created during the 2008-09 financial crisis, offered cheap loans to banks and flooded the U.S. financial system with liquidity to prevent strains.
The U.S. central bank is also providing dollar funding to Europe through the European Central Bank to ensure that continent’s financial institutions have access to the U.S. currency, which they use to make loans around the world.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke last week said those currency swap lines were “very helpful in reducing stress in dollar-funding markets.” (Read more)
Stefan Molyneux on Schiff Radio: Wisconsin, Walker and the Reshaping of American Politics
President Of Estonia Slams Paul Krugman: ‘Smug, Overbearing & Patronizing’
The president of Estonia chewed out Paul Krugman on Wednesday, using Twitter to call the Nobel Prize-winning economist “smug, overbearing & patronizing,” in response to a short post on Estonia’s economic recovery.
Krugman’s 67-word entry, entitled “Estonian Rhapsody,” questioned the merits of using Estonia as a “poster child for austerity defenders.” He included a chart that, in his words, showed “significant but still incomplete recovery” after a deep economic slump.
President Toomas Hendrik Ilves responded to Krugman in a series of outraged tweets, taking offense to Krugman’s tone and writing that Krugman didn’t know what he was talking about. (Read more)
This is what the Nobel Prize has come to
Daniel Hannan – Germany no longer needs Europe
The Tax Man wants your travel plans — US & Argentina
Imagine a day when you plan a trip abroad… and you exchange some dollars for the currency of your destination country before you depart.
At the airport, uniformed agents ask whether you have any foreign currency. You are then asked to prove you obtained the currency legally… and inform the IRS about where you’re going, how long you’ll be away and the reason for your trip.
As of seven days ago, this is the new reality in Argentina. And as of 11 days ago, an event in Washington should give pause to anyone who says, “it can’t happen here.”
The new rules in Argentina came into effect a week ago today. They are aimed squarely at holders of U.S. dollars.
The government wants to keep those dollars within the country, the better to shore up the central bank’s reserves and pay down its debts.
“Many Argentines,” reports The Associated Press, “only declare part of their wealth and income to evade taxes, and use black-market currency exchanges to convert their inflationary pesos into dollars. Travel agencies are the latest target since they manage multiple currencies and offer customers black-market rates for their money.”
A curious letter addressed to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner raises the specter of similar rules coming down the pike in this country.
Dated May 24, it comes from Rep. Barney Frank, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee… and Rep. Sander Levin, the top Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee.
“Frank and Levin,” says a joint press release, “have long been concerned that the language in U.S. trade and investment treaties was too restrictive and did not leave adequate flexibility for governments to use controls to stem the massive flows of speculative capital that can exacerbate economic crises.”
So they’re asking Geithner to make it clear, in writing, that the United States retains “the ability to deploy capital controls on the inflow or outflow of capital without being challenged by private investors.”
“You no longer have to read between the lines when it comes to currency and capital controls,” says an email from Addison this morning. Indeed, you can just read the lines directly.
Once Geithner obliges the Congress members with a written statement — do you really expect him to do otherwise? — a new brick will be erected in the “virtual Berlin Wall” that Addison has described to readers of Apogee Advisory for nearly a year now.
“Even if you’re a person of modest means,” he wrote last July, “and you merely want to ‘spread the risk around’ by putting a portion of your wealth outside U.S. banks and the U.S. dollar… it’s becoming harder and harder to do so.” (Read more)
letter to National Review Magazine re: The Real Cause of the Euro Debt Crisis
From Patrick Barron: Dear Sirs:
In his essay “Four Kinds of Dreadful”, John O’Sullivan discusses the possible outcomes of the Greek debt crisis (which really is a euro debt crisis). It is important that readers understand the cause of the crisis. Mr. O’Sullivan repeats some common misconceptions about that cause when he states that:
“Its original design was flawed because it sought to include too many countries with too-diverse economic characters and histories, too-different levels of unemployment, and so on.” He later states that “Above all, the euro zone did not include…transnational labor mobility; and transnational monetary transfers.” And finally, that “a single currency required a single budget, a single treasury, and a single fiscal policy.”
None of these reasons is the cause of the crisis. First of all, there is nothing to prevent people with different characters, etc. from adopting a common currency. Here in the US we have many people with different characters, different levels of productivity, etc. all using the dollar. There may indeed be cultural barriers to labor mobility, but several nations with different cultures have adopted the dollar as their national currency. Finally, all fifty states of the union use the dollar, without requiring that they meld their budgets, treasuries, and fiscal policies.
The real cause of the euro debt crisis has been explained by Dr. Philipp Bagus of King Juan Carlos University in his book, The Tragedy of the Euro. Dr. Bagus explains that the European System of Central Banks did not eliminate national central banks. These national central banks buy their respective country’s sovereign debt and use that debt as collateral for euro loans at the European Central bank. The result is predictable. All seventeen members of the European Monetary Union have the ability to monetize their government’s sovereign debt and force monetary inflation on the rest of the members. It is similar to having seventeen counterfeiters trying to outdo one another. First debt soared, and now inflation is being felt even in the more responsible nations such as Germany, because all use the euro.
There is no solution to this problem, as the euro is currently constructed. Fiscal treaties to prevent the inevitable money printing will be ignored, since there is no enforcement mechanism. Furthermore, there never will be an enforcement mechanism, because the seventeen members are sovereign nations with electorates that must be mollified. The euro was doomed from the day it was born.
Shanghai Composite Index Reflects Tienanmen Square massacre – Censored by China
The Shanghai Composite Index was down 64.89 on the anniversary of the massacre, which occurred on June 4, 1989.
Written in the American style, the date of Tiananmen Square was 6/4/89.
The WSJ also notes that the days opening was 2,346.98, which seems to refer to 23, and the date reversed.
Predictably, of course, searches for Shanghai Composite Index were banned on Weibo within hours. (Read more)
Here Come QE3…
Disappointing U.S. economic data, new strains in financial markets and deepening worries about Europe’s fiscal crisis have prompted a shift at the Federal Reserve, putting back on the table the possibility of action to spur the recovery.
Such action seemed highly unlikely at the central bank’s April meeting, when forecasts for growth and employment were brightening. At their policy meeting this month, Fed officials will weigh whether the U.S. economic outlook is deteriorating enough to justify new measures to boost growth, according to interviews and Fed speeches. (Read more)