Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktVital Statistics:
| Last | Change | Percent | |
| S&P Futures | 1488.5 | -1.8 | -0.12% |
| Eurostoxx Index | 2706.9 | -1.4 | -0.05% |
| Oil (WTI) | 95.96 | 0.7 | 0.77% |
| LIBOR | 0.301 | -0.001 | -0.17% |
| US Dollar Index (DXY) | 80 | 0.083 | 0.10% |
| 10 Year Govt Bond Yield | 1.83% | 0.01% | |
| RPX Composite Real Estate Index | 192.1 | -0.1 |
Markets are lower after Apple stunk up the joint. Initial Jobless Claims came in at 330k. The Markit PMI came in at 56.1. Bristol Myers and 3M beat expectations. Bonds and MBS are down small.
The IMF forecast world economic growth of 3.5% for 2013. The US is forecast to grow 2%, with growth accelerating in 2H. The Euro area is expected to contract by .2%.
KB Homes reported that preliminary quarter-to-date net orders increased 54%. Separately, they announced they are forming a home-loan company for its buyers with Nationstar. Concurrently, they are doing a $100MM secondary and a $200MM convertible bond issue priced at 1.375s up 50.
Obama is expected to name Mary Jo White as the new head of the SEC. A former prosecutor, she is expected to signal the importance of holding Wall Street accountable.
Bob Schiller is still cautious on housing.
The renovation boom continues. As inventory remains small, many homeowners are choosing to upgrade current homes as opposed to buying new ones. Are 203ks the next big thing?
Filed under: Morning Report |
All Things in Moderation 
Unemployment applications are down too. It helps to be well-educated, apparently.
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Fallout from the debt ceiling vote — Sen. Murray has distributed a memo to Senate Ds about getting a budget together.
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Mike:
Thanks for the link. It provides an excellent example of the abuse of language that theses clowns routinely engage in to rhetorically hide what they are actually doing, and in this case shows how hardcore leftist ideology is fundamental to the D’s worldview.
Murray (echoed by Ezra without even blinking) refers to “cutting tax expenditures”, which in more honest language means simply raising taxes. Far worse, though, than the Orwellian nature of the phrase is the mindset that it reveals. Only someone who thinks that created wealth belongs first to the state could sensibly characterize the failure to collect certain income as a government “expenditure”. Murray calls the myriad tax deductions available through the tax code “benefits”, which is like saying that the mugger who just took your wallet “donated” back to you the watch he didn’t bother to take.
Alos worth pointing out: Murray notes that “The top 1% of taxpayers receives nearly 25%” of these “benefits”, but naturally she fails to note that even with these “benefits” that same 1% pays an even greater percentage of collected tax revenue.
Murray goes on to say “In total, tax expenditures were estimated to cost the Treasury $1.2 trillion in forgone revenue in 2011. That is nearly equivalent to what we spent on all discretionary programs in 2011.”. Actually, if the failure to tax certain income represents a “tax expenditure”, with GDP around $14 trillion such “expenditures” really cost the treasury over $10 trillion, since the vast majority of income in the nation never made it to the Treasury.
Leftist ideology is corrupt at its very core, and represents a major obstacle in developing a sane and sensible budget.
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Worth a read:
http://www.tnr.com/blog/112152/timothy-geithners-exit-interview#
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“As inventory remains small, many homeowners are choosing to upgrade current homes as opposed to buying new ones.”
The place across the street from us sold last year & is being renovated. Around the corner a new place went up last year, on a teardown lot. 2 doors down from there, another major remodel (2nd story addition) also finished last year. There are several more new houses going up in the neighborhood; some are teardowns, some on the rare vacant lot. There’s definitely been an uptick in the last year. Most lots were built out between the 20s & 40s.
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Scott:
Far worse, though, than the Orwellian nature of the phrase is the mindset that it reveals
The term “tax expenditure” was also used by Simpson-Bowles. The point was to eliminate these deductions and lower the overall rates. S-B started out with the Bush tax cuts expiring as a baseline and added in the elimination of deductions, with the goal of increasing revenue. Boehner proposed eliminating the deductions at the beginning of the fiscal cliff negotiations, but keeping most of the Bush tax cuts. Heck, even Paul Ryan’s budget had a section on “tax expenditures” which he proposed to eliminate.
And here’s a quote from Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity” that Murray seems to have echoed:
Click to access pathtoprosperityfy2012.pdf
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Mike:
The term “tax expenditure” was also used by Simpson-Bowles.
Yeah, I know. The left has been extremely successful in determining the language, and hence dictating the direction, of the discussion. The R’s have been at best incompetent at countering, and at worst complicit in establishing, the pervasiveness of collectivist ideology.
And while Murray may be echoing the terms that Ryan used, she is clearly doing so towards a different end. Ryan, at least ostensibly, wants to eliminate these “tax expenditures” in conjunction with lowering headline rates in order to simplify the tax code. Murray quite openly wants to eliminate them in conjunction with raising headline rates in order to fuck high income earners even more than they already get fucked by the government. And even worse, as she’s fucking them over she’s pretending that they are somehow getting a better deal than anyone else.
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What percentage of total Federal income collections should the top bracket be responsible for?
What tax rate would be to high?
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Interesting piece by Nick Gillespie over at Reason.com. A taste:
Clinton’s statement may set a new standard for politically motivated evasions of basic truth and decency. Seriously: What difference does it make? Just for low-stakes starters, there’s a guy in California who was put in jail basically because the Obama administration said his stupid, irrelevant video trailer for “The Innocence of Muslims” was to blame for anti-Americanism in Libya and beyond. President Obama went to the United Nations and bitch-slapped free expression in front of a global audience on the premise that “Innocence” was the cause of the attack on Benghazi. Our own U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice, took to the talk shows to peddle a line that was either wilfully misleading or simply totally wrong (Rice was the admin’s point person in early appearances about Benghazi partly because, as Clinton explained yesterday, she doesn’t like doing Sunday morning shows!).
