I've been historically quite suspicious of a VAT, and I'm personally against a VAT that's just for revenue. As a trade mechanisism, I'm willing to support what I'm going to call in an upcoming piece a "double-rebated VAT."
But one thing that should be talked about here is capital controls. One of the reasons why Iceland has survived when Ireland didn't (despite the UK using anti-terrorism laws against them) was that they established strict capital controls which stopped capital flight quite effectively. I think it's especially necessary given the failure of international regulation and the real dangers of tax/regulatory arbitrage across countries (such as Ireland's government going to the wall to protect low corporate tax cuts while imposing minimum wage cuts).
I haven't read the details but supposedly the deficit reduction commission made the corporate tax code worse, making it more financially advantageous to offshore outsource jobs.
You'll see a pattern here, from the IMF style bail outs of Greece, Ireland and assuredly soon Spain, to trash what is left of pensions, retirement and social security and hand it over to the banks and multinational corporations. Also demand "wages be lowered".
I take this a direct assault on the middle classes, pure class warfare. The New York Times had up an interactive graphic to reduce the deficit. I had it set to zero in no time by letting the Bush tax cuts expire, introduced a VAT, introduced a Wall Street transaction tax, didn't touch SS or Medicare. They must, absolutely must do something about corporations parking profits, encouraging investments abroad instead of this country and that's primarily through the corporate tax code. A VAT is NOT a flat tax folks, it's an at the border adjustment tax and can be used to help the trade deficit. They are considered legal by the WTO, every other nation has them and China uses them against the U.S. all of the time on trade. It is regressive, so you have to balance that out somehow, but doing something about capital flows out of the country, plus encouraging investment, hiring in this country (strings attached please!) is key critical to reduce the deficit.
Anybody notice also how these comissions ignore the fact if everyone was working they would be.....paying taxes and not be....needing UI/food stamps/Medicare?
Good opening salvo! What's more amazing is how no one in the press understands the details, so please let's dig into the specifics on posts....
there is nothing more confusing to people than taxes and in that confusion, there is nothing more confusing than the corporate tax code.
Last night, Uncle Ben starts out by saying "We do not print money." Well, yes, that is done by the Bureau of Printing and Engraving over at Treasury. He goes on to say he will purchase up to 600 billion dollars face value of Treasury securities "with our reserves." I take this to mean that he has a huge VISA card in his wallet, one which he never has to pay. In fact, the Treasury will have to pay him interest -- a pretty cool deal when you think about it.
I don't know what these reserves are -- maybe a pile of rare coins or gold bars or maybe a Rembrandt or two in his vault. Or maybe they're money -- I don't think the Treasury will accept loaves of bread or jugs of wine in exchange for their bonds.
Can someone please reify this notion of "reserves"? Do they really exist or is it just my imagination?
I have a question to add. Since none of the title records have been recorded with the county, does that mean there is no public record of a forclore auction to let local investors know of them. If so, this seems like it would gives the banks an unfair advantage to aquire the property back from there investors for a fraction of what they paid for it. Also who if any one is collecting insurance for the loss of value of forclosure sales.
To put together a special graph of just the countries with Free Trade agreements and their various deficits is a job, but note that graph only goes to 2009, when global trade was still collapsed.
But considering even Ben Bernanke is warning on the China trade deficit, it's just astounding we get no action and instead yet another trade agreement with the same incentives and free flow of capital, finance, to guarantee we'll have more manufacturing, jobs moving to S. Korea now.
Can you tell any difference here between Bush and Obama from that press release? It's identical and odds on written by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is what I suspect. Those numbers are clearly spin and snow, almost identical to jobs and trade, export numbers quoted in every single bad trade deal made.
I think the limit on U.S. autos is 750,000. That's peanuts.
It's important to make the same fundamental point over and over - the people of this country don't authorize the rulers selling them out to benefit huge concentrations of capital and those who control that capital. Your summary graph says it all. Thanks for continuing to tell the truth in the face of massive dissembling.
There was no alternative out there in the public. The rhetoric was the usual of "lazy bums, get a job, we can't afford it, while giving tax cuts to the rich". Obviously that didn't fly too well to the public, so now it's changed.
