Click to Enlarge…
Comments »
The Tipping Point – America is Back, Baby!!!
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business Editor
5:53PM BST 23 Oct 2011
World power swings back to America
The American phoenix is slowly rising again. Within five years or so, the US will be well on its way to self-sufficiency in fuel and energy. Manufacturing will have closed the labour gap with China in a clutch of key industries. The current account might even be in surplus.
Assumptions that the Great Republic must inevitably spiral into economic and strategic decline – so like the chatter of the late 1980s, when Japan was in vogue – will seem wildly off the mark by then.
Telegraph readers already know about the “shale gas revolution” that has turned America into the world’s number one producer of natural gas, ahead of Russia.
Less known is that the technology of hydraulic fracturing – breaking rocks with jets of water – will also bring a quantum leap in shale oil supply, mostly from the Bakken fields in North Dakota, Eagle Ford in Texas, and other reserves across the Mid-West.
“The US was the single largest contributor to global oil supply growth last year, with a net 395,000 barrels per day (b/d),” said Francisco Blanch from Bank of America, comparing the Dakota fields to a new North Sea.
Total US shale output is “set to expand dramatically” as fresh sources come on stream, possibly reaching 5.5m b/d by mid-decade. This is a tenfold rise since 2009.
The US already meets 72pc of its own oil needs, up from around 50pc a decade ago.
“The implications of this shift are very large for geopolitics, energy security, historical military alliances and economic activity. As US reliance on the Middle East continues to drop, Europe is turning more dependent and will likely become more exposed to rent-seeking behaviour from oligopolistic players,” said Mr Blanch.
Meanwhile, the China-US seesaw is about to swing the other way. Offshoring is out, ‘re-inshoring’ is the new fashion.
“Made in America, Again” – a report this month by Boston Consulting Group – said Chinese wage inflation running at 16pc a year for a decade has closed much of the cost gap. China is no longer the “default location” for cheap plants supplying the US.
A “tipping point” is near in computers, electrical equipment, machinery, autos and motor parts, plastics and rubber, fabricated metals, and even furniture.
“A surprising amount of work that rushed to China over the past decade could soon start to come back,” said BCG’s Harold Sirkin.
The gap in “productivity-adjusted wages” will narrow from 22pc of US levels in 2005 to 43pc (61pc for the US South) by 2015. Add in shipping costs, reliability woes, technology piracy, and the advantage shifts back to the US.
The list of “repatriates” is growing. Farouk Systems is bringing back assembly of hair dryers to Texas after counterfeiting problems; ET Water Systems has switched its irrigation products to California; Master Lock is returning to Milwaukee, and NCR is bringing back its ATM output to Georgia. NatLabs is coming home to Florida.
Boston Consulting expects up to 800,000 manufacturing jobs to return to the US by mid-decade, with a multiplier effect creating 3.2m in total. This would take some sting out of the Long Slump.
As Philadelphia Fed chief Sandra Pianalto said last week, US manufacturing is “very competitive” at the current dollar exchange rate. Whether intended or not, the Fed’s zero rates and $2.3 trillion printing blitz have brought matters to an abrupt head for China.
Fed actions confronted Beijing with a Morton’s Fork of ugly choices: revalue the yuan, or hang onto the mercantilist dollar peg and import a US monetary policy that is far too loose for a red-hot economy at the top of the cycle. Either choice erodes China’s wage advantage. The Communist Party chose inflation.
Foreign exchange effects are subtle. They take a long to time play out as old plant slowly runs down, and fresh investment goes elsewhere. Yet you can see the damage to Europe from an over-strong euro in foreign direct investment (FDI) data.
Flows into the EU collapsed by 63p from 2007 to 2010 (UNCTAD data), and fell by 77pc in Italy. Flows into the US rose by 5pc.
Volkswagen is investing $4bn in America, led by its Chattanooga Passat plant. Korea’s Samsung has begun a $20bn US investment blitz. Meanwhile, Intel, GM, and Caterpillar and other US firms are opting to stay at home rather than invest abroad.
Europe has only itself to blame for the current “hollowing out” of its industrial base. It craved its own reserve currency, without understanding how costly this “exorbitant burden” might prove to be.
