Rewarding Bad Actors by More Bad Actors and Higher Taxes: A Krugman Gem

 Abstract: Krugman of the New York Times maintains his reputation by focusing only on higher taxes and more regulations or ‘rules’ from government.  He offers anecdotes with condemnations on speculation and big profits but seems to ignore the salient fact that many liberals also make big bucks too.  He ignores that salient fact that many liberals make huge profits and escape target taxes.

The assembly of propaganda pieces[1][2][3][4][5] and other blends of disinformation are designed to sway the reader with some guarantee of money, justice or, more appropriately: the notion that justice will claw-back some of the ill-gotten money or hides of evil doers and capitalists.  Victims must be identified, praised and the wrongdoers punished, at best, with higher taxes or more legislation.

Today, for our amusement, our esteemed non-economist from the New York Times, who is known affectionately as Dr. Paul Krugman of the Walter Duranty Papers,[6] squeezes off another propagandistic offalette[7] sanctioning the enduring confiscation of more private loot by suggesting that we truncate remuneration  in the investment banks, or what is left of them, on Wall Street.

To wit:

“Americans are angry at Wall Street, and rightly so. First the financial industry plunged us into economic crisis, then it was bailed out at taxpayer expense. And now, with the economy still deeply depressed, the industry is paying itself gigantic bonuses. If you aren’t outraged, you haven’t been paying attention.”[8]-- Rewarding Bad Actors By Paul Krugman Op-Ed Columnist Published: August 2, 2009 [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

Could we recall that Franklin Raines too away gigantic bonuses after cooking the books at Fannie Mae and was not condemned for this by the NTY or investigated, rewarded with some unknown function in the Obama election committee and received only praise from Maxine Waters?

Krugman appears to be blissfully unaware that the CRA [the phony Community Communist Reinvestment Act][9][10]  forced banks to lend out money at a loss and that this contributed to the collapse of the credit markets. The phony mortgages were bundled and sold as ‘investments.’ Fanny Mae was the toilet where bad loans could be flushed and Franklin Raines[11] made a cool $90,000,000 dollars off this scam. Oh, he is black and works for Obama? Oh, yes. Is Raines a fat cat under your definition Paul? This was all a vision of Greenlining.^[12]

Maxine at her very best:

“Maxine Waters: "We do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac and particularly Fannie Mae under the outstanding leadership of Frank Raines."—[comment  by Waters during a hearing in 2004 ] http://blog.beliefnet.com/reformedchicksblabbing/2008/09/maxine-waters-we-do-not-have-a.html Monday September 29, 2008 [Note the video showing Maxine was removed under threat of legal action.] Too bad the media has to be so crass as to filter out stuff like this.

Maxine at her second best:

“This liberal will be all about socializing….ah ah ….ah …taking over…….government running all of your companies…. ah … ah. .. ”[13][14]—Maxine Waters on stage in a video.[15]

We wonder how Krugman might sanction this criminal action and justify the huge bonus for Raines?

Two pointless Krugmaniacal anecdotists follow on the issue of “profits from high-frequency trading” and “speculates on oil and other commodities.”

“yadda yadda yadda”-- Rewarding Bad Actors By Paul Krugman

Could we wonder where we could have lost Krugman’s reference to George Soros here and comments in his currency speculations?? Did he try to sink the British pound? Oh! His actions do not belong in this article about greed and high profits and speculation! I understand.

Oh! This must be it:

“Just to be clear: financial speculation can serve a useful purpose. It’s good, for example, that futures markets provide an incentive to stockpile heating oil before the weather gets cold and stockpile gasoline ahead of the summer driving season.”-- Rewarding Bad Actors By Paul Krugman

And what can we predict Krugman will advise as a ‘solution’ to these ills?