But in terms of someone doing something to really boost jobs, I see neither party doing a damn thing.
They could curtail offshore outsourcing as a good example and obviously, they should reduce immigration because there are simply no jobs for more people and right now, we need jobs for the people already here.
Please read the latest on unemployment. Frankly, I read a couple of things this weekend and it's just so bad, I couldn't fund much humor in anything at the moment. (which is rare). I'm sure my humor will come back and I"ll dig out the economic gallows humor tomorrow. Check back.
but even without seasonal adjustments, Honestly I'm not sure and was very surprised to see that. Calculated risk shows temp seasonal is still below last year, but I haven't asked him where he got his temp retail trade hire data.
Either there is a major seasonal adjustment OR and this is more what I suspect, retail stored fired a ton of people before the holidays and then hired temps. but the stores with clear job losses are building, general merchandise.
But even if one looks at the NSA data, it's not a large job gain and I would think the norm on retail trade, at least most of the stores would be to increase perm hires too during their big quarter. Doesn't look like it.
Robert how can retail be -28000. I wonder if we are in for a huge revision next month. I don't understand with positive growth signs this holiday season.
As buying of the central government's own bonds to stabilize or raise their prices and thereby lower long-term interest rates is also quantitative easing. For QE 2 every country and every person is having some or the other differ in their respect.
I have long been amazed that what I consider to be "basic data" can be so hard to come by. Ask your realtor for a time series of prices in a certain neighborhood, and they will look at you like you are from Mars. Why? Well because this is a good time to sell (insert vacacious reason of whim here) and this is a good time to buy (insert vacacious reason of whim here), so historical pricing makes no sense.
Try to get good data on the indices going back a hundred years....good luck.
Even getting commodity prices is a feat. Wish I still had access to the full on Bloomberg, but alas that is no more. Costs around $30,000 a year, I had it for free.
So here is the project. Search out and upload "Real Data Series" of all sorts, and post them as direct downloads on Hawaii Trading.
You got Data? Send it over, I will post it up. Knowledge can be freedom and power. Let's create freedom and power, for free.
First chart / Excel is by me (Courtesy of the Perth Mint). This chart data is down-loadable in Excel at Hawaii Trading. Within 2 months, my goal is to have 25 spreadsheets with valuable data, available for free.
The Excel format is sloppy, it took me 30 minutes to whip it into this shape as they had odd date formatting.
http://oahutrading.blogspot.com/p/real-data-series.html
It's very obvious that our trade policies are a huge problem and Obama just signed another trade pact with South Korea. A country which is even more protectionist than China and Japan combined.
Obama will be a one-term president, but don't anyone ever think by bringing in a republican it will fix anything. Republicans are far worse than any Democrat.
GDP estimates are wrong because real growth must be separated from inflation and Gubment stats ignore a lot of factors, like food and energy for instance. Also, it uses subjective means to come to conclude what the CPI is.
Like how many indexes would anyone invest in if it weren't objectively defined?
This report is plain awful and shows, either the ADP is full of it or something is wrong with the BLS. I'd claim both methods just do not capture the true state of the U.S. workforce at this point, but regardless, this report is friggin' horrific!
There also is something very very wrong at this point in terms of hiring U.S. workers. I hope to write up more information on how this could happen. But a good indicator is more temporary jobs than total jobs and the fact most of America is part time!
"We should never have given any of the rapacious bankers any public money for any purpose. And if insolvent banks had been run negligently or fraudulently, vigorous prosecutions should have resulted."
Bankruptcy is one good option, especially Chapter 13 which can preserve one's home.
Another trend to watch is strategic defaults - people with massive negative equity simply walking away from the property. If that catches on in Nevada, California, or Florida, the big negative equity states, it will raise havoc with the banking system (which, as you point out, shouldn't even be around after it failed).
I've been historically quite suspicious of a VAT, and I'm personally against a VAT that's just for revenue. As a trade mechanisism, I'm willing to support what I'm going to call in an upcoming piece a "double-rebated VAT."
