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[TA]

Ooh, is it that the only family not to see a tax increase is the black couple?

[Brentai]

Should be noted that my take-home pay has actually increased slightly, and I'm still in the 5-digit range.  So unless there have been massive cuts to education and homeowner deductions (like the ones in the Ryan Plan), my tax burden is a couple hundred dollars less.  I'll probably use that on windows or a patio garden or, you know, something that increases the neighborhood property value.

Feel free to explain to me why you're more deserving of this than I am, Pictures of Sad Rich People.

[Royal☭]

What really gets me is, you could keep jacking up the taxes on the family making $680k a year and it'd be awhile before they could no longer sustain 6 people.

[Mongrel]

The Swiss turn on the super-rich

Not a bad little piece.

[Disposable Ninja]

The Debt Limit Explained

This... really does actually do a pretty good job of explaining the debt ceiling, and why the Republicans are vile shit mongers. Well, in regards to economics, not just in general.

I mean, they're vile shit mongers in general, too.

[Mongrel]

Some of you may have heard the hilarous saga of Gerard Depardieu fleeing to Russia to avoid French taxes. Well, the latest silly rumours have tagged no less of a person than former President Sarkoczy as running away to England to avoid French taxes.

The Sarko story is hilarious. If the rich want to make themselves into absurd laughingstocks who constantly flee like deadbeats pulling a midnight move, never to return to their land of birth, I am pretty okay with this whole "Make the Rich go elsewhere" thing.

In fact, watching the rich constantly scurry like cockroaches seeking the darkest corners might do more to discredit Ayn Rand than any reasoned argument or economic fact ever could.

[NexAdruin]

Wasn't Ayn Rand's works all about rich people fleeing? What discredits Rand isn't that rich people move, it's that life goes on without them.

[Mongrel]

Yes, but Rand's rich people always "flee" in a bold, triumphant way. The reality is so ignominious as to be laughable.

[Mongrel]

"Hurry up and die!" says Japan's new finance minister.

PR! 

[Brentai]

Oh, to the Japanese, not to the tax evaders.  Pity.

[Mongrel]

Australia's proven oil reserves may have just doubled in size with a single find

(Existing Aussie reserves are about 4 billion barrels, so not quite, but close). 

To put this in perspective, Venezuela (the country with the world's largest proven reserves) has over 200 billion barrels of proven reserves, with Saudi Arabia very close behind. So this is not some some kind of polar axis inversion for oil production or geopolitics. But it's interesting all the same, potentially moving yet another Western nation from the "importer" category to the "supplier" category.

[Mongrel]

A proposal to bring back perpetual bonds

I like that the argument isn't so much an economic one, as it is an argument on how to get Congress to outthink itself.

[Büge]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/secret-and-lies-of-the-bailout-20130104

[Thad]

Edmund Saez via Doctorow: top 1% has gotten 121% of the gains in the "economic recovery"; the remaining 99% is actually poorer than before 2009.

In short form, income to the top 1% is significantly influenced by capital gains. Remember, the tax reporting is not clean here: rising equity and bond markets help all those private equity and hedge fund professionals, who are able to get capital gains treatment for what ought to be labor income. But the paper also stresses that the lower orders were hit hard in the aftermath of the global financial crisis than in the dot-bomb era, which also saw a big drop in capital gains. That isn’t as hard to understand. The collapse of the dot-com mania didn’t impair the real economy overmuch because it was not fueled in a meaningful way by borrowings. By contrast, the housing bubble, and more important (in terms of damage to the financial system) the much housing exposure created synthetically by CDOs that consisted entirely or mainly of credit default swaps was highly geared, hence when it collapsed, it took credit providers down with it.

This will probably not come as a surprise to most of you.

[Mongrel]

SCOTUS just gave white collar fraudsters a damn good escape hatch

I know that's not the intention of the ruling, but damned if that won't be the effect.

[Brentai]

Well, from the SEC only.  I think the reasoning, which is sound enough, is that if regulators aren't moving on something until 5 years after the fact, they're either not doing their jobs or in on it themselves somehow.

I think the reasoning is to hold the SEC more accountable for its recent pattern of total fuckups than to protect criminals.  What actually will happen in practice is... well, whatever looks best on the bottom line of Mitt Romney's balance sheet, I imagine.

[Brentai]

So hey I guess stocks are at an all-time high, one day after the sequester goes into effect.  Good to know we're all sharing the burden here.

[Mongrel]

well, whatever looks best on the bottom line of Mitt Romney's balance sheet, I imagine.

[Mongrel]

Over in cyprus, an otherwise unnoticed bank bailout may herald the return of runs on banks.

Welp. Maybe this won't go any further than Cypriots getting bumfucked. But if this kind of stuff spreads, we're going to learn remember the hard way why governments started insuring bank deposits.

[Mongrel]

Krugman obliquely argues for the idea of Search Engines as a public utility

He's just musing though and not actively pushing anything, but it's one of his more interesting columns.