Some reads to start your morning:
• Obama’s Plan is a Stealth Middle Class Tax Hike. So Is Romney’s. (Forbes)
• Germany vs France:
…..- Europe Could Economize Itself to Death (Spiegel.de)
…..- The French Don’t Know Their Place (In the Global Economy) (Foreign Affairs)
• Sparks fly over dark pools stock trading reform (Reuters)
• Cooling Job Market Takes Toll on U.S. (Bloomberg) see also Forecasting GDP Through Rearview Mirror (WSJ)
• U.S. Assets at Work, Unsupervised (Economix)
• Housing Pro & Con:
…..-The Housing Outlook Is Still Dismal (Comstock Fund)
…..-Private money coming back into the housing finance market (Calculated Risk)
• Wall Street Tracks ‘Wolves’ as May 1 OWS Protests Loom (Bloomberg)
• Data and visualization blogs worth following (Flowing Data)
• The Man Who Makes the Future: Wired Icon Marc Andreessen (Wired)
• “Jesus Tap-Dancing Christ,” the Greatest Craigslist Car Ad Ever (Jalopnik)
What are you reading?
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U.S. Firms Add Jobs, but Mostly Overseas
Source: WSJ
Category: Financial Press
Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor implied. If you could repeat previously discredited memes or steer the conversation into irrelevant, off topic discussions, it would be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.
“U.S. Firms Add Jobs, but Mostly Overseas”
Buy American (stocks)!
Countered by:
“Cooling Job Market Takes Toll on U.S.”
Jesus Christ doing the Tango.
BR thanks for the link to the NYC photos last evening.
Jim Grant and the the Fed. Discussion about price controls on money(rates) and deflation( inventories become unfinanceable, merchandise is thrown on the market and prices fall) vs prices coming down due to lower costs of production and better technology.
http://bionicmosquito.blogspot.com/2012/04/jim-grant-educates-fed.html
Reading: ‘Death By Black Hole’ by Neil DeGrasse Tyson
That car ad is the funniest thing I’ve seen in a while. Thanks for the Friday laugh.
Here’s the follow up to that car ad piece
http://jalopnik.com/5905240/meet-the-two-guys-behind-the-greatest-craigslist-car-ad-in-history
U.S. Firms Add Jobs, but Mostly Overseas…
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303990604577367881972648906.html
Tax cuts for the job creators! And Damn it, let corporations who’ve run their profits through those Irish holding companies to pay no tax in THAT money too. And more tax cuts for “small business” without paying for them.
As I pointed out last week, articles such as Forbe’s are classic “fair-and-balanced,” he-said-she-said journamiminalism: Somebody falsely claims Obama’s tax plan raises taxes on the middle class while somebody else truthfully claims that Romeny’s tax plan really does include a stealth tax increase on lower income families. Sounds like equivalent claims cuz it’s opposing somebodies so let’s run the story; WTF.
Austan Goolsbee Did Hubbard Really Mean to Raise That? (ht Jared Bernstein)
The argument that Obama is initiating a ‘secret tax’ on the middle class is misleading and false. Considering the source the distinct possibility exists that the argument is designed to create a false equivalence to help shield Romney’s tax plans from criticism because Romney’s tax plan really does increase tax burden on the poor to cut taxes further for the rich
Gonna be a lot of agnotology, agitprop, bamboozlement and “fair and balanced” reportage out there this election season: Everyone needs to stay on their toes and check arguments carefully while doing their best to check their own biases at the door. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
Stunned Home Buyers Find the Bidding Wars Are Back
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304723304577366294046658820.html?mod=ITP_pageone_0
Doug Kass: Re: Why I am Constructive on the US Housing Market
http://www.thestreet.com/story/11511229/1/constructive-on-us-housing.html
Stunned Home Buyers Find the Bidding Wars Are Back
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304723304577366294046658820.html
Obama has made housing unaffordable for me!!! …and he took away my gun and my family’s farm! …and our allies hate us! …and he raised my taxes!!! and look at the way kids dress today!!!
Banks are like elk protecting themselves from wolves? How does Bloomberg put this out with a straight face?
a white wash of the banks and the crises they created?
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/04/frontlines-astonishing-whitewash-of-the-crisis.html
CISPA Bill To Obliterate Privacy Laws Under Guise of Cybersecurity, A Blank Check of Privacy Invasion
April 26th, 2012
Via: Hot Hardware:
There’s a bill currently up for debate in the US House of Representatives that would give companies and government agencies the right to share information when issues of cybersecurity were at stake. If the first thing you thought after reading that was “Wait, don’t we already do this,” the answer is “Yes, we do.” The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is drawing fire for certain provisions that drastically expand the definition of what data can be shared and for the way they handle existing data protections.
At present, the government’s ability to share data on its citizens is fairly restricted, insomuch as the various agencies must demonstrate cause and need. This has created a somewhat byzantine network of guidelines and laws that must be followed — a morass of red tape that CISPA is intended to cut through. One of the bill’s key passages is a provision that gives private companies the right to share cybersecurity data with each other and with the government “notwithstanding any other provision of law.”…”
http://cryptogon.com/?p=28824
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And Now… Defense Clandestine Service
April 25th, 2012
Via: Washington Post:
The Pentagon is planning to ramp up its spying operations against high-priority targets such as Iran under an intelligence reorganization aimed at expanding on the military’s espionage efforts beyond war zones, a senior defense official said Monday.
The newly created Defense Clandestine Service would work closely with the CIA — pairing two organizations that have often seen each other as rivals — in an effort to bolster espionage operations overseas at a time when the missions of the agency and the military increasingly converge…”
http://cryptogon.com/?p=28791
bankers covering up their real situation?
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/04/morgan-sandquist-finance-in-denial.html
OWS = Wolves, and bankers are the Elk? WTF?
Ten companies that control most of the brands you use.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/27/consumer-brands-owned-ten-companies-graphic_n_1458812.html
Tell me what the difference is?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtYjdEwa8GA
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/27/bank-ceos-meet-fed-derivatives_n_1459804.html
Regarding the creation of jobs overseas, this is a reflection of two things. Firstly, direct costs, including labor costs, adjusted for the proximity to the market costs (Freight, logistics, inventories etc.). Secondly, and much more importantly for IP industries in particular (Aka “The future”) is taxation. The US now has the highest rates of Corporate tax in the world, bar none. Until this changes, jobs will not return to the US and profits will be transfer-priced out of the US to the greatest extent possible). There is no way around this because if the Government tries to crack down, expect to see more Companies re-incorporating offshore, leaving behind just a US subsidiary with minimal profits, the bulk being transfer-priced through The Caymans etc.
The CalculatedRisk article: the resurface of the piggyback loan – an 80-10-10. (80% first mortgage, 10% down and a 10% interest only HELOC.) And so it starts again, just as it did the last time ending in zero down, streamlined everything, no verified information, Alt-A, etc. It took 10 years but this is starting well along the path. When one sits on a limb, next to the trunk, and competitive pressures cause one to inch out onto the limb, absent any rules or limits, how do you know where to stop before the limb breaks? At what point does sound underwriting weaken into nothing more than a hope and a prayer?
guy invited to give luncheon speech to ny fed tells them they need to disband…gotta love it
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2012/04/my-speech-delivered-at-new-york-federal.html
big cajones to give before having lunch with these guys!
The US now has the highest rates of Corporate tax in the world, bar none.
Do you work for Faux Noise? If our tax rates are so high, why hasn’t G.E. paid anything these past few years? Because the statutory rates are misleading. After all, why does Congress give out exemptions? Because those same companies legally bribe our government.
Perhaps you should try to look at the forest not the trees?