But one thing that should be talked about here is capital controls. One of the reasons why Iceland has survived when Ireland didn't (despite the UK using anti-terrorism laws against them) was that they established strict capital controls which stopped capital flight quite effectively. I think it's especially necessary given the failure of international regulation and the real dangers of tax/regulatory arbitrage across countries (such as Ireland's government going to the wall to protect low corporate tax cuts while imposing minimum wage cuts).
I'll put up a Ben Said post soon, with graphs of them facts. I must be nuts because to me Ben is the least of our woes at the moment.
I haven't read the details but supposedly the deficit reduction commission made the corporate tax code worse, making it more financially advantageous to offshore outsource jobs.
You'll see a pattern here, from the IMF style bail outs of Greece, Ireland and assuredly soon Spain, to trash what is left of pensions, retirement and social security and hand it over to the banks and multinational corporations. Also demand "wages be lowered".
I take this a direct assault on the middle classes, pure class warfare. The New York Times had up an interactive graphic to reduce the deficit. I had it set to zero in no time by letting the Bush tax cuts expire, introduced a VAT, introduced a Wall Street transaction tax, didn't touch SS or Medicare. They must, absolutely must do something about corporations parking profits, encouraging investments abroad instead of this country and that's primarily through the corporate tax code. A VAT is NOT a flat tax folks, it's an at the border adjustment tax and can be used to help the trade deficit. They are considered legal by the WTO, every other nation has them and China uses them against the U.S. all of the time on trade. It is regressive, so you have to balance that out somehow, but doing something about capital flows out of the country, plus encouraging investment, hiring in this country (strings attached please!) is key critical to reduce the deficit.
Anybody notice also how these comissions ignore the fact if everyone was working they would be.....paying taxes and not be....needing UI/food stamps/Medicare?
Good opening salvo! What's more amazing is how no one in the press understands the details, so please let's dig into the specifics on posts....
there is nothing more confusing to people than taxes and in that confusion, there is nothing more confusing than the corporate tax code.
Last night, Uncle Ben starts out by saying "We do not print money." Well, yes, that is done by the Bureau of Printing and Engraving over at Treasury. He goes on to say he will purchase up to 600 billion dollars face value of Treasury securities "with our reserves." I take this to mean that he has a huge VISA card in his wallet, one which he never has to pay. In fact, the Treasury will have to pay him interest -- a pretty cool deal when you think about it.
I don't know what these reserves are -- maybe a pile of rare coins or gold bars or maybe a Rembrandt or two in his vault. Or maybe they're money -- I don't think the Treasury will accept loaves of bread or jugs of wine in exchange for their bonds.
Can someone please reify this notion of "reserves"? Do they really exist or is it just my imagination?
Support The Realignment Project.
almost sarcastic. He printed out the basic GDP equation and shows how imports subtract from economic growth and also mentioned China.
settled yet. You're quite right about that.
I have a question to add. Since none of the title records have been recorded with the county, does that mean there is no public record of a forclore auction to let local investors know of them. If so, this seems like it would gives the banks an unfair advantage to aquire the property back from there investors for a fraction of what they paid for it. Also who if any one is collecting insurance for the loss of value of forclosure sales.
To put together a special graph of just the countries with Free Trade agreements and their various deficits is a job, but note that graph only goes to 2009, when global trade was still collapsed.
It's much worse in 2010. Some of the information is in the trade deficit economic monthly report overview.
But considering even Ben Bernanke is warning on the China trade deficit, it's just astounding we get no action and instead yet another trade agreement with the same incentives and free flow of capital, finance, to guarantee we'll have more manufacturing, jobs moving to S. Korea now.
Can you tell any difference here between Bush and Obama from that press release? It's identical and odds on written by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is what I suspect. Those numbers are clearly spin and snow, almost identical to jobs and trade, export numbers quoted in every single bad trade deal made.
I think the limit on U.S. autos is 750,000. That's peanuts.
It's important to make the same fundamental point over and over - the people of this country don't authorize the rulers selling them out to benefit huge concentrations of capital and those who control that capital. Your summary graph says it all. Thanks for continuing to tell the truth in the face of massive dissembling.