“What should be done? Last week the House passed a bill setting rules for pay packages at a wide range of financial institutions. That would be a step in the right direction. But it really should be accompanied by much broader regulation of financial practices — and, I would argue, by higher tax rates on supersized incomes.”-- Rewarding Bad Actors By Paul Krugman

Does this theme bypass Warren Buffett and George Soros?? I think it does. These are ‘friends of the left’ thus immune to abuse or condemnation or targeted taxes.

“Neither the administration, nor our political system in general, is ready to face up to the fact that we’ve become a society in which the big bucks go to bad actors, a society that lavishly rewards those who make us poorer.”-- Rewarding Bad Actors By Paul Krugman

This last sentence references a routine propagandistic turn-of-the-crank message alluding to the zero-sum theory where those whose assets are above the median must have gotten them unfairly. How many starve in Africa because Oprah or Michael Jackson or Barbara Streisand or made 100-+250 million per year or so?? How many starved in America when Joe Kennedy ran booze during the depression and made millions while escaping taxes and justice?

Krugman fails to mention that many traders in the speculative world have low salaries or work on a contract basis and will get little or nothing if they don’t perform and deliver high profits. Strangely, the NFL and NBA, hookers on 8^th Avenue, fisherman and most lawyers operate in a similar manner.  The illogic of selecting certain careers and blandishing them with selected social abuse labels fails to demonstrate to us a level playing field and undermines the notion of a progressive tax for all.

The underlying message here is that the ‘enemies of liberalism’ require a punitive tax and that ‘friends of liberalism’ may continue making millions in the meanwhile.

rycK

Comments: ryckki@gmail.com

Deleted by the New York Times 8.04.9

This comment on Herbert was submitted and was summarily ‘moderated’ by the New York Times

On Herbert and his columns:

Justifiable Anger and Racist Police Actions Duly Explained by the NYT http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2009/08/01/justifiable_anger_and_racist_police_actions_duly_explained_by_the_nyt.thtml

The ideological racism machines grinds on at the NYT where the purity and innocence of Afro-Americans, not to mention their manifold social problems, such as crime, are bathed in vast pools of excuses. Whites are guilty again. Even in cities where whites have had little control of anything, like New Orleans, we must always seek new excuses for the exercise of reverse racism and blame whites for the failure of leftist government.

 Murder in the Cities: The Triumph of Liberalism. http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2008/04/12/murder_in_the_cities_the_triumph_of_liberalism.thtml

Herbert turns an old rusty crank that has produced nothing but more sloth, sodomy, street crime, drug addiction and racial hatred and will continue to do so in the best disinformation traditions of Walter Duranty and other NYT icons. If Gates had been civil instead of launching off in rage the matter would have ended there. Gates is just what we expect from an AA graduate: too noisy, lacking any identifiable intellectual credentials, undignified and prone to howl before thinking. This is now a mere propaganda exercise for the NYT. The Party of Democrats cannot survive without 90% black votes and it is the solemn duty of the NYT to keep the race pots boiling as Mayor LaGuardia mentioned decades ago.

 Herbert and Rich fan the fires as often as they can.

This is good city politics.

Checked by         http://admin.communi...comments&lf=new&pp=9

170.149.100.# (The New York Times)

rycK

O’Bozo is a Liar as Well as a Bigot and Ideological Racist

I have several things listed below this:

And, now we have proof from his own twisted mouth:

UNCOVERED VIDEO: OBAMA EXPLAINS HOW HIS HEALTH CARE PLAN WILL ‘ELIMINATE’ PRIVATE INSURANCE

http://www.breitbart.tv/uncovered-video-obama-explains-how-his-health-care-plan-will-eliminate-private-insurance/

From my previous comments:

“An analysis of what Obama was and what he is now is becoming disturbing. His background, what we can learn of it, is that of a dexterously crafted caricature of an elitist that was groomed to be a reflection of some plastic political reflection of ‘change.’ He was indoctrinated into fashionable Neo-Marxism by some of the best fellow travelers and was taught how to be an ideological racist while avoiding the obvious appearance of a race baiter like Al Sharpton or Louis Farrakhan. He was mesmerized by Jeremiah Wright for 20 years. He is slick in that instance.  What he turns out to be, so far, is a bungling stooge whose control of his party and his mouth is metamorphosing into a sad joke.  We can seriously now question his ability to lead anything given what he has shown us and who he selected for his staff. “[1]

