After crowing about how close they were to 13,000 yesterday the traders on Wall Street apparently lost interest (or were taken aback by the negative commentary {OTHER THAN MINE} that the short hop to 13,000 would take…)
Anyway, markets are down slightly this morning on news that the latest Greek bailout does absolutely zero for the Greek economy (which is crashing and burning!)
Naked Capitalism is reporting that Greek tax collectors have been put under the gun to step up their game! They are being told they need to collect 200% more than last year!
Depending on how you read it, it appears that NONE of the, er, ‘arrears’ collected will go to the Greek government, it is all slated to head into a trust for Greece’s creditors.
Left to our imaginations is the incentive the Greek people will have to pony up for these increased taxes while their garbage piles up on the curb, uncollected.
Um, this variety of financial ‘stick ‘em up’ constitutes precisely the kind of fiscal mismanagement that politicians must be held accountable for!
After all, these aren’t the debts of the people Greece, this mess was caused by the Greek central bank!
This is ‘government debt’ that Greece’s central bank ran up…just like Iceland.
This has fraud written all over it and the world’s corporate owned media remains mute…
Does anyone wonder why?
Which brings us to today’s first offering A lie so huge it begs credibility!
Have Americans turned over a new leaf since last year by saving more money versus incurring more credit card debt? The short answer is no.
Bankrate's February survey, just more than half, or 54 percent, of Americans said they have more money in emergency savings than in credit card debt. This compares to 52 percent last year. One in 4 Americans has more credit card debt than emergency savings, up a smidgen from 23 percent last year.
And this year, 16 percent of survey respondents said they have neither credit card debt nor emergency savings. "This means they're only one unplanned expense away from having high-cost debt," says Greg McBride, CFA, Bankrate's senior financial analyst.
"Those most likely to have more in emergency savings than credit card debt are households with incomes of $75,000 or more, college grads and retirees," says McBride. And parents are most likely to have more credit card debt than emergency savings.
Let’s start with the 54% figure, shall we?
What we aren’t told is how many people were ‘sampled’ (It takes 4,000 respondents to create even a 5% margin of error when compared to the total US population, as this article attempts to do!)
If we were to be, er, ‘open minded’ about this we could speculate on the number of people who even have (genuine) credit cards (that provide them instant loans rather than being ‘pre-paid’ which is a horse of another color entirely! Then there are debit cards issued/backed by a credit card company, they have the logo but it’s still YOUR money you are spending!)
So, given the shear magnitude of the ‘credit crisis’, how many people (below the top dectile in the income distribution) even have credit cards? [that 20% that is responsible for 80% of the spending in our {imported} ‘consumer economy’.]
From the looks of the data, ONLY people with savings accounts were polled, providing us with an extremely lopsided picture! But we don’t know the details…making this rather ‘up-beat’ report next to worthless.
Which sort of brings us to our second offering
Thirty years of slashing corporate taxes and what has it gotten us? Yet Bobo wants to, you guessed it, slash the corporate tax rate!
Guess what good citizen, Bobo thinks YOU are STUPID!:
WASHINGTON — President Obama will ask Congress to scrub the corporate tax code of dozens of loopholes and subsidies to reduce the top rate to 28 percent, down from 35 percent, while giving preferences to manufacturers that would set their maximum effective rate at 25 percent, a senior administration official said on Tuesday.
Mr. Obama also would establish a minimum tax on multinational corporations’ foreign earnings, the official said, to discourage “accounting games to shift profits abroad” or actual relocation of production overseas. [Somehow this provision will curiously ‘disappear’ while in either house of Congress before it is submitted for signing…just like the ‘public option’ of the final healthcare bill!]
With the framework for changes that the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, will outline on Wednesday, Mr. Obama will enter an election-year debate with Republicans in Congress and in the presidential race who seek even lower taxes for businesses. But an overhaul of the corporate code is unlikely this year, given that political backdrop and the complexity of an undertaking that would generate a lobbying frenzy as businesses vie to defend old tax breaks or win new ones.
This presidential election cycle has taken on a very surreal quality considering the ONLY candidates for the nation’s top office are ALL CONSERVATIVE!
What the flaming fuck, good citizen!
This truly begs the question of why bother with holding elections if there is only one flavor on the menu?
Do we re-elect the current milque-toast (and pray he doesn’t fuck things up worse than they already are) or do we give one of the other ‘whack-jobs’ running a ‘mandate’ to remake the nation to their (campaign sponsors) liking?
Oil is nearly $106 a barrel and gold spiked up $25 yesterday, which could be construed as a mini ‘flight to safety’…
But there is no ‘safety’ in a world where ALL money is ‘funny’ (especially gold!)
Like the stock market, gold has zero ‘basis in reality’. If you want to get DEAD, buy gold!
The opposite is also true, the ‘gold nuts’ will kill you for your wedding band so you’d best lock that up if you want to hold onto it too!
Um, in case you were wondering, the destruction of our (global) civilization is proceeding apace!
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner
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