Stormy writes (lifted from an e-mail):Some developing nations are winners: France, England…others, the U.S. are very big losers. Banks take a hefty cut… Migrants billions overshadow aid.  This article is an interesting sidebar to the global economy, enormously powerful and consequential. Worth reading and thinking about. From the The Guardian For decades it was a largely unnoticed […]

By request of frequent AB commenter and SS contrarian Bruce Krasting. He claims vindication of claims from four years ago that the Trust Funds would top out at a much lower level than then estimated. And there is some support to be had here. Also lots of numbers and data points. I’ll have my say […]

And the plain fact is that Obama has reiterated that the same spending and entitlement cuts he offered in 2011 are still on the table, even irking his own base in the process. — Greg Sargent, this morning That really surprised me, so I clicked the link Sargent offers, which turns out to be to […]

In the Comments thread yesterday to my Uwe-Reinhardt-For-Labor-Secretary post, an old fellow “Frayster” (definition: Someone who posted regularly to Slate’s wonderful, late, great “Fray” comments board), Woolley, wrote: I don’t know anything about Uwe and after reading your piece, I still don’t know anything about [him]. Can you tell us why [he] is such a […]

Jake at Polymic points us to news today: John Brennan gets interrogated. President Obama’s nominee for head of the CIA will face the Senate at 2:30 p.m. today for his confirmation hearing. Brennan has come under criticism for supporting torture while serving in the Bush administration, and his support for drone strikes as President Obama’s […]

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_lehrer#ixzz2K8oPHu6U

The second is a press release regarding the Nation Academy of Social Insurance’s new study. http://www.nasi.org/press/releases/2013/01/press-release-americans-make-hard-choices-social-security The survey used a new approach to measuring public opinion about Social Security. In addition to asking participants whether they would favor a particular change, they were asked to choose a preferred package of changes, much as lawmakers might […]

David Cay Johnson describes the processes of restructuring the company over time as Dell goes private: Six years ago, Dell Inc. announced a $12 billion restructuring with huge tax consequences not just for Dell, but also for tax policy. If the deal works as intended, American multinationals can copy it to escape the corporate income […]

by Linda Beale Soon-to-be Google litigation with IRS over 2003-4 returns? Bloomberg dug into Google’s annual SEC 10-k filing to discover that the company plans to litigate an issue from the 2003 and/or 2004 tax years.  No suit has yet been filed, and there is no information regarding the substance of the dispute or the […]

http://econospeak.blogspot.com/2013/02/does-paul-ryan-know-what-austerity-means.html http://econospeak.blogspot.com/2013/02/government-purchases-versus-government.html http://econospeak.blogspot.com/2013/02/federal-expenditures-seasonally-adjusted.html