China and the rising reserve powers have rotated a large chunk of their $10 trillion stash into EMU bonds to reduce their dollar weighting. The result is a euro too strong for half of EMU.
The European Central Bank has since made matters worse (for Italy, Spain, Portugal, and France) by keeping rates above those of the US, UK, and Japan. That has been a deliberate policy choice. It let real M1 deposits in Italy contract at a 7pc annual rate over the summer. May it live with the consequences.
The trade-weighted dollar has been sliding for a decade, falling 37pc since 2001. This roughly replicates the post-Plaza slide in the late 1980s, which was followed – with a lag – by 3pc of GDP shrinkage in the current account deficit. The US had a surplus by 1991.
Charles Dumas and Diana Choyleva from Lombard Street Research argue that this may happen again in their new book “The American Phoenix”.
The switch in advantage to the US is relative. It does not imply a healthy US recovery. The global depression will grind on as much of the Western world tightens fiscal policy and slowly purges debt, and as China deflates its credit bubble.
Yet America retains a pack of trump cards, and not just in sixteen of the world’s top twenty universities.
Read the rest here.
Financing U.S. Debt: Is There Enough Money in the World – and At What Cost?
I’ve isolated the money quote from the research. The research suggests that in order to finance our debt, by 2020 foreigners will have to allocate 19% of their GDP to finance the debt of the United States. Any emphasis is mine.
Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Working Paper Series
La Follette School Working Paper No. 2010-015
http://www.lafollette.wisc.edu/publications/workingpapers
5.4.3. Is there enough money in the world … in the “global portfolio?” A third challenge is whether the increase in foreign holdings of such magnitude as in the base case is plausible or even possible. That is, reflecting the Meltzer quote earlier in the paper: “Is there enough money in the world?” Chart 11 shows the implied effect from the base case on foreign official holdings of U.S. Treasury securities as a percent of world GDP (in U.S. dollars). The large increase in foreign official holdings implied by the base case would require those holdings to rise to about 19 percent of rest-of-world (ROW) GDP, up from less than 5 percent for most years of history. Bertaut, Kamin and Thomas (2009) and Mann (2009) examine the issue of the U.S. asset share of the total world asset portfolio and the extent to which foreign investment in U.S. assets can increase under continued U.S. current account deficits and growth in the U.S. net international debt. Mann observed a “financial leverage” for the “global investor portfolio” of 1.6 times (160 percent) ROW GDP. The implied change in foreign official holdings from about 7 percent of world GDP in 2009 to more than 18 percent of ROW GDP by 2020 could at first glance therefore represent a potentially manageable shift compared to the total (non-U.S.) world portfolio. Mann showed that the share of U.S. assets held by foreigners in the world portfolio was about 14 percent in 2006, and that even with a doubling or tripling of that share (associated with projected U.S. current account imbalances), “these percentages would appear to imply US assets in the global investor’s portfolio about equal to the market cap weights.” Although questions would remain about the implementation and allocations associated with increased foreign official holdings – including issues associated with private versus official portfolio allocations and competition for funds amongst various international borrowers in a time of higher debt – the relationships suggest at face value that “there would be enough money in the world” to meet the financing requirements for U.S. Treasuries over the intermediate horizon (through 2020) and under the assumptions considered in this analysis. Uncertainty remains, however, under such a projection whether world portfolio allocations would, in fact, adjust sufficiently to accommodate higher shares of U.S. assets. Further, such an expansion has limits that ultimately could not be sustained indefinitely over the long run and beyond the intermediate horizon considered here. 35 34 Auerbach and Gale (2009) discuss concerns about negative effects on GDP growth and lower potential output. 35 Similarly, Mann concluded that, in contrast to the implications from the average portfolio percentages, it “looks unreasonable” for the required marginal contributions per dollar of new investment that would have to occur for holdings of U.S. assets under those increased world portfolio shares.
Read the research here.
Comments »The Obama Fade: 37 Percent of Public Back Protests
Although Obama’s latest poll numbers are higher (barely) than 37%, he has tied his re-election hopes to a bunch of dumb asses who like to copulate in public and sleep in excrement.
