The Londoner

By Sikander Hayat On the surface life is pretty boring and lifeless in corona times. All major European countries are in lockdown including Switzerland and it really is hard to keep up the motivation to work, to eat, to sleep and to do anything for that matter. One interesting thing happening right now is the global march of the markets towards a massive bubble like state and we don't actually know if this is a bubble or not. This bubble-like state is just due to the fact that all central banks are pumping massive amounts of money into the economies inflating every asset or asset lookalike ( bitcoin ). The rise of the bitcoin to stratospheric levels is the most obvious example of free money available in the market. There is so much free money being pumped into the markets that people don't know what to do with it. All they can see is the stock market and the ponzi schemes like Bitcoin and putting all access cash wherever they see any opening. This is really turning into ir...

By Sikander Hayat  Trumptax cuts may help big corporation but these won’t help lower and middle class Americans . One positive outcome could be that largecompanies which are hoarding money outside United States will hopefully declare their profits in US and will start paying their due share of corporate tax which has now come down to 20%. Google,Amazon, Starbucks e.t.c. do not pay their fair share of tax anywherein the world. They make a lot of money around the world but concoct atax evasion system which is barely legal and yet does not come out very well against any moral code. Apple has a sweatheart dea l with Republic of Ireland where Apple pretends to pay tax and Irishgovernment pretends to collect tax . Irish tax rate is probably lowest among the OECD member states and is sucking a lot of good money from hard working people around the world. Compared to United Kingdom, UStax rate was really high but it is now at the same level at 20%. Some o...

Progressive tax rates have always puzzled me because they assume that government has different value for citizens based on their incomes . Break government down to the basics and it is essentially a provider of services — defense, transportation, the legal system, schools , etc. — that customers want or need and are willing to pay a price to obtain. In that way, it's little different than a private sector business. Except in the private sector, goods and services have a set value; all customers pay the same. You don't have to scan your 1040 at the gasoline pump to set the price per gallon. Only in government does every customer pay a different price for the same thing. Reader Jon Taub sent me a note last week putting the difference between government and private sector pricing in perspective. Taub, a corporate lawyer for a Detroit business, notes that the top 1 percent of earners pay for 38 percent of the general fund services delivered by the federal governme...

Michael Tomasky : The GOP Brings Politics to a Crisis Point by Michael Tomasky Dec 23, 2012 4:45 AM EST With their refusal to vote for Boehner’s Plan B , Republicans have definitively shown that they’d rather sabotage democracy than govern. How can they be stopped? Really, what is to be done about this Republican Party ? What force can change it—can stop Republicans from being ideological saboteurs and convert at least a workable minority of them into people interested in governing rather than sabotage? With the failed Plan B vote, we have reached the undeniable crisis point. Actually we’ve been at a crisis point for years , but this is really the all-upper-case Undeniable Crisis Point. They are a direct threat to the economy, which could slip back into recession next year if the government doesn’t, well, govern. They are an ongoing, at this point almost mundane, threat to democracy, subverting and preventing progress the American peo...

Sen. Barrasso : Obama sees a ‘political victory ’ in going over the cliff Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said Sunday he thinks President Obama wants to dive over the so-called "fiscal cliff." "I believe the president is eager to go over the cliff for political purposes," Barrasso told Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday. " "He senses a political victory at the bottom of the cliff." The senator also said he believes the nation will go over the cliff, with the deadline just nine days away. Barrasso said he thinks Obama is eager to blame Republicans if Congress cannot reach a deal by the end of the year. Polls have indicated that Americans would blame Republicans more than Democrats if talks fail. Barrasso also pointed to a report in the Wall Street Journal late last week that said during negotiations, Obama threatened Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) that he would use the presidential bully pulpit to heap blame on the GOP ...

How 'Cliff' Talks Hit the Wall Behind Scenes, Boehner Failed to Sell Republicans on Taxes , While Obama's Spending Plans Rankled WASHINGTON— Congressional leaders and President Barack Obama called Friday for a return to negotiations to avert the so-called fiscal cliff, a day after talks cratered in a very public fashion when Republicans abandoned House Speaker John Boehner 's backup plan. In truth, talks to secure a big deficit-reduction deal had already broken down Monday afternoon in the office of Mr. Boehner (R., Ohio), a Wall Street Journal reconstruction shows. Mr. Boehner had been negotiating a deal with the White House to let tax rates rise for upper-income people. Mr. Boehner, irritated with the White House, was finding it hard to keep his troops in line as details of his negotiations with Mr. Obama leaked out. In the speaker's office just off the Capitol's majestic rotunda that afternoon, he told his top lieutenants that ...

Plan B Fails, Boehner Marches Toward Cliff People are using words like “meltdown” to describe the failure of the House of Representatives last night to pass “Plan B.” They’re doing that because House votes are traditionally a matter of pure formality, normally having all the suspense of a Politburo vote. John Boehner expected to squeeze 217 votes from his 241 Republican members because, once Boehner had decided on his course, they had no rational choice. It was vote with him or court pure chaos. Some number of his charges – at least a couple dozen – chose chaos. At the same time, the actual stakes of the vote were far from Earth-shaking. Let us consider the progression here. Boehner had been negotiating quite fruitfully with President Obama , and had brought the terms of the emerging agreement closer to where he started than Obama had started, with a deal-hungry Obama apparently ready to move even a bit farther. Then, almo...

The Second Great Betrayal: Obama and Cameron Decide that Banks are above the Law One of the “tells” that reveals how embarrassed Lanny Breuer (head of the Criminal Division) and Eric Holder (AG) are by the disgraceful refusal to prosecute HSBC and its officers for their tens of thousands of felonies are the false and misleading statements made by the Department of Justice (DOJ) about the settlement.  The same pattern has been demonstrated by other writers in the case of the false and disingenuous statistics DOJ has trumpeted to attempt to disguise the abject failure of their efforts to prosecute the elite officers who directed the “epidemic” (FBI 2004) of mortgage fraud. HSBC was one of the largest originators of fraudulent mortgage loans through its acquisition of Household Finance . Three recent books by “insiders” have confirmed earlier articles revealing the decisive role that Treasury Secretary Geithner has played in opposing criminal prosecutions of the elite...