Fascinating look:
Most companies don’t disclose median worker pay, so Bloomberg calculated ratios based on the U.S. government’s industry-specific averages for pay and benefits of rank-and-file workers. This table, searchable by company name, CEO or industry, shows the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index top 250 companies by ratio.
Look at the table: all the CEOs are paid millions each year. Wow.
CEO Pay 1,795-to-1 Multiple of Wages Skirts U.S. Law - Bloomberg
Friday, May 3, 2013
Turns out much-hyped settlement still allows banks to steal homes - Salon.com
You should have seen Erica's face when I took her Monopoly property and gave it to the CEO. Or....you could read this article and imagine being one of the "homeowners" whose house is taken.
Turns out much-hyped settlement still allows banks to steal homes - Salon.com
Turns out much-hyped settlement still allows banks to steal homes - Salon.com
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Cure for HIV?
I know this isn't related to the financial crisis but it's wild that they could be coming close to a cure for HIV
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=169537
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=169537
Can Dogs Save the Economy?
It has been scientifically proven that dog owners are overall healthier and happier people. Dr Wells said that dog owners appear to suffer from fewer minor ailments as well as fewer serious medical problems. What does this have to do with saving the economy you may ask? Well I'm glad that you asked. People who are happier and healthier help create a better, stronger economy. If people are overall healthier, their medical bills are lower and therefore they can spend more money investing into our economy. If people are overall happier then they will have a tendency to go out and do more with their lives which means putting more money into our economy. Are dogs the answer to ending this financial crisis? We may never know.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/how-a-dogs-life-can-make-you-happier-433184.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/how-a-dogs-life-can-make-you-happier-433184.html
You must read this!!!
This is a fascinating piece on "what we know" about current events.
The realization that the world is often quite different from what is presented in our leading newspapers and magazines is not an easy conclusion for most educated Americans to accept, or at least that was true in my own case. For decades, I have closely read the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and one or two other major newspapers every morning, supplemented by a wide variety of weekly or monthly opinion magazines. Their biases in certain areas had always been apparent to me. But I felt confident that by comparing and contrasting the claims of these different publications and applying some common sense, I could obtain a reasonably accurate version of reality. I was mistaken.
Aside from the evidence of our own senses, almost everything we know about the past or the news of today comes from bits of ink on paper or colored pixels on a screen, and fortunately over the last decade or two the growth of the Internet has vastly widened the range of information available to us in that latter category.
Our American Pravda | The American Conservative
The realization that the world is often quite different from what is presented in our leading newspapers and magazines is not an easy conclusion for most educated Americans to accept, or at least that was true in my own case. For decades, I have closely read the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and one or two other major newspapers every morning, supplemented by a wide variety of weekly or monthly opinion magazines. Their biases in certain areas had always been apparent to me. But I felt confident that by comparing and contrasting the claims of these different publications and applying some common sense, I could obtain a reasonably accurate version of reality. I was mistaken.
Aside from the evidence of our own senses, almost everything we know about the past or the news of today comes from bits of ink on paper or colored pixels on a screen, and fortunately over the last decade or two the growth of the Internet has vastly widened the range of information available to us in that latter category.
Our American Pravda | The American Conservative
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Financial Media Celebrates Apple’s Tax Evasion Bond Deal « naked capitalism
Again, I'm reminded of our monopoly game. To help with the government deficit, the middle class paid taxes last night.
A variety of technology corporations are among those pressuring the US government to give them a preferential tax break, sources tell Fortune. Apple, Cisco, Pfizer and Duke Energy are specifically named as lobbying politicians for a tax “holiday” in regards to repatriated cash. Whereas the companies would normally be obligated to pay 35 percent, their goal is allegedly to pay just 5 percent.
Everyone is taxed multiple times, so stop running the con that investors deserve to be a protected class. Workers pay FICA and income taxes, so sales tax payments come out of income that has been previously taxed. You also pay the real estate taxes of store owners when you buy goods or eat out. You pay the gas taxes on the shipping costs of products you buy online (again out of your after tax dollars!)
And let’s also not forget that growth rates were higher when corporations were more heavily taxed, dispelling the notion that making corporations pay their fair share is a negative for the economy.
