William Jennings Bryan vs. Tea Party Anarchists

by Nomad

Swiss Bank Pleads Guilty to Felony Conspiracy with American Tax Dodgers

Syndicated news with introduction by Nomad 

Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse has admitted that it conspired to help some US clients avoid paying taxes. It has agreed to pay over $2.5 billion and to cooperate with investigations. 

This would make the Swiss company the largest bank in 20 years to plead guilty to criminal charges.

  

As much as I think this is a good- and long overdue- step, imposing a fine on Swiss banks for helping Americans hide their wealth is a little like punishing dogs for peeing on fire hydrants. It's what they do. There's nothing very "brazen" about either case. 

Perhaps the only surprising aspect of this news is that the US government found the wherewithal to actually do anything about it. As Forbes describes the news, the IRS took on Swiss banking and it won. According to that article, IRS is the big winner in this plea bargain arrangement.

Plus, the IRS earns dividends in the form of account holders applying for amnesty. And for the IRS, it isn’t just Switzerland, but everywhere now that FATCA has expanded U.S. tentacles almost worldwide. Attorney General Eric Holder wins big too, getting the benefit of a guilty plea. He can’t be accused of letting another big bank off the hook for being too big to fail.

The U.S. Treasury and New York State both make out well. Credit Suisse will pay nearly $1.8 billion to the Justice Department, $100 to the Federal Reserve, and a whopping $715 million to New York’s Department of Financial Services.

With FATCA approaching its launching date, some would see this in a little less cheery light. The US, they'd say, is simply attempting to assert its control over all international banks. 

Amid all this back slapping, and at a time when Putin is threatening to renew a Cold War, what is left unsaid is that the long-term consequences may be hard to calculate.

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Credit Suisse guilty on US felony charge, pays $2.6 bn (via AFP)

Credit Suisse pleaded guilty and was fined $2.6 billion for helping Americans avoid taxes, the first time in 20 years a major bank has been punished on US criminal charges. US authorities said the "brazen" Swiss bank, one of the world's largest wealth…

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Why This Century-Old Cartoon Could Have Been Printed Yesterday

by Nomad

I found this political cartoon in an online archive. Incredibly, it was printed in 1912.

Outback Outrage: How Rupert Murdoch's News Corp Helped Destroy Australian Budget

by Nomad

Through a special tax arrangement with the Australian government,  Rupert Murdoch's New Corporation- parent company of Fox News- became  the largest single factor in the shortfalls in the Australian budget.

The Australian Financial Review is reporting a story which will probably never appear on Fox News.

The single largest factor in the underlying deterioration of the federal budget announced by Treasurer Joe Hockey in December was a cash payout of almost $900 million to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.

Despite Fox News and News Corp newspaper's near-constant drumbeat against government spending, it came right down to it, News Corp was just another corporation expecting special treatment. Documents last week revealed the company claimed a massive tax deduction- one of the largest cash payments- from the Australian Tax Office. 

When the Australian budget went south, it was not due to wild spending on foolish projects or due to the military appropriations but, if these reports are true, one main factor was a record-breaking tax deduction that the Tax Office allowed the media giant. 

The Guardian fills us in with other particulars:

The payment by a “foreign tax authority” was revealed in accounts published by News Corporation in the US earlier this month and related to a $2bn claim by News Corp for historic losses on currency transactions by its Australian subsidiaries.

The payment was estimated to be worth $600m to News Corp but the final figure grew to $882m after interest charges.

FATCA Repeal : Tax-Avoiding Super Wealthy with Secret Bank Accounts Find a Friend in GOP

by Nomad

Once again, the Republican Party has demonstrated which side it supports. Between the average taxpayer or the 1%, its call for a repeal of Obama's anti-tax haven law of 2009- before it has even had a chance to be put into effect- provides us with a clear answer.  

Some Facts on FATCA

Reuters is reporting that the Republican Party is expected to approve a resolution this week, calling for repeal of an Obama administration law that is designed to crack down on offshore tax dodging.

The law, Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) requires foreign banks to find any American account holders and disclose their balances, receipts, and withdrawals to the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS), or be subject to a 30-percent withholding tax on income from US financial assets held by the banks. Owners of these foreign-held assets must report them on US tax returns if they are worth more than $50,000.

It was always going to be controversial and not beloved by banks, libertarians and some Americans living abroad. Another example of Big Government overreach, they howled. Lobbyists have been successful at delaying the law in operation. Its effective date has been pushed back repeatedly, with enforcement now set to start on July 1. 

If the Republicans have their way- and there doesn't seem to be much chance they will- FATCA would never start at all.

Romney’s Million Dollar Campaign Contributor Considers Tax Escape to Puerto Rico

by Nomad

At the beginning of last year, before the presidential campaign had really gotten underway, Nomadic Politics reported that one of Mitt Romney’s high- dollar contributors to his Restore Our Future SuperPAC was hedge fund billionaire, John Paulson. Now it seems as though, Paulson might be considering leaving the country altogether. Bloomberg last week mentioned Puerto Rico as a possible new home. (His hedge fund, however, issued a denial of the story.)

Paulson belonged to an exclusive club of uber-wealthy Romney backers who, even before the Republican nomination, were willing to write a cool million check for Romney’s bid for the White House. What's a million between friends?
Why, that's chicken feed for a man like Paulson, whose net worth, according to Forbes was almost $16 billion. (The year prior to the SuperPAC contribution he reportedly earned staggering 5 billion.)

But it was all for naught, in the end. Investing in Romney proved to be an expensive proposition with very limited returns. However, the opposite can be said of Paulson's investments during the economic crisis. Wall Street analysts say that Paulson became outrageously successful by betting on failure, from the collapse of banks to the mortgage crisis. 

The Incredible Hoax of Reaganomics- Trickle-Down 2/3

by Nomad

In Part One of this series, we looked at David Stockman, Reagan's budget adviser and his candid assessment back of Reagan's application of supply-side economics, better known as the trickle-down theory. Now let's take a look at the intellectual origins of the idea.

Plutocracy is abhorrent to a republic; it is more despotic than monarchy, more heartless than aristocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. It preys upon the nation in time of peace and conspires against it in the hour of its calamity.

Horse and Sparrow Theory

History is sometimes a fickle thing. Often it remembers those who should probably be forgotten while forgetting those who, for one reason or another, deserve our lasting appreciation.

William Jennings Bryan is one of those people who was quite popular in his time but has now been largely consigned to unread records. However, not unlike his contemporary, Teddy Roosevelt, Bryan’s words and thoughts, once considered fixed to a particular time and particular circumstance of American history, seem to be suddenly just as apt in our own times.

Born in 1860 in Salem, Illinois, Bryan was a gifted orator of his day and as an American political figure,, ran three times for president in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Bryan never won the presidency but eventually became Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State in 1913. 

His name is familiar in some circles because of his role in the famous Scope’s “Monkey Trial” in which he argued against the teaching of evolution in public school. Although he was left humiliated after being called to the stand himself to defend religion against science, Bryan, in fact, he won the case; the teacher was found guilty of breaking the law but the verdict was later overturned on a technicality. For that to be his only claim to fame is a pity. He appears to have much to say to our present age.