Good luck with that one, buddy.
For fun, note the blatant AP bias in the first sentence. Let’s rewrite it, shall we? “Slightly fewer than two-thirds of the country find the Wall Street protests to be bullshit, and almost the same amount say they think American’s politicians are full of shit as well.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — More than one-third of the country supports the Wall Street protests, and even more – 58 percent – say they are furious about America’s politics.
The number of angry people is growing as deep reservoirs of resentment grip the country, according to the latest Associated Press-GfK poll.
Some 37 percent of people back the protests that have spread from New York to cities across the country and abroad, one of the first snapshots of how the public views the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. A majority of those protest supporters are Democrats, but the anger about politics in general is much more widespread, the poll indicates.
“They’ve got reasons to be upset, they’ve got reasons to protest, but they’re protesting against the wrong people,” Jan Jarrell, 54, a retired school custodian from Leesville, S.C., says of the New York demonstrators. “They need to go to Washington, to Congress and the White House. They’re the ones coming up with all the rules.”
Read the rest here.
Comments »SCANDAL: Car Company Gets 500 Million U.S. Loan, Builds Cars In Finland
Not mentioned in this article is the breaking news that this car only gets 20 mpg when running on the gasoline engine…
With the approval of the Obama administration, an electric car company that received a $529 million federal government loan guarantee is assembling its first line of cars in Finland, saying it could not find a facility in the United States capable of doing the work.
Vice President Joseph Biden heralded the Energy Department’s $529 million loan to the start-up electric car company called Fisker as a bright new path to thousands of American manufacturing jobs. But two years after the loan was announced, the job of assembling the flashy electric Fisker Karma sports car has been outsourced to Finland.
“There was no contract manufacturer in the U.S. that could actually produce our vehicle,” the car company’s founder and namesake told ABC News. “They don’t exist here.”
Henrik Fisker said the U.S. money so far has been spent on engineering and design work that stayed in the U.S., not on the 500 manufacturing jobs that went to a rural Finnish firm, Valmet Automotive.
“We’re not in the business of failing; we’re in the business of winning. So we make the right decision for the business,” Fisker said. “That’s why we went to Finland.”
Read the rest here.
Comments »Who Is #Occupy? Polling the Protesters
Occupy Wall Street Survey Topline
Douglas E. Schoen, LLC
In interviews, protesters show that they are leftists out of step with most American voters. Yet Democrats are embracing them anyway.
Link to the poll results published in a narrative format.
Comments »Mission Impossible: Beating the Market Over Long Periods of Time
Before I even begin, here are some findings (I use the CRSP return database which starts January 1, 1926 and runs through December 31, 2010):
- Earning 20%+ returns over very long horizons is for all intent and purposes virtually IMPOSSIBLE (assuming the market experience of the past ~90 years is representative of the future).
- 31.5%+ returns over the 1926 to 2010 period imply that an investor will end up owning over half of the ENTIRE stock market.
- 33%+ returns imply that an investor will end up owning the ENTIRE STOCK MARKET!
- A 40% return will have you owning the entire stock market in ~60 years–not a bad retirement plan!
- A “doable” 21.5% a year implies an investor will own .62241% of the market at the end of 2010. With a $16.4 trillion total market value as of December 31, 2010, this would imply a personal stock portfolio worth $102 billion!!!
- Warren Buffett–and perhaps a very select handful of others–have been able to achieve 20%+ returns over very long time periods. These individuals represent some of the richest people on the planet because of this very phenomenon.
- An investor might have an epic run of 20% returns for 5, 10, maybe even 15, or 20 years, but as an investor’s capital base grows exponentially, the capital base slowly becomes ALL capital, and all capital cannot outperform itself!
Read the entire article here.
