Mitt Romney’s plan for taxing multinational corporations would create 800,000 jobs, according to President Barack Obama.

“There’s only one problem,” the president added at a speech in Ohio last week. “The jobs wouldn’t be in America. They’d be in other countries.” That clever remark kicked off a week of sparring between the two candidates and their surrogates about the right way to tax corporations.

On this count, the president is wrong. Investment and job growth abroad don’t necessarily mean job losses in the U.S. And more importantly, Romney’s plan to tax multinational corporations only on the income they earn domestically is on the right track.

Properly structured, and combined with a lower corporate- income-tax rate, a so-called territorial system could make U.S. companies more competitive, simplify the tax code, reduce compliance costs, boost real wages and enable companies to repatriate the more than $1.2 trillion they are now holding abroad for fear of the tax man.

Full Article 

I’d say taking a large cash position going into this week is a good idea.

Greece retakes its position at the heart of the European debt crisis this week as its creditors assess how far off course the country is from bailout targets, raising again the specter of its exit from the euro.

Greece’s troika of international creditors — the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund — will arrive in Athens tomorrow amid doubts the country will meet its commitments and reluctance among euro-area states to put up more funds should it fail.

“If Greece doesn’t fulfill those conditions, then there can be no more payments,” German Vice Chancellor Philipp Roesler told broadcaster ARD yesterday, adding that he is “very skeptical” Greece can be rescued and that the prospect of its exit from the monetary union “has long ago lost its terror.”

After euro finance ministers failed to staunch a fresh low for the single currency last week with the approval of a 100 billion-euro ($122 billion) aid package for Spain, the troika will be tasked with determining the fiscal position of the nation where the crisis began almost three years ago. Greece is clamoring for more help as efforts to cut its debt to 120 percent of gross domestic product by 2020 fall short.

Full Article 

While this quarter’s earnings reports have crossed a substantially lowered profit bar, future expectations through the year indicate a recession could be on the way.

Estimates for the third and fourth quarters have been dropped to levels not seen since the days of the 2008 financial crisis, below even the muted 2 percent expected level of inflation.

That’s an ominous recession sign for an economy that has barely managed to attain positive growth this year even with the strong level of earnings beats, according to an analysis by Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at ConvergEx in New York.

Full Article 

A mother who went to have her cell phone fixed at Best Buy has spoken of her fury after a male employee copied racy photos of her to a CD before later inviting her to his home to collect them.

Last April, Sophia Ellison hired a Geek Squad employee in Fairfax, Virginia to transfer hundreds of photos, numbers and contacts to a newly purchased iPhone for her.

Instead, he copied them on to his own computer and demanded that she see him in person if she wanted to get them back.

Full Article 

(Reuters) – Hundreds of unemployed Spaniards who had walked hundreds of kilometers (miles) to Madrid joined protests on Saturday against Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s government and its handling of an economic crisis.

Demonstrations have swollen across Spain since the center-right government announced 65 billion euros ($79 billion) in new spending cuts two weeks ago to cut its deficit and avert a full-blown bailout, with firefighters and police joining a mass protest on Thursday.

Full Article 

Greek GDP is expected by the end of this to have shrunk by about a fifth in five consecutive years of recession since 2008, hammered by tax hikes, spending cuts and wage reductions required by two EU/IMF bailouts. Unemployment climbed to a record 22.6pc in the first quarter.

“You had the Great Depression in the United States,” Samaras told Clinton, who was visiting Greece as part of a delegation of Greek-American businessmen. “This is exactly what we’re going through in Greece – it’s our version of the Great Depression.”

Athens must reduce its budget deficit below 3pc of GDP by the end of 2014, from 9.3pc of GDP in 2011 – requiring almost another €12bn euros in cuts and higher taxes on top of the 17 billion successive governments have cut from the budget shortfall.

A Chinese central bank adviser predicted the nation’s expansion may cool to 7.4 percent this quarter, adding to concern that the world’s second-biggest economy has yet to bottom out.

Song Guoqing, an academic member of the People’s Bank of China monetary policy committee, also warned that a decline in producer prices in tandem with consumer inflation may hurt investment returns of industrial companies, damping their desire to expand.

Full Article 

Click here for a full update on the Dark Knight Rises Shooting.

Old friend $MVIS is not looking all that bad right here.

Italian and Spanish yields are soaring, while European markets sell the fuck off.

Here is your nightly screen of movers under $10, click here for charts.

The U.S. post office will need $5.5 billion in order to stay afloat….

Full article

“Spain’s five-year borrowing costs surged as the government braced for protests against spending cuts, while France paid record-low yields of less than 1 percent to sell similar securities.

Spanish five-year notes yielded an average 6.459 percent at auction today, compared with 6.072 percent a month ago. French yields for the same maturity fell to 0.86 percent, almost half of last month’s level. Spain sold debt as lawmakers debated spending cuts in Parliament, where police erected barriers and stood guard.”

Full article

Here’s a look at Wednesday’s hybrid movers under $10, click here for charts.

Japan’s banking lobby said it may review lenders’ interest-rate submissions and South Korean regulators started a probe into possible collusion in money markets, amid widening global scrutiny of key lending rates following the Libor scandal in the U.K.

The Japanese Bankers Association said it’s considering looking at as many as 16 banks to confirm that they follow guidelines for submitting yen-denominated Tokyo interbank offered rates. In South Korea, the antitrust agency expanded an investigation today into whether local brokerages kept certificate of deposit rates artificially high.”

Full article

FOX 10 News – Phoenix, AZ | KSAZ-TV

The video is embedded here, for your viewing pleasure…

QE is coming….

Full article