Financial topics

[Reality Check]

.. I thought gamblers should be allowed to write off their losses as well. Why not? Under a logical system, those losses would still be taxed as income for the casino

But just think about the implications.

If gamblers could write off their loses, they would report them to the IRS.

It the IRS knew how much all the gamblers lost at a Casino, they would also know how much the Casino made in Gross Profit.

Think about all that skim that would suddenly be exposed.

All that untaxed, free money, the Casino owners make can buy a lot of votes in Congress.

[Reality Check]

STAGE 4. The Grab for Power
...
Stage 5 is next… and it is not pretty.

Always a beacon of hope and optimism.

Problem is, the vast majority of everything I study in depth supports your brand of optimism.

[Reality Check]

Reading on the fiscal cliff talks, there is much alarm that "raising rates on income over 300K will reduce job creation".

Raising rates on those over 200/250 K is merely a smoke screen.

There is no real money there.

The real money is in taxing the working poor, taxing the lower middle class, and taxing that portion of the upper middle class making less than 200K single, and 250K married.

That is where the vast majority of the Bush tax cuts went.

But even if the entire Bush tax cut is allowed to expire, it is still just a distraction, to cover up the main event.

Even the liberal economists preach running a surplus during expansions and a deficit during recessions.

Instead we have been running record deficits every year since the very weak recovery started.

1,200 Billion a year in federal government deficit spending.

Cut back substantially on federal government spending, economy slips back into recession and the deficit get's bigger.

Fail to cut spending substantially, and Greece here we come.

Screwed if we do, Screwed if we do not. Blame Bush or Blame Clinton or Blame Obama. No matter who you blame... we are all screwed.

[Trevor]

I have a "more senior" friend that worked for many, many years on Wall Street and seems to have a very good handle on economic trends, etc. Any way, he is always saying, "sure, raise the top rate back up to 90% like it once was, but then also give the speculators the deductions they received back then". His point is that people like to point to the top rates of the 50's, but they never talk about how those making enough to pay those rates also were able to write off all their speculative losses in a single swoop.

You also had more deductions then, and everyone paid taxes, even the poor. We've got a spending problem and an inability and an unwillingness to do anything about it. Too much has been promised and given, and we're not capable of sustaining it, even if we didn't have a quadrillion dollar bubble at the moment.

[Trevor]

Raising rates on those over 200/250 K is merely a smoke screen.

There is no real money there.

The real money is in taxing the working poor, taxing the lower middle class, and taxing that portion of the upper middle class making less than 200K single, and 250K married.

That is where the vast majority of the Bush tax cuts went.

But even if the entire Bush tax cut is allowed to expire, it is still just a distraction, to cover up the main event.

Even the liberal economists preach running a surplus during expansions and a deficit during recessions.

Instead we have been running record deficits every year since the very weak recovery started.

1,200 Billion a year in federal government deficit spending.

Cut back substantially on federal government spending, economy slips back into recession and the deficit get's bigger.

Fail to cut spending substantially, and Greece here we come.

Screwed if we do, Screwed if we do not. Blame Bush or Blame Clinton or Blame Obama. No matter who you blame... we are all screwed.

The very, very rich can always find ways around regulations, around taxes, etc. I'm talking about the .1 percent here, the individuals that actually do make a million dollars a year or more. They can afford taxes, or find ways around them.

It's only the semi-wealthy who are really going to be hit hard. Regulations are taxes are going to hold them back, reducing competition for the people at the very top. I know what it's supposed to do in theory, but practice is another matter entirely.

As for the Clinton tax rates, a few points. One: taxes were higher for everyone, not just the rich. Two: we were in the middle of the dot-com bubble. Three: as a percent of GDP, spending was around 18 percent of GDP. Today it's nearly 25, so it wouldn't help today, especially since the money would go towards buying votes, not the debt.

[aedens]

http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/story/20264 ... support-us

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... 6Iozyg-xs4

Similar decisions are being made all over the country right now. That's the real cliff and we already went over it.
Call it economic history or providence. Choose https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSYMqfnARXk

The difference between capital gains and income is nil in any real sense. We can unfold this later O.

[aedens]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-12-0 ... rgin-calls

H, I think we have already covered this topic. Fascinating metrics as this unwind may fashion.

http://movieclips.com/eyji-forrest-gump ... rrest-run/ DeMint resigns

There are two types of skew, time skew and strike skew. Time skew is a measure of the disparity of option volatility for option contracts with the same price but different expirations. Strike skew is the measure of the disparity of option volatility for option contracts with different strikes but the same expiration.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQf9JGxX-Xc Brevior saltare cum deformibus mulieribus est vita - The GOP is dying as it eyes sink into its deseased
morally decrepit head and the democrats are to be found in history just as we see them as today.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ ... aninstitu/ Run

Then revolution is indeed ripe; then, indeed, if we have correctly gauged all the conditions indicated and briefly outlined above, and if we have chosen the moment rightly, our victory is assured. (“Left-Wing” Communism, An Infantile Disorder, pp. 98-99)
We noted this to Walker (1912) on the mental contruct they pocess in terms that are fact.
In 1526 Kopernicus wrote a study on the value of money, Monetae cudendae ratio. In it he formulated an early iteration of the theory, now called "Gresham's Law," that "bad" (debased) coinage drives "good" (un-debased) coinage out of circulation, 70 years before Gresham. He also formulated a version of quantity theory of money. His work was suppresed as was Sismondi and a few others we have noted. I can reference many works on Keynesian economics based economics back to 980. Walker (1912) cites the political reality in this context even up to Luther's comments on repressionary design of state affairs.
We noted no loose nails allowed as forumed and it is here.

[Higgenbotham]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-12-0 ... rgin-calls

H, I think we have already covered this topic.

We took a look 6 months before last year's debacle. In my view it seems comparable to mutual fund cash levels. Both can flash warnings for months, but I think the mutual fund cash levels are saying there can be immediate danger this time. Things are very far out of line.

Also checked back in to say I'm back to 75% short. We can infer that the employment is lagging and still positive, and a positive report in the morning may spike it on some hope. I may increase to 100% or higher after the report. The thing I notice about employment is the market is fixated on numbers of jobs but not quality of jobs. Employment may be positive in terms of numbers but if it were still positive in terms of quality the rest of the economy would probably look better. Right now we are resting just under the May 1 intraday high level in the SPX. There are some good indications that a topping formation is nearly complete in the SPX if the chart stays comparable to 2007 and 2011.

[aedens]

Yep, I will convey 80:20 model today.

[aedens]

In October there were 8.3 million “involuntary” part-time workers, whose hours vary anywhere from one to 34 hours a week, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This figure has risen by nearly one-third of a million over the past couple of months to avoid providing madated health care.