So, we have a sophist and an ideological racist who was politically  fine-tuned by Jeremiah Wright and launches into the xenophobic clouds on matters of race[2] e.g.-- howled that the police acted ‘stupidly’ without any evidence or accurate information in the Gates Crisis--has wild support from Africa, the welfare rights crowd, certain terrorist groups like the Black Panthers, the prison guests, the unions, most of the Middle East and Europe  and who, we observe,  has no experience other than 160 days as a ‘senator’ and has his little finger on some 50 trillion dollars in assets and wants to ‘spread it around. ‘[3]

I call for his impeachment for blatant lies to the public

rycK

Comments to: ryckki@gmail.com

There is No Tax Bottom to George Stephanopoulos’ ‘Bottom Line’ Other than his Bottom

Abstract: We are hopelessly in debt and our government can do no more than raise taxes and print money. The amount of debt we owe as average citizens is way beyond our ability to repay. Our government lies to us about this and is monetizing the debt [printing money to pay interest and principal on our current debt] and will now tax everything they can. Inflation will roar and our economy will collapse and our government CANNOT find a single place to make spending cuts. Not a solitary place. The end is in sight. Inflation will wipe out our savings and wipe out 25% of all jobs in the US while illegal aliens get free healthcare.

Appeasement is best acted out in political matters such as mimicking the part of the drooling peasant cautiously approaching the king’s carriage and who said in some movie: ”Pardon me , governor, for fouling the air you breath, sire..[or words to that effect]” while twisting his hat with his unwashed fingers in reverence and advanced obsequiousness in the presence of his superiors.

Little “Steffi”[1]  has learned his lesson since making a comment, for money, in his book about his prior benefactor Bill Clinton: “…a complicated man responding to the pressures and pleasures of public life in ways I found both awesome and appalling."^[2] Steffi is now in the nonreporting business and spends much time filtering out the firm information during interviews with leftist politicians and their familiars.

An example of wasting bandwidth in the ether for no gain comes from a recent interview with our elfin tax cheat Little Timmy Geithner:[3]

Steffi axes:

“To get the economy back on track, will President Barack Obama have to break his pledge not to raise taxes on 95 percent of Americans? In a “This Week” exclusive, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told me, "We’re going to have to do what’s necessary.””[4]-- Geithner Won’t Rule Out New Taxes for Middle Class By George Stephanopoulos August 02, 2009 8:02 AM George's Bottom Line Reporting and analysis from ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent and "This Week" Host George Stephanopoulos [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

I thought that Bill Clinton ran on a ‘middle class tax break’ in his first round. Gee, what happened to that?[5]

Well, let’s probe this bottom and find out if there is any substance emerging anywhere:

“We will not get this economy back on track, recovery will be not strong and sustained, unless we convince the American people that we are going to have the will to bring these deficits down once recovery is firmly established,” he said.”-- George Stephanopoulos August 02, 2009

Gee, how about some spending cuts??

Note: the words ‘spending’ and ‘cut’ do not appear anywhere in this ’interview’ but do appear in the detailed transcript.[6]

"We do not plan to ask for more money and I think it’s quite unlikely that we do," Geithner said in his most blunt language to date on TARP funding. The secretary said that today the TARP has roughly $130 billion, in part due to more than $70 billion that has already come back into the government.”-- George Stephanopoulos August 02, 2009

Did Steffi bother to axe Timmy if the TARP monies paid back would be recycled as more spending? No.

From the transcript:

“STEPHANOPOULOS: Have you created a bottom?

