Or so says the headline.
Which is nonsense. GM is out of business, and now a government owned entity. The headline should read TAXPAYERS pay $1000 to Get Toyota owners to Switch.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
GM to Pay $1000 to Get Toyota Owners to Switch
Apologies to Ron Paul
On my post aboout Geithner and none of the Congressmen asking the right questionbs, I now see Ron Paul was on the committee, but the congressmen before him took so much time he never got a chance to question Geithner. Not only is the congressional leadership not asking the right questions, they are keeping the one who asks the right questions away from the witness.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Geithner is a Thief
During lunch I was watching C-Span, as congressmen grill Sec of Treas Geithner. Geithners defense is two-fold: if they had not acted, the coonsequencs would have been worse. The taxpayers will not lose a dime on the bailouts.
The first point is ahistorical, we did the bailouts, so we cannot know it would be worse. A premise that is historical is without bailouts, matters would be better. WE have countless examples of no bailouts/better results in history.
Geithner insists that all of the Goldman Sachs employees that are working for the banks in govt positions have the best intersts of only the taxpayers in mind. Apparently he has never heard of "moral hazard."
As to the fee on the banks that will recover teh billions the taxpayers lost, just who does Geithner think will pay those fees? Not the banks, the banks custoemrs. And now with "get big or get out" concentrating the baking biz in fewer and fewer hands, it is the very taxpyers who were burned who will make up the loss, just after the banks turn a profit on the taxpayers loss.
Politics are getting ever rawer in USA. That not a single congressman on the committee called Geithner on this Econ 101 point illustrates how uninterested politicians are in the taxpayers welfare. It does not matter if you suffer, these people would rather rule over ruins than lose their position as a consequence of admitting their greed.
Apple Does It Again
Apple has launched a new product, although the name is not so good... I'd guess iPed, as in it gets around, but no one asked me.. This looks like a big iPhone, which is probably what it is... maybe I can travel with this instead of my laptop....
Monday, January 25, 2010
Put US Military In Haiti Under Salvation Army Command
The world renown Italian disaster relief expert slams US Military aid in Haiti. He makes the obvious point that people trained for military are not best for relief. You'll never find a better combination of discipline and disaster aid than the Salvation Army, so why not put the US Military in Haiti under a Salvation Army general?
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Koyaanisqatsi
Ack... in 2007 thre were more people in USA working for government than producing goods, and this graph shows it has gotten worse!
Taxes and Regulations
Higher taxes is particularly interesting to me, because we had a heyday of small business development and innovation after WWII, when taxes were high to pay down the war debt, something like 90% on biz. Neutra and locally Roland Terry designed bauhaus inspired minimalist homes which were cheaper and faster to build (about 80% of the cost of a house is the last 20%, the finishes and flourishes) ... Since the govt was taking all of your profits, you built a minimalist house, and spent all of your money pretax on your business, the offices, the accourtrement, travel, etc. The business was the lifestyle. You can drive down rainier avenue and see some of the cool med-century office small biz office bldgs from this era, and inside they were very cool too. Small biz people will simply change how they allocate their assets and declare them on taxes.
Against this we have new regs that militate small businesses from forming, such as "sand" is now hazmat according to the EPA and has control and reporting requirements similar to anthrax. In Washington if you have more than three employees you must allow people off the street to use your restrooms. On January 1 alone, 40,000 new laws went into effect in USA, according to ABC TV. There are thousands, perhaps millions, of other rules and fees that just crush any competition for big biz. One of the harms done during the dotcom and real estate booms is people were misallocated from starting their own businesses into the malinvestment of those to booms. So we missed their contributions, plus they were not there to object to the degeneration of the business milieu.
One small advantage, corporate taxes will show up in the price of end user goods, mostly commodity items. This means that innovative items will be in some measure more price competitive, perhaps spurring more innovation, to some degree.
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