Here’s the link,
http://reason.com/blog/2013/01/24/3-incredibly-outrageous-evasions-by-hill
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Okie, just wanted you to know I saw your comment regarding Emily’s family and reading all her books and reviewing them at Amazon. I think that’s an excellent idea and I will follow suit this year.
Michi, I’ve emailed her husband about running/walking in her honor. I’ll let you know here what he says. I can’t imagine he would object.
Sorry about the personal messages everyone, but the PL moves too fast to leave these kinds of comments and hope someone sees them.
Hope y’all are doing fine. Looks like things are “heating up” at ATiM.
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Scott:
Murray quite openly wants to eliminate them in conjunction with raising headline rates
I’ll withhold judgment about Murray wanting to raise headline rates until I see the budget proposal, but I don’t believe that she would want to lower tax rates, as S-B proposed.
Would you be in favor of a tax reform that eliminates deductions but lowers rates so as to be revenue neutral overall? How about something along the lines of Romney’s deductions cap?
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Mike:
Would you be in favor of a tax reform that eliminates deductions but lowers rates so as to be revenue neutral overall? How about something along the lines of Romney’s deductions cap?
I am in favor any reform that simplifies the tax code without exacerbating the inequities that already exist. I am even more strongly in favor of any reform that decreases the inequities that already exist. So, for example, since the tax rates have just been raised on the very people who already bear an inequitable size of the tax burden, I am in favor of increasing, not decreasing, the number of deductions for that demographic so that they are at least no worse off than they were before.
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Scott:
Thanks for your answer. I would like simplification of the tax code as well, but haven’t thought about it enough to know how to accomplish it. Maybe Wyden-Gregg.
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Mike:
I would like simplification of the tax code as well, but haven’t thought about it enough to know how to accomplish it. Maybe Wyden-Gregg.
Flat tax rate, no deductions. The only thing that would be simpler would be elimination of the income tax altogether, which would also be nice.
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the more I think about it, I think I’ve partial to the argument the very nature of the income tax is regressive.
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nova:
I think I’ve partial to the argument the very nature of the income tax is regressive.
I don’t understand.
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the truly rich don’t have w-2 income.
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nova:
the truly rich don’t have w-2 income.
I’m not at all sure that is true, but in any event, any variation in tax rates based on types of income is a legislative choice, not a function of the very nature of an income tax.
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i was thinking taxes on wages to mean income tax — which I suppose isn’t really accurate. I think a truly progressive tax would go after assets or wealth (not that i favor such a thing)
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Scott:
Flat tax rate, no deductions.
All income treated equally?
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Mike:
All income treated equally?
Yes.
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Icahn vs Ackman.
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Great stuff from David Mamet.
This is a chillingly familiar set of grievances; and its recrudescence was foreseen by the Founders. They realized that King George was not an individual case, but the inevitable outcome of unfettered power; that any person or group with the power to tax, to form laws, and to enforce them by arms will default to dictatorship, absent the constant unflagging scrutiny of the governed, and their severe untempered insistence upon compliance with law.
The Founders recognized that Government is quite literally a necessary evil, that there must be opposition, between its various branches, and between political parties, for these are the only ways to temper the individual’s greed for power and the electorates’ desires for peace by submission to coercion or blandishment.
Healthy government, as that based upon our Constitution, is strife. It awakens anxiety, passion, fervor, and, indeed, hatred and chicanery, both in pursuit of private gain and of public good. Those who promise to relieve us of the burden through their personal or ideological excellence, those who claim to hold the Magic Beans, are simply confidence men. Their emergence is inevitable, and our individual opposition to and rejection of them, as they emerge, must be blunt and sure; if they are arrogant, willful, duplicitous, or simply wrong, they must be replaced, else they will consolidate power, and use the treasury to buy votes, and deprive us of our liberties. It was to guard us against this inevitable decay of government that the Constitution was written. Its purpose was and is not to enthrone a Government superior to an imperfect and confused electorate, but to protect us from such a government.
I had a hard time selecting which part to excerpt, as it was all so good, but I really like that last line: “Its purpose was and is not to enthrone a Government superior to an imperfect and confused electorate, but to protect us from such a government.” Too bad so few people today understand that fact.
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The NYT reports that in preparation for allowing women to participate in combat:
The armed services are now developing gender-neutral standards for all of their jobs, and the Pentagon has vowed that those standards will not be lowered to make it easier for women to join combat units.
At present, the Army, for instance, allows women to pass their physical fitness tests with fewer push-ups and a slower two-mile run, than men.
My question: Why would they need to “develop” gender-neutral standards? Why wouldn’t they simply apply the existing standards currently used for men to women as well, thus making them “gender neutral”?
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nova:
I think a truly progressive tax would go after assets or wealth
Estate tax?
BTW, I forgot that Jagr was still in the NHL until I looked at the ‘Hawks-Stars box score. Can’t believe he’s still playing.
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Why wouldn’t they simply apply the existing standards currently used for men to women as well, thus making them “gender neutral”?
That’s more than likely exactly what they’re doing, just rewording them so that they don’t say “male”.
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“i was thinking taxes on wages to mean income tax — which I suppose isn’t really accurate. I think a truly progressive tax would go after assets or wealth (not that i favor such a thing)”
That’s the argument for a consumption tax rather than an income tax that taxes the varying forms of income at inconsistent rates.
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