by Linda Beale Lew’s Senate Finance hearing as Treasury Nominee Jack Lew, former budget director under Clinton and Obama and former Obama chief of staff, answered questions at Senate Finance today in his bid to succeed Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary. See, e.g., Rubin & Klimasinska, Lew Says He Didn’t Know Money-Losing Investment Was in […]
by Linda Beale The Inequality Gap Robert Reich, former labor secretary, has some worthwhile advice for the President’s State of the Union address: he notes that the focus should be the “central issue you want the nation to help you take action on”. That’s “not immigration, guns or the environment” (though “[a]ll are important”) but […]
by Linda Beale Goggle’s Bermuda hideaway/HSBC’s too-big status: time to rein in the corporations! If you are a company that depends on IP for a lot of your revenue, you may be able to avoid considerable taxes by funneling profits from subsidiaries in high-tax countries into a Bermuda shell company. Google avoided about $2 billion […]
by Linda Beale Republican “fiscal cliff” proposal House republican leaders have sent a letter to President Obama with their “fiscal cliff” proposal, which the Republicans cast as a “fair middle ground” and a “balanced framework for averting the fiscal cliff.” Id. Republicans object that the administrative proposal has is unbalanced, because it has “four times […]
by Linda Beale Links Worth Noting: Stealth (Class) Warfare(Op-ed) Paul Krugman, Class Wars of 2012, New York Times (Nov. 30, 2012). When Mitt Romney disparaged ordinary Americans, it was visible, obvious, and clearly an indication of the lack of esteem he held for ordinary Americans. The same arrogance is at work in the class warfare […]
by Linda Beale The Media’s Role in Driving the “Fiscal Cliff” Imagery The mainstream media has been fed a steady diet of releases from interested parties (like right-leaning propaganda tanks) about the need to adopt austerity measures, often cast as needing to save the country from out-of-control spending and unprecedented deficits and debt. At the […]
1/24/12 Links worth noting by Linda Beale: Germany rejects Swiss banking secrecy deal; Labor Devaluation David Jolly, German Lawmakers Reject Swiss Tax Deal, New York Times (Nov. 23, 2012).The US and other countries like Germany have been pressing the Swiss on their bank secrecy, which allows U.S. and other foreign citizens to establish bank accounts without […]
by Linda Beale More on the Threat to Social Security and Medicare from the so-called “Fiscal Cliff” In several posts recently I have discussed the harmful demands the right is engaging in related to the so-called “fiscal cliff” created by the original Bush tax cuts (set to sunset en masse), the artificial debt ceiling (used […]
by Linda Beale Sore-Losing Doesn’t Bode Well for Well-Considered Policy Choices on Taxes… Romney and Ryan have apparently joined the GOP sore-losers ranks most ably demonstrated by John McCain’s bitter post-presidential candidate spin. Romney betrayed the GOP’s disregard for ordinary Americans in a post-election talk with some of his major donors. Like his “47% comment” […]
by Linda Beale Calling all Americans: we face an “austerity crisis” not a fiscal “cliff”; we need a piecemeal solution, not a “grand bargain” Keynesian economic theory is the only theory that has gotten much of what’s gone on in the last few decades correct, but of course the GOP market fundamentalists, in reliance on […]