GEITHNER: But I think we have a ways to go,. I want to emphasize the basic reality still that unemployment is very high in this country. We need to make Americans more confident about their future.”-- George Stephanopoulos August 02, 2009

“GEITHNER: George it is absolutely right and very important for everyone to understand we will not get this economy back on track, recovery will not be strong enough to sustain unless we can convince the American people that we're going to have the will to bring these deficits down once recovery is firmly established. Remember we inherited a 1 point three trillion dollar deficit. The cumulative consequences of the policies this country pursued over the last 8 years left us with 6 million [billion or trillion?? ed]dollars of more debt than we would have had by making a bunch of commitments to cut taxes and add to spending without paying for those. We are not going to be able to afford to do that. And it is very important that people understand that. Our first priority now though is to get this economy back on track, make sure this financial system is repaired. Without that, we're not going to get our deficits under control and the necessary path to fiscal responsibility, the necessary path to getting this country living within our means again is not just health care reform, to bring down those costs, but we're going to a range of other things and that's going to be a very difficult challenge for this country. We can do this, it just requires the will to act.

A pause to reflect on the past:

This debt thing is hooey. Consulting these CBO tables[7] in this link and taking into account that Nancy Pelosi controlled spending in the last two years of the Bush era, for about 600 bln dollars [$615.5 bln], we find a total of $2.7 trillion dollars attributed to George Bush according to CBO. [8]

The Obama deficit will soar beyond $2.87 bln as it now stands.

Continuing on here:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Including new revenues?

GEITHNER: Well, we're going to have to look at – we're going to have to do what's necessary. Remember the critical thing is people understand that when we have recovery established, led by the private sector, then we have to bring these deficits down very dramatically. We have to bring them down to a level where the amount we're borrowing from the world is stable at a reasonable level. And that's going to require some very hard choices. And we're going to have to do that in a way that does not add unfairly to the burdens that the average American already faces.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But that's the dilemma, isn't it?

GEITHNER: That is the dilemma.”-- George Stephanopoulos August 02`, 2009

This is politico babble at its finest. The Little One squirrels around in the butts for the nuts but cannot seem to get the notion of tax increases out in the open. There is no dilemma here—they want tax hikes and cannot mention the T Word in public.

What happened here is that Bush and the Dems, together, spent us into debt so deep that we now cannot crawl out. If we raise a mere trillion dollars in taxes to take away just about ½ of the projected 2009 Obama deficit of $1.5 trillion [it will certainly be bigger] we would bust the economy. There is no fix here.

The average citizen does not realize that ONLY taxpayers pay back the interest and principal on the debts and that ½ of them do not pay much in federal taxes. That leaves about only 60 million taxpayers to pay back $16,000 per trillion owed on average. [9]

How would you like to pay for this when we add in the current national debt of 12 trillion?? Let us see, that is 12+$2.87 bln so that rings out at just under $15 trillion dollars. That is a mere 15 x 16,000 or $240,000 per taxpayer who pays federal taxes plus interest. Gee, in 10 years you would only pay off the debt, not counting interest at $2,000 per month! How does that sound? In Oregon, the tax maggotry arena of the US for the moment [until New York goes completely down like California] we have a 57% tax bracket that includes state, federal and other taxes. [10] In Oregon, the average earnings for a family of four is $61,945.[11] [or $5,162 a month] so a 57% tax rate brings this down to something like [ignoring deductions for a moment] to $26,636.35 [or $2,219.70  per month] in disposal income but we can allow for some deductions to make things fair, but now what do we do about the additional $24,000 to pay off the debt in 10 years. Ooops.

Why not try to pay off the debt in, say, 100 years and get the payments down to $240 per month with interest. Let’s ask the Chinese about this. With interest this might be $1000 per month.

Oh, but did we figger in Social Security and Medicare costs and debt? Oh, we forgot. Let us see—the combined debt is only 54 trillion but most workers will pay for that so the tab is only about $8,000 per trillion per taxpayer or, gee, 8 x 54 or $432,000 for each worker.  If we do the 10 year trick above [and this is a big trick] we get about $43,000 per year ignoring interest [why make this too painful?] and that works out to about $3,500 more per month.

