The coming Storm

Theodore Roosevelt and Ross Perot both accomplished something that we must look upon with regret.

Teddy’s run for president against Taft and Wilson brought us the First or worst progressive, W. Wilson.

H.R. Perot drew about 13% and elected B. (Womanizer) Clinton. Of course the No New Taxes Pledge failure probably helped.

Over the next 20 months we must choose carefully and possibly need to vote for the lesser of two evils.

Please keep this in mind if the Power Brokers fail again to hear our voices. The choice we need to make might be a sour taste. Our best option, over the coming days, is to speak out with letters, bumper stickers and dollars. Of course we will need to get our neighbors to vote in the primaries. Criticize the news media if they don’t get our message.

If George Carlin didn't say this he should have.

Marketplace Fairness Act: Back Door To New TaxShare

House Speaker John Boehner blocked passage of the Marketplace Fairness Act (MFA) in the lame-duck congressional session. So consumers were able to shop online this holiday season without fear of new taxes on out-of-state purchases.
But after Jan. 1, consumers and investors need to watch their wallets.
The MFA would allow states and localities to require "remote sellers" to collect taxes on sales to their residents. It passed the Senate last year but not the House. Supporters pushed for passage during the lame-duck session, and with that failure promised to be back in full force in the next Congress.
Advocates for the bill, a powerful coalition of large retailers and state and local politicians of both parties, claim that online businesses enjoy an unfair advantage over their brick-and-mortar competitors because they don't have to collect taxes from out-of-state residents.
But as opponents point out, the MFA would impose taxation on businesses that have no physical presence in the taxing state.
That's bad enough. But the damage likely doesn't end there. In its current form, the bill is silent on the particular products and services of "sellers" and "sales" that it covers.
Thus, it could open the door for state and local governments to tax all sorts of service industries, including legal services, tax preparation and financial transactions.
But don't take it from me. Those likely affected by the legislation strongly oppose it. The Financial Services Roundtable and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) have expressed concern.
"The bill could lead to unexpected costs being passed on to consumers of financial services, including sales taxes on services or state-level stock-transaction taxes," SIFMA says in a statement.
American Society of Pension Professionals and Actuaries Executive Director Brian Graff notes, "The legislation would allow states to impose a financial-transaction tax that would apply to American workers' 401(k) contributions and other transactions within workers' accounts."
MFA proponents have done little to address these concerns. One of the bill's co-sponsors, Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., says that the financial industry has nothing to worry about because "no state imposes a sales tax on financial transactions." However, states have done so in the past, and the legislation would give them incentive to do so again because doing so would stifle tax competition with other jurisdictions.
For an idea of what a state-level financial transaction tax would do, the state of New York is instructive. From 1905 to 1981, the state imposed a transfer tax on securities transactions. After a 50% increase was proposed in the 1960s, the president of the New York Stock Exchange threatened to build a second trading floor in Trenton, N.J., to bypass the New York tax.
New York settled on a 25% increase instead, but even that caused many investors and financial firms to flee.
"New York securities markets have experienced increasing competitive problems in recent years from regional stock exchanges located in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and Boston," noted a 1968 NYSE analysis. "From 1965 through 1967, the volume of trading on the regional exchanges increased by 73.2%."
The competition prompted New York to phase out the tax, starting in the 1970s. The state still collects a nominal tax, but since 1981 the proceeds have simply been returned to traders. Since the November elections, however, some progressives have called for the tax's reinstatement. "New York could serve as a pilot program for an eventual national tax," write Lenore Palladino and Sean McElwee in Vox.
A national tax, of course, would allow for no escape. Yet the MFA would also bolt the exit doors pretty tight.
If New York were to re-impose a stock-transfer tax and the MFA were in effect, the state could blunt the impact of the New York Stock Exchange leaving by classifying it as a "remote seller" and taxing any transaction involving a New York business or resident.
The possibilities for revenue-hungry state governments and populist politicians would be mind-boggling. For example, New York and other states could also tax "remote sales" made from the Better Alternative Trading System exchange (better known as BATS) in Lenexa, Kan., which now accounts for more than 10% of equity trading in the U.S.
Middle-class savers would lose out as hidden taxes chip away at their 401(k)s, mutual funds and brokerage accounts. So would U.S. competitiveness, as international investors would be forced to contend with an unpredictable tax regime of varying tax rates on financial transactions from several different states.
The MFA is bad policy and bad politics. As the recently passed election season shows, imposing a financial transaction tax is certainly not among voters' priorities. Congress should honor their wishes and not seek to impose one during the next congressional session.
• Berlau is senior fellow for finance and access to capital at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.

Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-perspective/122614-732239-marketplace-fairness-act-sets-up-financial-transaction-tax.htm#ixzz3N7PB8I00
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Kaboom?