There was no alternative out there in the public. The rhetoric was the usual of "lazy bums, get a job, we can't afford it, while giving tax cuts to the rich". Obviously that didn't fly too well to the public, so now it's changed.
But in terms of someone doing something to really boost jobs, I see neither party doing a damn thing.
They could curtail offshore outsourcing as a good example and obviously, they should reduce immigration because there are simply no jobs for more people and right now, we need jobs for the people already here.
Shouldn't the article have portrayed the republicans proposal to accomplish extension of the unemployment benefits.
Please read the latest on unemployment. Frankly, I read a couple of things this weekend and it's just so bad, I couldn't fund much humor in anything at the moment. (which is rare). I'm sure my humor will come back and I"ll dig out the economic gallows humor tomorrow. Check back.
but even without seasonal adjustments, Honestly I'm not sure and was very surprised to see that. Calculated risk shows temp seasonal is still below last year, but I haven't asked him where he got his temp retail trade hire data.
Either there is a major seasonal adjustment OR and this is more what I suspect, retail stored fired a ton of people before the holidays and then hired temps. but the stores with clear job losses are building, general merchandise.
But even if one looks at the NSA data, it's not a large job gain and I would think the norm on retail trade, at least most of the stores would be to increase perm hires too during their big quarter. Doesn't look like it.
Robert how can retail be -28000. I wonder if we are in for a huge revision next month. I don't understand with positive growth signs this holiday season.
As buying of the central government's own bonds to stabilize or raise their prices and thereby lower long-term interest rates is also quantitative easing. For QE 2 every country and every person is having some or the other differ in their respect.
I have long been amazed that what I consider to be "basic data" can be so hard to come by. Ask your realtor for a time series of prices in a certain neighborhood, and they will look at you like you are from Mars. Why? Well because this is a good time to sell (insert vacacious reason of whim here) and this is a good time to buy (insert vacacious reason of whim here), so historical pricing makes no sense.
Try to get good data on the indices going back a hundred years....good luck.
Even getting commodity prices is a feat. Wish I still had access to the full on Bloomberg, but alas that is no more. Costs around $30,000 a year, I had it for free.
So here is the project. Search out and upload "Real Data Series" of all sorts, and post them as direct downloads on Hawaii Trading.
You got Data? Send it over, I will post it up. Knowledge can be freedom and power. Let's create freedom and power, for free.
First chart / Excel is by me (Courtesy of the Perth Mint). This chart data is down-loadable in Excel at Hawaii Trading. Within 2 months, my goal is to have 25 spreadsheets with valuable data, available for free.
The Excel format is sloppy, it took me 30 minutes to whip it into this shape as they had odd date formatting.
http://oahutrading.blogspot.com/p/real-data-series.html
It's very obvious that our trade policies are a huge problem and Obama just signed another trade pact with South Korea. A country which is even more protectionist than China and Japan combined.
Obama will be a one-term president, but don't anyone ever think by bringing in a republican it will fix anything. Republicans are far worse than any Democrat.
GDP estimates are wrong because real growth must be separated from inflation and Gubment stats ignore a lot of factors, like food and energy for instance. Also, it uses subjective means to come to conclude what the CPI is.
Like how many indexes would anyone invest in if it weren't objectively defined?
This report is plain awful and shows, either the ADP is full of it or something is wrong with the BLS. I'd claim both methods just do not capture the true state of the U.S. workforce at this point, but regardless, this report is friggin' horrific!
There also is something very very wrong at this point in terms of hiring U.S. workers. I hope to write up more information on how this could happen. But a good indicator is more temporary jobs than total jobs and the fact most of America is part time!
"We should never have given any of the rapacious bankers any public money for any purpose. And if insolvent banks had been run negligently or fraudulently, vigorous prosecutions should have resulted."
Bankruptcy is one good option, especially Chapter 13 which can preserve one's home.
Another trend to watch is strategic defaults - people with massive negative equity simply walking away from the property. If that catches on in Nevada, California, or Florida, the big negative equity states, it will raise havoc with the banking system (which, as you point out, shouldn't even be around after it failed).
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