Glenn Greenwald explains the healthcare debate. It's what Obama wanted. Makes a lot of sense to me.

Kevin Drum nails the income inequality argument over at Mother Jones. This is the best bit:

Ask an economist what's responsible for increased productivity, and the most likely answer you'll get is: new technology. So if we really wanted to reward the people who are responsible for productivity growth, we'd shower riches on engineers and scientists. But we don't. We shower riches on the CEOs who buy their products and make use of them.

But buying a new inventory control system is hardly a sign of managerial brilliance. It's just something that every company eventually does once a better one is invented, and the CEO who signs the purchase order to buy it is no more responsible for productivity growth than the workers who use it. They're both piggybacking off of someone else's invention, and there's no special reason why either one should be thought more deserving of sharing in the rewards. They both should.

Politics as usual = a busy, busy day

Our Congress is disgusting. Very few people in either the House or Senate deserve our respect or support. I must admit that both Senators from Washington state have been doing ok, but any Republican Senator currently serving is disgraceful.

Republicans don't care about your health, just winning.

Joe Lieberman is a hypocrite of the highest order.

Republicans won't take responsibility for their fiscal follies.

Obama is all show when it comes to dealing with bankers. Today Obama met with the 6 heads of the big banks and scolded them and urged them to do more, including more lending. So that results in a statement from the banks that makes Obama look stupid: "He can say what he wants, but we're not going to go back to the kind of lending that put us in this mess." Brilliant.

A conservative magazine wants to reenact post-depression regulations in a modern light. Marvelous idea!

The fellers over at Minyanville are seeing double-dip recession possibilities.

New Majority examines how the Republicans can't support the status quo on health care. Good read.

Andrew Ross Sorkin in tomorrow's NYT confirming that Wall St. owns Washington.

Bonus:

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

VAT

Today in the NYT, Catherine Rampell discusses how it works. Then she says that it will never happen because both sides of the isle have promised no new taxes. It's a great read but her conclusion about it never happening is frustrating. Taxes have been treated as a hot potato. Nobody likes hearing about tax increases, but lots of people like hearing about entitlement increases. For a country that spent the last 30 years aquiring stuff on credit, this disconnect about where the money for entitlements comes from isn't surprising. Both the American people and the government have been spending and spending and not worrying about where the money comes from (except when it's politically damaging to the other party) and this is going to come to a head at some point in the future when the baby boomers cash in on social security and medicare. Baby Boomers day of reckoning is coming, and it won't be pretty for any of us.

Matt Tiabbi's latest from Rolling Stone is now online: Obama's Big Sellout

Mother Jones has a great follow-up to Tiabbi's piece.

Bonuses, Taxes, and Goldman Sachs

So Goldman Sachs is giving bonuses in the form of stock. Seems like they were just caving to the populist outcry against Wall Street bonuses. Then yesterday in the WSJ the British made the case for doing a one time 50% bonus tax on bank bonuses. Today France is joining the tax bandwagon. So now it seems to me like Goldman is hedging against a possible tax on bonuses by hiding the bonuses in the stock awards. We'll see.

Job and taxes and Medicare

People all over the place are going after Obama on the jobs front:

Dan Gerstein at Forbes.com

Bruce Bartlett

Michael Maiello at Forbes.com


Economix.com looks at how much taxes we pay and surprise! Rich people pay more than super rich people.

David Frum sums up how the Washington Republican's strategy of 'no no no' to Democrats is hurting the party. The article is good but the comments section of the article is even better. I disagree with most of the comments, but it just shows how broken Republicans are.

Since the Senate has a tentative deal on health care reform that kills the public option in favor of letting people age 55-64 buy into Medicare, there is debate as to whether this is good or bad. As noted above, Mr. Frum thinks this is a bad deal, since Medicare is unsustainable. Ezra Klein thinks the deal is a good thing. My take: I think the deal is a good thing, too. Letting folks buy into medicare will force more hospitals to take Medicare, which they don't like because they don't make as much money. But if you think that making lots of money in healthcare is a bad thing as I do, then this is good. I also think that taxes will increase sometime so that we can pay for our entitlements. This increase should make forming commissions to actually do cost reduction (which this is not) in Medicare more politically feasible as people will want to make sure their taxes are being spent wisely. These commissions should lower the costs of Medicare by cutting out the waste and going after all the fraud that is in Medicare. There is a lot of fat in our government that should be cut out. The neat thing about the Medicare buy in is that it could turn into a sneak single-payer ideal. The more people in Medicare, the more single payer will gain traction as a good idea. David Vitter is arguing for single payer right now on the floor of the Senate, using the facts that single payer will reduce costs.