Editorial of The New York Sun 
December 23, 2014 

“Kaboom! Dow 18K” is the headline atop the Drudge Report. It links to a story on the Bloomberg wire reporting that the Dow Jones Industrial Average “rallied past 18,000 for the first time, after data showed the world’s largest economy grew at the fastest pace since 2003 last quarter.” By 4 p.m. the Dow had gained 64.73 points and hit 18,024, while Standard and Poor’s 500 Index hit a record 2,082.17 and the American economy was expanding at an annualized 5% in the third quarter as, the Bloomberg noted, “consumers and businesses spent more than was previously estimated.” What the story failed to note is that the value of the Dow — that is, its worth in ounces of gold — is nowhere near a record. 

This can be glimpsed in the charts that are kept by pricedingold.com. The chart illuminates that even with the kurrent kaboom, the current value of the Dow, at just under 350 ounces of gold, is below where it was at the start of the Obama administration, when it was near 450 ounces, and way down from its record of 1,400 ounces part way through 1999. 

The value of the Dow has certainly been trending upward in recent months, the chart of pricededgold.com suggests. It ducked under 200 ounces of gold at one point during the Great Recession. It is, however, nowhere near a record. We note this not in the spirit of parceling out stock market tips (the only suggestion we’ve ever made to investors is “never take financial advice from a newspaperman”). 

Rather we are interested in the principles of political economy — in the regulation of the value of the dollar by Congress in the spirit in which the Founders intended. The Congress was granted the power to coin money and regulate the value thereof (and of foreign coin), we like to point out, in the same sentence of the Constitution in which it was granted the power to fix the standard of weights and measures. 

 The current trends remind us of the time — we’ve often remarked on it — when our Julie Satow reported on the latest report by the real estate industry of the soaring price of Manhattan apartments. She focused on a report that within the past six years the average price of a Manhattan apartment has soared to what was then a staggering $1.4 million. Her lead was that the average value of apartments in the same period had actually been plunging, as much as 29%, to what was then 1,727 ounces of gold. How the protests over that story rolled in, though they stopped abruptly sometime in September 2008 and we haven’t heard them since. 

Whether we will have in respect of the Dow the kind of reversal we saw in the real estate markets, it’s not our place to say. But we do think the question would not be so mysterious were our monetary system based on the constitutional dollar, a dollar defined as a legislated amount of specie. These were dollars as the word dollars was used in the Constitution itself.

If we had such dollars today, then headlines such as the one at the top of the Drudge Report this afternoon would be speaking in a universal language, one requiring less deciphering by mandarins of our hedge funds and economics departments. Then the 18,000 Dow would really mean something.

The Magic Bank Account

The author is not known.  

It was found in the wallet of Coach Paul Bryant, after he died, in 1982 

___________

The Magic Bank Account

Imagine that you had won the following *PRIZE* in a contest: 
Each morning your bank would deposit $86,400 in your private account for your use.  

However, this prize has rules:

1. Everything that you didn't spend during each day would be taken away from you.

2. You may not simply transfer money into some other account.

3. You may only spend it.

 4. Each morning upon awakening, 

the bank opens your account with another $86,400 for that day.

 5. The bank can end the game without warning; at any time it can say,

“Game Over!". It can close the account and you will not receive a new one. 

What would you personally do? 

You would buy anything and everything you wanted right? 
Not only for yourself, but for all the people you love and care for. 
Even for people you don't know, 

because you couldn't possibly spend it all on yourself, right?  

You would try to spend every penny, and use it all, 

because you knew it would be replenished in the morning, right? 

ACTUALLY, This GAME is REAL ...

Shocked ??? YES!

Each of us is already a winner of this *PRIZE*. We just can't seem to see it.

The PRIZE is *TIME*

1. Each morning we awaken to receive 86,400 seconds

as a gift of life.

2. And when we go to sleep at night, any remaining time is Not credited to us. 

3. What we haven't used up that day is forever lost.

4. Yesterday is forever gone.

5. Each morning the account is refilled, but the bank 

can dissolve your account at any time WITHOUT WARNING... 

SO, what will YOU do with your 86,400 seconds?

Those seconds are worth so much more than the same amount in dollars.  

Think about it and remember to enjoy every second of your life, 

because time races by so much quicker than you think.  

So take care of yourself, be happy, love deeply and enjoy life! 

Here's wishing you a wonderful and beautiful day. Start “spending”....

"DON’T COMPLAIN ABOUT GROWING OLD…!"

SOME PEOPLE DON'T GET THE PRIVILEGE!

What is the truth?

The economy has recovered.

That is what we have been told. Look around and see how many jobs have been created, or have they. In November 2014 there was a 312,000 increase in employment.

But look closely at our Bureau of Labor Statistics. The participation rate, the percentage of the labor force that is working, remained at 62.8%. That means thirty-seven (37%) are not employed. There are one hundred forty-seven million (147,289,000) people working. There are nine million (9,110,000) people not working. 

Take heart, India Japan, and Turkey have lower participation rates.

The accuracy of these statistics is only as good as what are government is telling us. Merry Christmas.