Comments »Analysis of Co-Cain’s 9-9-9 Plan
Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 Tax Plan
The Tax Policy Center has estimated the distributional effects of a fully-phased-in version of Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan. Summary tables are available here 
View this page as a PDF
Herman Cain’s plan would eliminate the current individual income tax, corporate income tax, payroll tax, and estate and gift tax and substitute three taxes imposed at a 9 percent rate: 1) a 9 percent “national sales tax” 2) a 9 percent “business flat tax”, and 3) a 9 percent “individual flat tax.” Based on descriptions from the Cain campaign website and Fiscal Associates, the firm that analyzed the proposal for the Cain campaign, we conclude that all three taxes are versions of well-known forms of consumption taxes, although collected in different ways and with a few modifications.1 The bases of all three taxes are essentially the same as the base of a national sales tax. The basic structures of the three taxes are:
1. National Sales Tax: This is a retail sales tax, collected on sales to final consumers. It is imposed on all sales to households, non-profit institutions and governments, as well as sales by the business activities of government and non-profits (for example, revenues of non-profit hospitals.) The tax is modeled on the Fair Tax proposal that has been proposed by Americans for Fair Taxation and was first introduced in Congress by Representative John Linder (R-GA) in 1999. The tax rate is 9 percent of the total price (including tax) charged by businesses to consumers.2
2. Business Tax: This is a subtraction method value-added tax, sometimes called a business transfer tax (BTT). All businesses would pay a 9 percent tax on all sales minus purchases from other businesses (including purchases of investment goods). This is essentially the same as a retail sales tax, except that it is collected in pieces on the value added at each stage of production. In the aggregate, those pieces add up to retail sales.
3. Individual Flat Tax: As described by Fiscal Associates, this is a version of the Flat Tax originally developed by Professors Robert Hall and Alvin Rabushka and endorsed in the past by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, and former Presidential candidate Steve Forbes. The flat tax is a subtraction method value-added tax, similar to the BTT, with the exception that businesses may deduct wages paid and workers must report and pay taxes on their wages. With a single rate, however, it makes no difference whether the worker or the business remits the tax. (The original flat tax proposal would have allowed workers to claim exemptions for themselves and dependents, but the Cain proposal has no such adjustment.)
The three taxes include several modifications.
a. The Cain plan would allow businesses to deduct dividends paid under the business tax (BTT), but would include dividends received in the base of the individual flat tax. Because the rates of the BTT and the flat tax are the same, this treatment is equivalent simply to exempting dividends received by individuals from tax. But the modification would provide a tax subsidy for dividends paid to tax-exempt investors, such as non-profit institutions, pension plans, and qualified retirement plans.
b. Wages paid to government workers would be part of the tax base under the individual flat tax, but not under the retail sales tax or the BTT. (We assume that the savings to the federal government from not having to pay retail sales tax and BTT on wages would offset the revenue loss from not taxing these wages.)
c. The Cain plan would allow individuals to deduct charitable contributions from the base of the flat tax. These deductions would reduce the net income from wages and dividends that is subject to the 9 percent tax. The deduction would be available both to those currently claiming the charitable deduction and to those who contribute to charities but do not currently itemize deductions on their income tax return.
We assume that the national sales tax and business flat tax are imposed independently on businesses so they sum to sales tax rate of 18 percent. The individual flat tax, however, is applied to real wages that have been reduced by 18 percent by the other two taxes. The 9 percent individual tax thus applies to only 82 percent of tax-inclusive consumption, making its effective rate 7.38 percent of all consumption. Therefore, the three taxes combined are equivalent to a 25.38 percent national sales tax, with the above mentioned adjustments for dividends paid to tax-exempt entities and charitable contributions.
The Cain campaign documents also contain some discussion of deductions for empowerment zones that might relieve some of the tax burden on low wage workers. We have not received any details of these provisions and thus cannot estimate them. If such relief were to be provided, it could relieve some of the burden at the low end of the income distribution, but would reduce the net revenue raised by the proposal.
The Tax Policy Center estimates that, if fully phased in, the plan would raise about $2.55 trillion of revenues at 2013 levels of income and consumption, virtually the same amount that would be collected if current tax policy were in place that year (that is, if 2011 tax law, other than the payroll tax reduction, were extended). However, the plan would raise about $300 billion less revenue than would be raised by current tax law, under which most 2001-2010 tax cuts would have expired by 2013.3
Read the source article here.
