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Updated at 1:30 p.m.
There’s a sizable portion of the American public that’s against bailing out underwater American homeowners under any circumstances. That sentiment was most eloquently summed up by CNBC’s Rick Santelli in 2009. His fiery speech on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade is credited with spurring the Tea Party movement and helping coalesce forces against government bailouts of all kinds.
Market-observers are worrying about a new landmine in the path of economic recovery: America’s impending “fiscal cliff.” Economists from Ben Bernanke to Alan Blinder have been warning of the $600 billion that will be sucked out of the U.S. economy – through a combination of tax increases and spending cuts – at the end of 2012 if current law is allowed to stand.
In his fiscal 2013 budget proposal, President Obama has suggested a temporary 10% tax credit designed to spur job creation and wage growth among small businesses. It’s a fine idea with a long pedigree — just the ticket if you’re in the market for small-bore economic policies that sound cool but don’t do much.
The Obama administration just rolled out something it’s calling a “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights.” It’s a first draft at this point — think of it as a blueprint for legislation down the road, a statement of principles companies can voluntarily sign onto — but given what it’s meant to do, and how it could [...]
One of the many cans being kicked down Washington’s boulevards these days is the government conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In 2008, at the height of the financial crisis, Congress and the Bush administration created the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) and subsequently put Fannie and Freddie into conservatorship under its authority.
Yesterday, President Obama announced a long-awaited proposal to cut corporate taxes in America, which U.S. businesses complain are much too high by international standards. The proposed reform is intended to prevent companies from shifting operations and earnings to tax havens (paging Mitt Romney!) and instead encourage companies to bring them back into the U.S., where [...]
As the nation frets over slow growth and large budget deficits, much has been made over how much Americas are and should be paying in income tax. President Obama and Democrats have argued that the wealthiest among us are not paying their fair share. They say the spoils of the globalization and the internet revolution have gone almost exclusively to the very wealthy, and that, in times of crisis, more should be asked of those who can afford to give. Those on the right counter that the wealthy pay their fair share and, more, that the top one percent pay a huge percentage of federal income tax receipts.
But there is another source of federal revenues that receives less attention: corporate income taxes. According to the Wall Street Journal’s recent study of Congressional Budget Office numbers, corporations are paying an effective rate of 12.1%, the lowest in at least 40 years. So why are some of the biggest and most powerful entities in our society getting away with paying so little? The story is complicated, but the biggest factor in the recent collapse in corporate tax receipts appears to be a set of tax breaks built into recent stimulus efforts.
Perhaps the single biggest headwind the American economy faces, rivaled only by unemployment, is the dismal housing market. American’s biggest source of wealth has been decimated over the past six years, so it was no surprise that President Obama, in his state of the union speech, promised responsible homeowners the chance to refinance and “save [...]
While the year of the protester has just passed, 2012 looks to be the year of the entrepreneur.
You can practically set your watch by it. As petroleum prices soar—and with them, oil company profits and pain at the gas pump—sooner or later members of Congress will haul Big Oil executives into a hearing and Demand That Something Be Done. It happened in 2008, the last time oil prices breached the $100 a [...]
