Further Light and Knowledge

I was curious what effect S & P's downgrade of US sovereign debt to AA+ and the apparent intent of S & P to rate the next batch of junk mortgage-backed bonds as AAA woud have on the market. At this mornings auction, 4 week T-bills went at 00.005%. In other words, a 4 week $10,000 T-bill sold for $9,999.96 meaning that if I bought one today on September 29, I would have earned a princely sum of four cents interest. This is one-tenth the yield a 4 week T-bill went for only six weeks ago, before S & P's pronouncement. Yesterday the 4-year 8-month note sold at a substantial premium, making the yield negative! If you want in on the four week gain of four cents on $10,000.00, the CUSIP is #9127953L3. [the T-bill results are at http://www.treasurydirect.gov/RI/OFBills. The auction for bonds and notes is linked and vv.

Somebody is smoking crack and the market says it's S & P. I bet the subprime mortgage backed bonds they rate AAA next week will not sell at higher prices than Treasuries. I can't believe anyone would believe S & P anymore.

Jamie

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"Now I troll back to my little cave where we no talk about things we no understand..." Malfalda

"Ummmm. Roadkill."

The U.S. debt would be considerably less if Congress re-vamped the tax code, requiring all billion dollar corporations to pay taxes. The middle and poor classes are certainly paying their full share. Why are these corps not? G.E., Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Exxon Mobile, just to name a few, paid ZERO in taxes last year. Pretty much the same loopholes allowing billionaires to get out of most taxes. We never pay attention when they pass amendments that allow only certain persons to get away with financial murder. We should be paying attention now. Absolutely no plausible reason everyone cannot have health care. We've allowed them to screw us in the ass, and this is what we get. For the first time in 20 years, I got a response from my republican senator in Congress, and he actually told me there was a committee assigned to "look" at the tax code. I can't believe he said that. It's so anathema to conservatives.

Yeah, in addition to the tax writing committees (Senate Finance Committee and House Ways and Means Committee) there is a permanent Joint Committee on Taxation. From a wonky standpoint, the do a pretty good job. Check out http://www.jct.gov/. They and the Congressional Budget Office are responsible for budget scoring for tax and spending proposals which are required for every bill, and they use a jointly developed economic model for that purpose. The administration uses a different model, which is why sometimes a proposal the administration says will save $30 billion ends up with a JCT/CBO score saying it will save only $20 billion (the other reason the figures differ is that the CBO rescores the bill after all amendments and the Treasury does not). Other good stuff on tax policy is the annual report of the Office of Taxpayer Advocate and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). And of course there is the ever popular Statistics of Income Division of the IRS. This is the source material that the media and pundits get their information from, but they usually mangle it pretty badly. The source documents are pretty well written in plain English, and I wonder why people don't read the sources summary page themselves rather than hear hundreds of rehashings of the material. For example there is a report that lists the estimated JCT/CBO cost of each and every "tax expenditure" in the Code actually costs (Bet you didn't know that in 2009 corporations got $600 million in tax credits for "open loop biomass electric production facilities"; i.e. producing electricity from pigshit). http://www.jct.gov/publications.html?func=startdown&id=3642
The same is true of most economic statistics. Check it out yourself.

Joint Committee on Taxation http://www.jct.gov
Congressional Budget Office http://www,cbo,gov
IRS Taxpayer Advocate http://www.irs.gov/advocate/
Statistics of Income Division http://www.irs.gov/taxstats
Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration http://www.treasury.gov/tigta/
Labor Statistics http://www.bls.gov
Census Info http://www.census.gov
Economic statistics (don't get me started on why this one is so hard to access)
http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/cea/economic-report-of-the-President
Happy hunting!

Jamie

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"Now I troll back to my little cave where we no talk about things we no understand..." Malfalda

"Ummmm. Roadkill."

Jamie, I love that you bring facts - after all the hype has died down.

One place I like to go for information comparing economies is The CIA World Factbook. I notice it wasn't one you listed.

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- CV Rick
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I'm a frequent visitor to the CIA World Factbook and thanks for adding the listing! I didn't think of it as I was fixated on United States statistics. You make a good point that people are more likely to check out the sources when they are presented outside a specific controversy turning kerfuckle.

Jamie

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"Now I troll back to my little cave where we no talk about things we no understand..." Malfalda

"Ummmm. Roadkill."

The only tax the poor pay is sales and property taxes. Federal income tax from the poor is nonexistent. The poor actual get things like EIC which gives them money "back" despite they have zero tax burden.

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I would be agnostic, but I have a commitment problem.

Fucking slackers....

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The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less. ~ Arthur Miller

Srsly. They really ought to just die and decrease the surplus population.

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Apostasy loves company.

It may be, that in the sight of heaven you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child.

Reuben's statement was factual, and made no judgments either way.

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"It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office."

- H. L. Mencken

I may be used to reading between the lines (I do have teenagers after all), but to me the way Reuben couched the word back in quotation marks indicated to me that those damn-poor-trailer-trash-slacker folk were getting something for nothing.

We get EIC. Both my husband and I work. We pay taxes and own a home. We have five children that we are raisin' up real good to get that college ejumication and stuff. So as for getting "back" money. Yeah, we do.

And? I don't think anyone was stating that he made any judgements.

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"To those seaching for truth - not the truth of dogma and darkness but the truth brought by reason, search, examination, and inquiry, discipline is required. For faith, as well intentioned as it may be, must be built on facts, not fiction - faith in fiction is a damnable false hope." - Thomas Edison

Then what was the point of the following 3 posts?

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"It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office."

- H. L. Mencken

I can't speak for anyone else, but I was just adding a follow-on quote from A Christmas Carol--solely because I wanted to impress everyone that I picked up on the reference from TBNU's post. It was a purely non-substantive addition added only to stroke my own ego.

That surely can't be any more annoying than the non-substantive drive-bys you drop in virtually every other political thread, can it? I mean, at least I'm referencing someone that is arguably a good writer and not just recycling a soundbyte from a talking head on Fox News, so cut me a little slack.

[ETA: Yes, I intended to make a judgment in this post. ]

If I even watched Fox News, you might have been funny.

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"It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office."

- H. L. Mencken