Comments »Income Inequality #OWS: Obamacare Will Price Less Skilled Workers Out of Full-Time Jobs
One of the factors widely believed to have contributed to the current income inequality is the move from low-skill to high-skill jobs. New research asserts that Obamacare will only exacerbate income inequality by pricing less skilled workers out of full time jobs.
—————————————————————————————————–
“President Obama’s health care law requires employers to offer health benefits to full-time employees. This employer mandate will price many unskilled workers out of full-time employment.
After paying the new health premiums, the minimum wage, payroll taxes, and unemployment insurance taxes, hiring a full-time worker will cost employers at least $10.03 per hour. Full-time workers with family health plans will cost $13.75 per hour. Employers who hire workers with productivity below these rates will lose money. Businesses employing less skilled workers will probably respond by dumping their employees onto the federally subsidized health care exchanges and replacing full-time positions with part-time jobs.” [Emphasis mine].
Read the research about what this will do to less skilled workers here.
Comments »We Are Getting Ready to Terrify Washington, D.C.
Cheering Economic Terrorism- SEIU Getting Ready To Terrify DC: Steven Lerner At SEIU Meeting Outlines Rules To Creating a Crisis: We want their kids to hate them, name enemies like Glenn Beck, shut down bridges, long occupations, recruit Tea Party.
This was from September 22nd. Yet the media still wants you to believe this is grassroots, and NOT part of the Obama re-election strategy.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKqHL8eJZO8 603 500] Comments »The Causes of Income Inequality #OWS
This article describes the deficiencies present in typical measure of income inequality, describes some trends, and list some possible causes.
As we continue to examine the #OWS raised issue of income inequality, ask yourself if the data being presented in the media is accurate. Furthermore, are the causes of income inequality as simple as #OWS would have you believe?
Distribution of Income
by Frank Levy
The Causes of Inequality
In one sense, the growth of inequality in the last part of the twentieth century comes as a surprise. In the 1950s, the bottom part of the income distribution contained large concentrations of two kinds of families: farm families whose in-kind income was not counted in Census data, and elderly families, many of whom were ineligible for the new Social Security program. Over subsequent decades, farm families declined as a proportion of the population while increased Social Security benefits and an expanding private pension system lifted elderly incomes. Both trends favored greater income equality but were outweighed by four main factors.
•
Family structure. Over time, the two-parent, one-earner family was increasingly replaced by low-income single-parent families and higher-income two-parent, two-earner families. A part of the top quintile’s increased share of income reflects the fact that the average family or household in the top quintile contains almost three times as many workers as the average family or household in the bottom quintile.
•
Trade and technology. Trade and technology increasingly shifted demand away from less-educated and less-skilled workers toward workers with higher education or particular skills. The result was a growing earnings gap between more- and less-educated/skilled workers.
•
Expanded markets. With improved communications and transportation, people increasingly functioned in national, rather than local, markets. In these broader markets, persons with unique talents could command particularly high salaries.
•
Immigration. In 2002, immigrants who had entered the country since 1980 constituted nearly 11 percent of the labor force (see immigration). A relatively high proportion of these immigrants had low levels of education and increased the number of workers competing for low-paid work.7
These factors, however, can explain only part of the increase in inequality. One other factor that explains the particularly high incomes of the highest-paid people is that between 1982 and 2004, the ratio of pay of chief executive officers to pay of the average worker rose from 42:1 to 301:1, and pay of other high-level managers, lawyers, and people in other fields rose substantially also.
Read the rest of the research here.
Comments »Apple Blames iPhone Rumors for Disappointing Results
(Reuters) – Apple Inc stunned Wall Street by reporting results that missed expectations for the first time in years, blaming rumors of the new iPhone for hurting demand in the September quarter.
Shares of Apple fell 7 percent in extended trading on Tuesday, wiping some $27 billion off the value of the world’s largest technology company.
It was Apple’s first quarterly earnings under Chief Executive Tim Cook, who took over from Steve Jobs in August at a critical juncture for the company. Apple is battling Google Inc in the mobile arena, as well as other challengers such as Samsung and Amazon.com Inc.
