Relax, Hank Paulson Is In Charge
So today's Washington Post has a very interesting and very poorly written article about the implementation of the bailout.
First: No ever seems to have told them that you lead the article with the punchline. Once you get that in you can dither about all you want. Unless you want people to get bored and miss the punchline.
Second: The punchline appears on page two and it is a doozy.
By administrative fiat the Treasury Department has allowed banks to shelter "their profits from taxation by acquiring shell companies whose only real value (is) the losses on their books. The (banks) would then use the acquired company's losses to offset their gains and avoid paying taxes."
In 1986, "Lawmakers decried the tax shelters as a scam and created a formula to strictly limit the use of those purchased losses for tax purposes." Conservative economists objected to this change and even asserted that: "not only should a firm be able to use losses to offset gains, but that in a year when a company only loses money, it should be entitled to a cash refund from the government."
Congress has never agreed with this but now, using his emergency powers, Paulson has made it so.
If Wonks Anonymous were still a drinking man he would be shouting. Instead he must satisfy himself with the liberal use of boldface. He is particularly intrigued by the prospect of banks using bailout funds to buy other banks with losses and then turning around and getting further tax rebates based on these losses.
Even though the real economy is in a shambles and unemployment is growing by leaps and bounds, all that the clowns in the current administration can think to do is to use the emergency to hand out goodies to their cronies.
If we started impeachment proceedings right now we could have these guys out of office by Christmas. Even one less month of this outrageous misrule would be an improvement.
But that would require the Republicans in the Senate to go against their President and lose face for the benefit of the country and we all know that Country First is just a slogan.
First: No ever seems to have told them that you lead the article with the punchline. Once you get that in you can dither about all you want. Unless you want people to get bored and miss the punchline.
Second: The punchline appears on page two and it is a doozy.
By administrative fiat the Treasury Department has allowed banks to shelter "their profits from taxation by acquiring shell companies whose only real value (is) the losses on their books. The (banks) would then use the acquired company's losses to offset their gains and avoid paying taxes."
In 1986, "Lawmakers decried the tax shelters as a scam and created a formula to strictly limit the use of those purchased losses for tax purposes." Conservative economists objected to this change and even asserted that: "not only should a firm be able to use losses to offset gains, but that in a year when a company only loses money, it should be entitled to a cash refund from the government."
Congress has never agreed with this but now, using his emergency powers, Paulson has made it so.
If Wonks Anonymous were still a drinking man he would be shouting. Instead he must satisfy himself with the liberal use of boldface. He is particularly intrigued by the prospect of banks using bailout funds to buy other banks with losses and then turning around and getting further tax rebates based on these losses.
Even though the real economy is in a shambles and unemployment is growing by leaps and bounds, all that the clowns in the current administration can think to do is to use the emergency to hand out goodies to their cronies.
If we started impeachment proceedings right now we could have these guys out of office by Christmas. Even one less month of this outrageous misrule would be an improvement.
But that would require the Republicans in the Senate to go against their President and lose face for the benefit of the country and we all know that Country First is just a slogan.
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