Well, that does not work out too well. It seems we need to push this debt past 10 years so can escape a tax rate of more than 100%. But, long term loans have a lot of interest to pay.

So, for a Oregon family of 4 making $5,162 a month we can take $432,000 for SS and Medicaid and $240,000 for the national debt, adding up to $662,000 and push that out 100 years for only $6,620  per year or about $500 per month not including interest, which would be about $2,000 per month on a 100 year loan. That gets our family down to $5,162 a month - $2500 –for the 57% tax bracket of $2,219.70   or $5,162 minus $2,500 and also minus 2,219.70 for a grand total of $442.30 per month to live on. That is an effective tax rate of only 91%.

They don’t like 100 year loans but they do give 50 year calculations on the internet. [12]

For a 50 year loan at only 3% [a bargain!!] for $662,000 has only 600 payments of $2,131.49 for a total of $1,278,894.62 and will be cleared in July 2059. That helps a lot because it gives the home owner $2219-$2139 for 80$ per month.  That breaks the $500 per month limit by $12!!

But at 10% inflation:

Your payment is now $5,554.88 per month before Oregon state and federal taxes. That leaves you short -$392.88. You could sell your car or cut lawns.

But, we would have to have a balanced budget to keep the tax rate going over 100% would we not??

Let us hear from the Sage of Omaha and China  on this from a previous blog[13]:

Here is what the Chinese say:

“Mr Luo, whose English tends toward the colloquial, added: “We hate you guys. Once you start issuing $1 trillion-$2 trillion [$1,000bn-$2,000bn] . . .we know the dollar is going to depreciate, so we hate you guys but there is nothing much we can do.””[14]—wild rant by Luo Ping, a director-general at the China Banking Regulatory Commission [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

I thought the haters were only on the capitalist right wing—not in the Marxist camp that provides the vision for left-liberalism.  Here is a salient bit from the Brits:

“It is unclear why US bond yields have spiked so violently, with spill-over effects on gilts and bunds. One camp of investors is worried that inflation is rearing its ugly head again: others fear a sovereign debt crisis as over-extended states loses their AAA ratings."[15]-- Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

And from the Sage of Omaha:

 “A country that continuously expands its debt as a percentage of GDP and raises much of the money abroad to finance that, at some point, it’s going to inflate its way out of the burden of that debt,” Buffett said….

“Every country that has denominated its debt in its own currency and has found itself with uncomfortable amounts of debt relative to the rest of the world, in the end they inflate,” Buffett explains. That becomes a tax on everybody that has fixed dollar investments.”[16]--Buffett Sees Massive Inflation to Handle Staggering Debt. Monday, May 4, 2009 By Dan Weil [Emphasis is mine in all quotes]

Gee, isn’t this swell. But, we can take the Obama Solution and raise our taxes and tax our way out of debt and into prosperity.

And this morning:

“WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama's treasury secretary said Sunday he cannot rule out higher taxes to help tame an exploding budget deficit, and his chief economic adviser would not dismiss raising them on middle-class Americans as part of a health care overhaul.”-- 2 Obama administration officials can't guarantee middle-class Americans won't see tax hike By Philip Elliott, Associated Press Writer On Sunday August 2, 2009, 9:24 pm ED[Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

“Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and National Economic Council Director Larry Summers both sidestepped questions on Obama's intentions about taxes. Geithner said the White House was not ready to rule out a tax hike to lower the federal deficit; Summers said Obama's proposed health care overhaul needs funding from somewhere.”-- By Philip Elliott

So, in the midst of a depression they are going to raise taxes!! Gee, that will be great.  Won’t that help the economy?? Sure!! Let’s spend our way out of debt! Wheeeee!

The End is in Sight. The economy is collapsing. Look into the latrines for the bottom they mention.

rycK

Comments: ryckki@gmail.com