“Investors are going to start to speculate that there is change under way now that Jobs is gone, and that there’s trouble ahead. We don’t share that point,” said Channing Smith, co-manager at Capital Advisors Growth Fund, which holds Apple shares.
“The iPhone is where the weakness was and it’s an explainable one. The strong demand for the iPhone 4S set up strong demand for the holiday season.”
Apple said it sold 17.07 million iPhones in its fiscal fourth quarter ended September 24 — well short of the roughly 20 million forecast by analysts. The iPhone is Apple’s flagship product, yielding some 40 percent of annual sales.
Revenue rose 39 percent to $28.27 billion, lower than the average analyst estimate of $29.69 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. It was the first time Apple missed revenue expectations since the fiscal fourth quarter of 2008.
Net profit was $6.62 billion, or $7.05 a share. That fell shy of expectations for earnings of $7.39 per share. The last time Apple missed EPS estimates was in the first quarter of 2001, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
“Expectations for this company were red-hot, that is why we downgraded it,” said BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis, who lowered his rating on the shares days before. “The reality is their business is not an annuity. They have to sell their quarter’s worth of revenue every 90 days.”
“They had a big upgrade cycle with the iPhone, the numbers came in weak. They need to set records every time they report to keep up the momentum.”
Read the rest here.
Comments »Two Americas: One Rich, One Poor? Understanding Income Inequality in the United States #OWS
Since income inequality seems to be one of the concerns of the #Occupy Wall Street protestors, I thought I’d dig up some research about it so that we may all have a more thorough, if not intelligent understanding of the matter…Be sure to read the whole article. I’ve included the conclusion here, because I’m sure it will stimulate your interest and challenge your assumptions.
Conclusion
The Census income distribution figures are the foundation of most class-warfare rhetoric. On the surface, these figures show a high level of inequality: The top fifth of households have $14.30 of income for every $1.00 at the bottom.
However, these figures are flawed by the exclusion of taxes and social safety net spending and by the fact that the “fifths” do not contain equal numbers of people. Adjustment for these factors radically alters the picture of income distribution: The top fifth of the population has $4.21 of income for every $1.00 at the bottom.
The remaining inequality in society is heavily influenced by the lack of work at the bottom. If working-age adults in the lower quintiles worked as much as their higher-income counterparts, the income disparity of the top to the bottom quintiles would fall to $2.91 to $1.00.
Still, the top fifth of U.S. households (with incomes above $84,000) remain perennial targets of class-warfare enmity. These families, however, perform a third of all labor in the economy. They contain the best educated and most productive workers, and they provide a disproportionate share of the investment needed to create jobs and spur economic growth. Nearly all are married-couple families, many with two or more earners. Far from shirking the tax burden, these families pay 82.5 percent of total federal income taxes and two-thirds of federal taxes overall. By contrast, the bottom quintile pays 1.1 percent of total federal taxes.12
In one sense, John Edwards is correct: There is one America that works a lot and pays a lot in taxes, and there is another America that works less and pays little. However, the reality is the opposite of what Edwards suggests. It is the higher-income families who work a lot and pay nearly all the taxes. Raising taxes even higher on hard-working families would be unfair and, by reducing future investments, would reduce economic growth, harming all Americans in the long run.
Read the research here.
Comments »Dylan Ratigan Helps #Occupy Wall Street with Message, Emails Show
Dana Loesch reports:
“In these emails we see MSNBC’s Ratigan, hawking his book in the footnotes, instructing occupiers on how properly to present their demands and messages while simultaneously appearing on television reporting “objectively” on the story (when he’s not taking part in the protests himself as content.)”
****
****
Read the rest of the article here.
Comments »BREAKING: Emails Expose #Occupy Wall Street Consipiracy to Destabilize Global Markets, Governments
We’re in this for the long haul. There are no “solutions” that can be presented quickly to make us go away. And so there will be moments where our presence is no longer an uncomfortable and unknown variable, but rather is normalized and integrated. It’s in those moments that we have to push the envelop [sic], pry open the space of possibility even farther. We go as far as we can to destabalize [sic], but maintain momentum. And when that’s the new “normal” then we go farther. That’s how change happens, how we shift the terrain and the terms of the game.