Supply siders won't die! They are still peddling their 'what ifs' as economic facts. At least the people who left comments on this farce have common sense and call out the author for his delusion.

Taxes and wages

Paul Krugman and David Frum disagree on how to go about current climate change legislation. Paul Krugman takes a realistic view that while a carbon tax would be much more effective, it's politically impossible so going with cap and trade is the better option since it has a good chance to pass. David Frum agrees that the carbon tax is better, but he thinks that cap and trade is a boondoggle and not worth the time. What's funny about Mr. Frum's article is the comments. People have gone nuts over the carbon tax. I tend to think that most of the comments on Mr. Frum's article are from folks who would consider themselves conservative, which probably means they are hawkish on deficits. But their railing against taxes rings hollow. If you have credit card debt, you don't pay it off sooner by just paying the minimum payment. Arguing that adding taxes in a recession is unhelpful is just another argument by the trickle down crazies. Yes, if you impose a tax on companies, they would be inclined to pass those costs along to consumers in the form of higher prices. Couldn't you structure the tax to say that companies can not pass on the increase to consumers? Could you structure the tax so that it is taken out of company executives pay? Or how about instead of dividends to stockholders, you pay the tax? There has got to be a way to make those that benefit most from higher corporate earnings pay their share here. Of course, as an American I should be paying more considering how much oil America consumes.


Ezra Klein talk about how rising health care costs impact us all directly in lost wages.

Estate tax explained

What's that, you say? Never heard of the Estate Tax? How about the Death tax? Heard of that? Does it make you angry that after you die the government is going to be taxing you? Here's something else that will make you angry then: If you believe that, you deserve to be taxed in death. The myths surrounding the estate tax are just that, myths. Who is spreading the myths? The insanely rich people who are the only ones who will be impacted by the tax: Those that leave behind more that $3.5 million to their heirs when they die. Don't believe me? Fine, go join Pailin and the Birther movement.

Bank of America paying back TARP + Jobs report

In a post on Baseline Scenario, James Kwak explains why Bank of America is paying back it's TARP money.

I support restrictions on the form of compensation in financial institutions, such as requiring them to be distributed in restricted stock that vests over several years (which is already standard practice at some banks, such as Goldman Sachs) and making bonuses in good years subject to clawbacks in bad years. But those restrictions have to apply to all financial institutions, not just some of them; otherwise, you get this situation where Bank of America is making a silly financial decision because it has to in order to hire a new CEO. (The fact that nobody will be CEO of America’s largest bank because of executive comp restrictions is another issue, but there’s not much we can do about that. I would do it, but I don’t want to move to Charlotte.)

In other news, Bruce Bartlett examines the stimulus' effect on unemployment and concludes that the stimulus was a good thing, but that it was foolish for the Obama Administration to throw around numbers as to what the unemployment rate would be with and without a stimulus back in March. He also concludes that the tax cuts that were included in the stimulus have had very little if any impact on the unemployment rate.

Indeed, one can argue that the failure of the stimulus to create or save more jobs occurred largely because Obama included too many non-stimulative tax cuts in the stimulus package. These tax cuts, such as the Making Work Pay Credit, accounted for more than 40% of the cost of the $787 billion stimulus package. Based on the CBO analysis, I don't think there is any question that the economy would be much worse off today if Republicans had gotten their wish and 100% of the stimulus had been in the form of tax cuts.

Pay now not later

For Republicans (or anybody really) to lambast Obama for spending money, then refuse to support a tax increase to pay for wars that they support is the height of hypocrisy and doesn't deserve my vote or respect. Bruce Bartlett agrees.

The Medicare Commission, which could do some serious cost control has been seriously weakened in recent weeks. I love these politicians of ours. They rail against health care reform, point out how wasteful Medicare is, then prevent any attempts to rein in the waste. Morons! Morons! Morons! How the heck is it right that people who do such dumb things get rewarded, but the rest of us gets screwed? I keep having Bill O'Reilly's confrontational interview question bounce around in my head, "Why do you hate America?" Well, it's because of people like you, Mr. O'Reilly. The more I learn about how this country works, the less hopeful I am for the future. I'm not kidding.

Frontline's latest program examines the history and direction of credit cards. Good stuff.