Reuters – European Union leaders will call at a summit next week for the world’s 20 biggest economies (G20) to agree in April to substantially boost funds available to the International Monetary Fund, draft conclusions of the meeting showed.
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EU leaders to ask G20 to back higher IMF funds
(Reuters)
As a market recovery gathers pace and fears over Greece recede, the Dow hit a four-year high and European indices rallied
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Market gains point to budding recovery
Bad news: It’s for loan forgiveness. Admit it — you thought that the Obama administration had some sort of latent hostility toward religious organizations. His new HHS mandate refused to exempt such charities, schools, and hospitals from employer mandates to cover contraception and abortifacients, ruling that they were exactly like all other employers in the eyes of the government. Well, have Read this post
Tax cheat Tim Geithner, the only member of the Obama economic brain trust who has not yet been fired , testified to the Senate Finance Committee today in favor of the president’s proposed trillion-dollar-deficit budget. Geithner, a Dartmouth man esteemed more for his tennis skills than for his understanding of markets or business, peddled much Keynesian voodoo before a nation whose economy he helped destroy while employed by the Federal Reserve Bank and then the Department of the Treasury. To get a sense of the mixed metaphors and confused logic that characterized the treasury secretary's testimony, ponder the Reuters headline “ Geithner: Year-end fiscal cliff to hit U.S. growth ,” and tremble to reflect that this word salad accurately describes Geithner's comments. Mostly, Geithner pressed the need to lay heavier tax burdens on the “top 2 percent” of Americans. In proof that the second version of history is farce, the same rhetoric that characterized the birth of the modern central banking system – that the income tax would be levied only on the rich – is being used again at its death. But the Tax Foundation , citing data from Geithner’s Internal Revenue Service, suggests why the political goal of raising taxes on people who earn more than $340,000 in a year will not achieve the fiscal goal of raising more revenue: Earners in the top 1 percent pay 37 percent of the income tax. Earners in the top 5 percent pay 59 percent. Raising tax rates for these people may feel good, but the iron judgment of history is that it will not increase the total tax haul. As you can see from the chart here , top marginal rates have varied from above 90 percent to below 30 percent over the past 70 years, but federal revenue as a percentage of GDP has remained steadily in the 19-percent neighborhood. The chart also gives strong evidence of what brought Uncle Sam’s cut of GDP from the single-digit range to the 19-percent range. That happened in the mid-1940s, when the government and the Federal Reserve broke their original promise to soak the rich and broadened taxable income to include every penny earned by every American. While the Geithner plan will not succeed in raising revenue, it does have the capacity to raise the volatility of revenue collections. High earners experience more severe ups and downs in their income than the rest of us. This is the particular danger in California’s own effort to service its spending addiction through higher top rates, as I explained a few weeks ago : Geithner’s top-2-percent strategy risks putting federal revenues on the same roller coaster. Here is a look at just how contingent and temporary millionaire status is in the United States. As Geithner knows from his own experience using TurboTax to conceal income from Washington, high earners also have more opportunities to earn in ways that will not be captured by the IRS – even though in the final stages of its decadence the U.S. government is becoming far more punitive on overseas earnings, charitable donations, expatriation of wealth and people, and other hallmarks of personal freedom. This is not novel stuff. Even First Baron Keynes understood that the relationship between tax rates and revenue raised is not one-to-one. In fact, if Keynesians were truly attentive to their master, they would have a better understanding of the importance of depressive taxation in centrally planning an economy. What’s truly worrying is that Geithner doesn’t seem to grasp the concepts he’s trying to put into practice. Plenty of people want to soak the rich: But if Warren Buffett or Hillary Clinton or even Stephen King believes in garbage, that has at most a tangential effect on me. Geithner, on the other hand: He’s the guy who takes money directly out of my pocket.
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Top 1 Percent Pay 37 Percent of Income Taxes
***BUMPED*** Google’s Blogspot platform is home to the newest branch of al Qaeda: al Qaeda in East Africa . The group formerly known as al Shabaab — or, the Mujahideen Youth Movement — has chosen an American company to host its website. Providing business services to al Shabaab or al Qaeda violates US and international law, even if those services are provided at no cost. And how do we know that this is al Qaeda in East Africa’s website. Well, in addition to the fact that the website is posted on their Twitter account , there is also this. Stay evil Google, stay evil. PS: Also, you too Twitter !
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Google Hosting al Qeada in East Africa *Bumped*
Science : The world’s greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows. The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that around 50bn tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall. Now let me add my two cents. If scientists are stunned by simple data collection, they’re doing it wrong. Their job is to dispassionately collect and analyze the data, not get all worked up because it didn’t fit their pet theory. So, um — might be time to drop the hissy fits and adjust the theory, yes?
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I’m (Not) Melting! I’m (Not) Melting!
Reuters – Economists in a survey see the unemployment rate falling much faster this year than previously expected, an improvement in the jobs market that could help President Obama’s re-election chances.
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U.S. jobless rate projected to fall sharply
(Reuters)
“By the time Texas is over, we will be very, very competitive in delegate count,” Gingrich predicted on Sunday.
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Gingrich: Goal is to get to Super Tuesday
Paul on Sunday said there was still a fight for second place in the Nevada caucuses.
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Paul sees ‘chaos’ in Nevada caucuses
Mayhem The hacker group Anonymous is back at it again, raising online mayhem with government and law enforcement websites in what they referred to as a “day of action” on Friday. In one of the more embarrassing incidents, the FBI was on a phone call with Scotland Yard, discussing ways to combat the group. Anonymous responded Read this post