– Email in “Occupy” archive, “Re: Can OWS be turned into a Democratic Party Movement?”; Wednesday, October 12, 2011
In keeping with the new media notion of crowdsourcing–enthusiastically embraced by the mainstream media when trawling through Sarah Palin’s emails–Big Government will be providing readers later today with links to a document drop consisting of thousands of emails.
The email archive, created by a private cyber security researcher, appears to contain messages shared by the left’s anarcho-socialist activists during the strategic and daily tactical planning of the “Occupy Wall Street” and broader “Occupy” campaign this fall.
Big Government received a tip about the existence of the archive, and we were able to contact the individual who compiled and posted it. He will describe the archive, and how he obtained the emails, later this morning exclusively on Big Government.
Through “crowdsourcing,” the media and the public will then be able to discover the truth behind the “Occupy” movement.
The archive includes emails, for example, from radical anarchist organizer Lisa Fithian, who was profiled earlier this week at Big Government, and who is one of the leading organizers behind the Occupy movement.
In one email, dated October 1, Fithian applauds the launch of “occupations” throughout the country. She also highlights an ACORN-style illegal home occupation in California, linking to a television news story that reveals the involvement of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), which is apparently the reconstituted version of ACORN in California.
Read the rest (and crowdsource the emails) here.
Comments »Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 Plan is Truly Radical and Revolutionary for the Rich
Herman Cain’s proposals are truly radical. So radical that they would produce a massive windfall for the wealthy and significant hardship for the rest of us, says Michael Tomasky.
Read the article here.
Comments »New State Online Sales Tax Bill Introduced in Congress
Posted on October 13, 2011 by Joseph Henchman
Yesterday we reported on what might be in a new online sales tax bill being introduced into Congress. The actual version was introduced yesterday and is different from that version. Read the full version (PDF) of the bill; here is a talking points sheet being distributed by supporters. The bill is reportedly called the Marketplace Equity Act but the version I obtained yesterday has that blank.
Key points of the bill:
- A state must first implement a simplified system of sales tax administration, as defined by meeting four requirements:
- Remote sellers are exempt if they have less than $1 million in U.S. sales or $100,000 in sales in the state.
- One state return to be used by remote sellers, which cannot be required to filed more frequently than required for other sellers.
- Uniform statewide tax base (list of things subject to tax).
- The state can require remote sellers to pay one of three tax rates: (1) a single rate blending the state rate and the average local rate (for an idea of these, see our recent local sales tax report), (2) the maximum state rate exclusive of local rates, or (3) the tax rate of the customer’s location although the state must “make available adequate software that substantially eases the burden of collecting at multiple rates,” although this is not further defined. This is the most concerning part of the bill: states are likely to prefer (3) and then skimp on easing compliance burdens.
Read the rest of the provisions of the bill here.
Comments »AOLHuffPo Begging Yahoo To Buy It
(Reuters) – AOL Inc CEO Tim Armstrong has been meeting with top shareholders in the past couple of weeks to push the idea of a sale to Yahoo Inc that could wring up to $1.5 billion of cost savings, according to sources with knowledge of the discussions.
While Yahoo’s own strategic review has bumped AOL to the back burner for many on Wall Street, Armstrong is still trying to drum up shareholder support for a deal with Yahoo, presenting it as an alternative to going it alone as an Internet media company.
“The focus in the meeting has gone from a year ago of being around the fundamentals to now being how could you carve this up, what are separate assets worth, are there ways to sell off the business to extract value from them,” said a top 20 AOL shareholder who attended one of the meetings.
Armstrong said a merger between AOL and Yahoo could wring out $1 billion to $1.5 billion in savings from overlapping data centers and duplicate news sites, such as sports, entertainment and finance, according to another major shareholder who met with Armstrong.
He is pushing the notion that a combination with Yahoo would appease ad agencies looking for more efficient buys with a bigger audience, said the two shareholders.
They said they liked the idea of a merger with Yahoo but it remains to be seen if Armstrong can pull it off.
Read the rest here.
Comments »Bear Markets in the Dow Jones Industrials – 1899 to Present
Some great chart porn here. Well worth the click-over!
Comments »