But thanks to the tender ministrations of the Fed, which is goosing asset prices right and left in a futile effort to pump of the economy, Apple has a cheap and easy way out of the fact that its clever tax avoidance leaves its monster cache largely overseas, where it can’t buy the good will of increasingly jaded US investors. Its $17 billion of bond offerings Tuesday were a blowout. And that’s despite the fact that they didn’t garner an AAA rating. That view may as much reflect rating agency doubts that Apple will ever get the tax breaks it wants to bring its dough into the US on the cheap as well as concerns about how long the Cupertino company can keep its cachet and the premium margins that result.
Read more at:
Financial Media Celebrates Apple’s Tax Evasion Bond Deal « naked capitalism
A variety of technology corporations are among those pressuring the US government to give them a preferential tax break, sources tell Fortune. Apple, Cisco, Pfizer and Duke Energy are specifically named as lobbying politicians for a tax “holiday” in regards to repatriated cash. Whereas the companies would normally be obligated to pay 35 percent, their goal is allegedly to pay just 5 percent.
Everyone is taxed multiple times, so stop running the con that investors deserve to be a protected class. Workers pay FICA and income taxes, so sales tax payments come out of income that has been previously taxed. You also pay the real estate taxes of store owners when you buy goods or eat out. You pay the gas taxes on the shipping costs of products you buy online (again out of your after tax dollars!)
And let’s also not forget that growth rates were higher when corporations were more heavily taxed, dispelling the notion that making corporations pay their fair share is a negative for the economy.
But thanks to the tender ministrations of the Fed, which is goosing asset prices right and left in a futile effort to pump of the economy, Apple has a cheap and easy way out of the fact that its clever tax avoidance leaves its monster cache largely overseas, where it can’t buy the good will of increasingly jaded US investors. Its $17 billion of bond offerings Tuesday were a blowout. And that’s despite the fact that they didn’t garner an AAA rating. That view may as much reflect rating agency doubts that Apple will ever get the tax breaks it wants to bring its dough into the US on the cheap as well as concerns about how long the Cupertino company can keep its cachet and the premium margins that result.
Read more at:
Financial Media Celebrates Apple’s Tax Evasion Bond Deal « naked capitalism
Secret free trade negoitiations
Some of you didn't like my "redistribution of property to create more output" last night --eg., taking from the middle class to give to the corporations. But what's happening behind closed doors is no different:
It’s a sign of the times that a reputable economist, Dean Baker, can use the word “corruption” in the headline of an article describing two major trade deals under negotiation and no one bats an eye.
By way of background, the Administration is taking the unusual step of trying to negotiate two major trade deals in the same timeframe. Apparently Obama wants to make sure his corporate masters get as many goodies as possible before he leaves office. The Trans-Pacific Partnership and the US-European Union “Free Trade” Agreement are both inaccurately depicted as being helpful to ordinary Americans by virtue of liberalizing trade. Instead, the have perilous little to do with trade. They are both intended to make the world more lucrative for major corporations by weakening regulations and by strengthening intellectual property laws. The TPP has an additional wrinkle of being an “everybody but China” deal, intended to strengthen ties among nations who will then be presumed allies of America in its efforts to contain China. As we indicated via a link to an Asia Times article over the weekend, that’s proving to be a bit fraught as Japan is flexing its muscles militarily and thus less inclined to follow US directives tamely.
I doubt that Stiglitz likes either deal. Read more at:
Secret “Free Trade” Negotiations Will Gut Regulations, Further Enrich Multinationals and Big Financial Firms « naked capitalism
It’s a sign of the times that a reputable economist, Dean Baker, can use the word “corruption” in the headline of an article describing two major trade deals under negotiation and no one bats an eye.
By way of background, the Administration is taking the unusual step of trying to negotiate two major trade deals in the same timeframe. Apparently Obama wants to make sure his corporate masters get as many goodies as possible before he leaves office. The Trans-Pacific Partnership and the US-European Union “Free Trade” Agreement are both inaccurately depicted as being helpful to ordinary Americans by virtue of liberalizing trade. Instead, the have perilous little to do with trade. They are both intended to make the world more lucrative for major corporations by weakening regulations and by strengthening intellectual property laws. The TPP has an additional wrinkle of being an “everybody but China” deal, intended to strengthen ties among nations who will then be presumed allies of America in its efforts to contain China. As we indicated via a link to an Asia Times article over the weekend, that’s proving to be a bit fraught as Japan is flexing its muscles militarily and thus less inclined to follow US directives tamely.
I doubt that Stiglitz likes either deal. Read more at:
Secret “Free Trade” Negotiations Will Gut Regulations, Further Enrich Multinationals and Big Financial Firms « naked capitalism
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