Comments on: Regs, tax breaks expiry to hit lending

By: DennisG

DennisG — Thu, 27 May 2010 10:37:54 +0000

Last spring, the IRS released a report (1st authorized by Clinton EO, then surpressed by GWB EO following 2002 tax “changes”) that analyzed taxes paid by S&P 500 corps in the last completed yr (2006, I think). Two-thirds of the corps paid… NO Taxes whatsoever! Since the financial sector had grown to 40% of the index by then (pretty absurd, when ya think about it), may it be assumed that a good number of the tax-free were financial firms? Perhaps we should focus less on taxin’ those bonuses and more on taxin’ the firms’ revenue streams. The latter might just solve the problem of the former. [though I have yet to see that annual IRS report this Spring--- wonder where o where it is? [:) ]

By: Macwizz

Macwizz — Wed, 26 May 2010 20:26:37 +0000

Simple facts are the US Government is in a catch 22. We are at over capacity in housing, imports, and energy output. if they raise taxes you remove just that more from the markets. population growth is on a steady decline under 1%. you can’t fix the the problem by adding 25M illegals to the tax roll, cause over half would be taking more out of the system, then they put in. we have 120 Trillion in unfunded mandates threw SS and medicare right now. they passed the Obama tax care bill to try and stop the hemorrhaging of falling tax revenue.

Right now cash is king. its better to seat on the side lines, cause the P\E is to high interest rates at 0. you can make more by waiting for the market to hit bottom. as I type they are below 10k. then you can get back in later and make more on the up tick.

This ride is not over, they just prolonged the pain till the first of the year. Oil will continue to fall with 15m barrels a day over capacity and climbing, demand world wide is in decline from the world markets pulling back.

You have a nice day now:)

By: HBC

HBC — Wed, 26 May 2010 03:05:56 +0000

The dynamic here is that banks have come to reenact the business model of aerospace: as it becomes more profitable to survive off government money in exchange for supplying defective products than to actually meet market index head-on through strenuous competition (a status eliminated by government largesse and intervention) – whaddya know – they choose the former.

All the other stuff is just window dressing. They didn’t really want to supply real money anyway because, if they did, that would be another thing at which major banks have miserably failed as though they all attended the same failure academy at the same time.

It takes far longer to rationalize than to recognize the obvious, that’s for sure.

By: armoderate

armoderate — Tue, 25 May 2010 17:16:12 +0000

Though painful, the value of housing did not reflect true demand and supply. Demand was artificially raised by banks extending loans to people who had no business buying houses at inflated prices and then the banks transferring high risk loans surreptitiously to the taxpayer through derivatives and hedge fund markets that we know collapsed. To get the market back to reflecting true housing value we need to have these regulations in place so that risk is placed on the entity that extends the loan. We also need to eventually break up the behemoth financial institutions so that they don’t expect windfall profits and begin to act more like businesses that operate in a competitive market instead of an oligopoly (as if that’s going to happen).

By: usbychoice

usbychoice — Tue, 25 May 2010 14:22:04 +0000

Amazing that for a Dollar that was, how do you say? ‘released from the cruel stranglehold of gold and efficiently propped up by debt’ we may find ourselves today wishing for the days of old.