Have you heard some rumors using a figure of $700 billion? You didn’t forget Fannie and Freddie and Bear Stearns and AIG did you? That was somewhere in the neighborhood of $315 billion, even before the other number started getting all of the attention.
So, let’s just round all of this off at a trillion dollars. It’s difficult at my age to maintain concentration. I keep losing count and having to start over.
If those numbers were not stunning enough, John McCain just keeps on throwing hay-makers. He hasn’t learned anything from this financial crisis other than how to mouth a few basic populist sentiments. Even there he keeps getting confused. I’ve seen rapid-cycling manic depressives but I’ve never seen anyone switch sides of his mouth so quickly. Regulation. Deregulation. Fire at will.
Despite the fact that the problems we face can be traced back to a slavish devotion to an infantile ideology, little Johnny can’t see beyond that simple construct. He may deviate for short periods from the deregulation mantra. That is political expediency. But he can’t let go of the other golden oldie.
Tax cuts. Tax cuts. I think I have heard that somewhere before. Bush put a time limit on the big tax cuts for the top two percent. That was just an obvious ploy to tie it in to the crisis of the moment. He figured it would be easier to get the cuts extended later. That later was put on the plate of his successor.
Those tax cuts sunset soon. No action is necessary to eliminate the most unnecessary cuts in our history. McCain wants to extend those cuts. He accuses Obama of wanting to increase taxes. Actually, Obama intends that the law expire just as it was written and passed by the Republican-led Congress and White House.
To repeat my mantra, there is no such thing as a tax cut. When the national debt is pushing $11 trillion and we are being asked to borrow another trillion, it is not a tax cut, it is a tax deferment. Be sure and send a Thank You note to your grandchildren.
Now, let’s make a little connection. McCain says that our present mess was caused by greed on Wall Street. He says he wants to stop them from benefiting from their greed at the expense of the denizens of Main Street. He says he wants to extend the tax cut that is for the wealthiest two percent of the country.
That is the precise place where you will find all of those greedy Wall Street thieves. Ipso facto, McCain’s ideology worship will give an estimated average $700,000 tax break to each of those senior executives of Wall Street. These are the people who In 2006 alone, in Wall Street firms alone, paid themselves $62 billion in bonuses. Just bonuses.
Merry Christmas from McSanta.
{ 1 comment }
Excellent read, I just passed this onto a friend who was doing a little research on that.
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