Tag Archives: Money/Economy/Taxes
Pose compares both profit and nationalism to idolatry
He seems not to be attacking corporatism but the profit motive itself. This is bad.
He laments that capitalism results in inequality.
Honduras court bans private cities project
I have one libertarian friend from Peru who was very excited about this project.
The “model cities” project was backed by President Porfirio Lobo, who said it would attract foreign investment and create jobs
By 13 votes to one, Supreme Court judges decided that the proposal violated the principle of sovereignty.
Demonstrators celebrated the decision outside the court in Tegucigalpa.
“This is great news for the Honduran people. This decision has prevented the country going back into a feudal system that was in place 1,000 years ago,” said lawyer Fredin Funez.
The government proposal to create some 20 “special development zones – as the new cities were officially called – was approved by Congress last year.
(Read more)
Government Squeezes Egan-Jones after US Debt Downgrade
In July 2011, Egan-Jones Ratings Co. became the first nationally recognized statistical rating organization to downgrade the U.S. below AAA. In April 2012, Egan-Jones cut the U.S. government’s credit rating an additional notch to AA from AA+.
Later that month, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement division accused Egan-Jones of securities-law violations related to errors in the company’s 2008 application to expand its license as a nationally recognized rater. Last September, Egan-Jones downgraded the nation again, this time to AA-.
Then today, the SEC said it reached a settlement with Egan-Jones, under which the company “agreed to be barred for at least 18 months from rating asset-backed and government securities issuers as an NRSRO.” The deal doesn’t affect Egan-Jones’s license to rate corporate debt.
Maybe downgrading the U.S. had nothing to do with the SEC’s decision to target Egan-Jones, which neither admitted nor denied the SEC’s claims. Regardless, the chronology looks chilling. In essence, Egan-Jones was accused of “filling out forms wrong,” (Read more)
Great Interview of Patrick Barron by Andy Duncan — Germany, EU, Sound Money, the Looming Fiat Tidal Wave
Krugman on Bill Moyers (Government Broadcasting Praises and Promotes Big-Government Propagandist)
Watch closely. This is what propaganda looks like:
Bill Moyers starts by promoting the idea that our obsession with slashing the deficit and cutting spending is killing us. Nevermind spending is NOT getting cut and federal deficits have NOT been slashed.
The government has gotten everything it wanted in terms of spending. This interview bolsters the fear of enemies who are denying our central planners their need for EVEN MORE spending.
Fiscal Cliff Deal: $1 in Spending Cuts for Every $41 in Tax Increases
The real fiscal cliff will come when no one wants to lend the US government any more money.
Senate Dems haven’t passed a budget in more than 1,000 days
Tom Woods Talks Agorism, Economics, and U.S. History on FOX News Station
The Inequality Drum
They’ve destroyed Western Civilization and these professional propagandists are still chirping about income inequality.
he long-term projections produced by official agencies, like the Congressional Budget Office, generally make two big assumptions. One is that economic growth over the next few decades will resemble growth over the past few decades. In particular, productivity — the key driver of growth — is projected to rise at a rate not too different from its average growth since the 1970s. On the other side, however, these projections generally assume that income inequality, which soared over the past three decades, will increase only modestly looking forward.
It’s not hard to understand why agencies make these assumptions. Given how little we know about long-run growth, simply assuming that the future will resemble the past is a natural guess. On the other hand, if income inequality continues to soar, we’re looking at a dystopian, class-warfare future — not the kind of thing government agencies want to contemplate. (Read more)
Sweden’s War on Cash Runs Into a Wall – and a Heroic Bank
The war on cash in Sweden may be stalling. The anti-cash movement has been vigorously promoted by major Swedish commercial banks as well as the Riksbank, the Swedish central bank. In fact, for three of the four major Swedish banks combined, 530 of their 780 office no longer accept or pay out cash. In the case of the Nordea Bank, 200 of its 300 branches are now cashless, and three-quarters of Swedbank’s branches no longer handle cash. As Peter Borsos, a spokesman for Swedbank, freely admits, his bank is working “actively to reduce the [amount] of cash in society.” The reasons for this push toward a cashless society, of course, have nothing to do with pumping up earnings from bank card fees or, more important, freeing fractional-reserve banks from the constraints of bank runs. No, according to Borsos, the reasons are the environment, cost, and security: ”We ourselves emit 700 tons of carbon dioxide by cash transport. It costs society 11 billion per year. And cash helps robberies everywhere.” Hans Jacobson, head of Nordea Bank, argues similarly: ”Our mission is to make people understand the point of cards, cards are more secure than cash.”
Fortunately, it seems that the Swedish people are not falling for the anti-cash propaganda spewed by private bankers and Riksbank officials and are resisting the trend toward a cashless economy. It is reported that last year the value of cash transactions in Sweden were 99 billion krona which represented only a marginal decrease from ten years ago. And small shops continue to do one-third to one-half of their business in cash. Furthermore a study of bank customers satisfaction released by the Swedish Quality Index in October 2012, indicated that the satisfaction index was pulled down among customers of Swedbank, Nordea and SEB by their policy of eliminating cash transactions at their bank branches. Even more heartening is the fact that Handelsbanken, the largest bank in Sweden, is committed to serving consumers who demand cash. (Read more)
Book Review of World Right Side Up by Christopher Mayer
Is a college degree worth the cost? You decide.
Gérard Depardieu says he will give up French passport over tax rises
Gérard Depardieu has said he is handing back his French passport and social security card, lambasting the French government for punishing “success, creation, talent” in his homeland.
A popular and colourful figure in France, the 63-year-old actor is the latest wealthy Frenchman to seek shelter outside his native country by buying a house just over the border in Belgium in response to tax increases by the Socialist president, François Hollande.
The prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, described Depardieu’s behaviour as pathetic and unpatriotic at a time when the French are being asked to pay higher taxes to reduce a bloated national debt.
“Pathetic, you said pathetic? How pathetic is that?” Depardieu said in a letter to the weekly newspaper le Journal du Dimanche.
“I am leaving because you believe that success, creation, talent, anything different must be sanctioned,” he said.
An angry member of parliament has proposed that France adopt a US-inspired law that would force Depardieu or anyone trying to escape full tax dues to forgo their nationality. (Read more)
Maddow Propaganda: “The fastest deficit reduction in generations”
We learned about a month ago that the U.S. budget deficit for the most recent fiscal year fell to $1.089 trillion, $200 billion smaller than it was last year, and nearly $300 billion smaller than when President Obama took office. (Read more)