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Microsoft threatens to move jobs out of US

Tex

Well-known member
Mike said:
Mike, if you make more money, you should pay more taxes.

Well no sh!t :lol: Isn't that the way the system is set up now?

Microsoft is dismayed by the fact that they might pay the taxes on the amount prescribed by law here and abroad, but will be double taxed again by the Fed for profits made in those other countries, although the U.S. benefits broadly from that income.

I have a real problem with taxing taxes and taxed income. Before you know it the Gov't's portion of all earned income will be equal the amount of that income. We are almost there now.

I say cut out all Corporate Income taxes in the U.S. The employees will still be paying, the stockholders (owners) will still be paying, the economy will get a huge boost, and companies will flock here to set up shop.

I have no idea what your jibberish about a $50,000 flat tax means......

Mike, I can agree with you on these two issues:

1) Government spending makes taxes inevitable and crowds out private spending because they ultimately have to get the money from taxpayers. The government has not been able to get that balance right because we have had creditors like China who have allowed us to "put it on the credit card", which has hidden the true cost of government spending more than the taxes they collect.

2) That taxation rates of companies that do business in the United States is not fair if it allows profits from the U.S. to be shifted to other countries to avoid taxes and the same with foreign businesses who are able to shop where they claim profits instead of where they are actually earned. To agree with your point on corporate tax rates, the taxable amount should be based on the business you do here in the United States.

I will not be arguing for the very wealthy to pay less taxes until there is a balanced budget. I will continue, as always, argue for governments to not over spend as ours has been prone to do.

I do see your point on corporations being taxed twice but none of these corporations have to have the advantages corporations give them like reduced personal liability. They could all avoid this "double" taxation by not being a corporation.

It is a tax of choice.

Tex
 

Tex

Well-known member
Mike said:
And if your customers complain about price you lower the price huh Aplus??? Is that how you do business? If so you must make a lot of money in your business.

If you sell cattle at an auction and the buyers complain about high prices, they might bid less for yours.........What's the diff???????????

Profits are the simple driving force of "Capitalism".

When the conglomerate's "profits" start to dwindle from higher taxes, they will either close shop or make adjustments......

Is that so hard to understand?

I totally agree with you on this, Mike. Taxation and government overspending crowds out private spending.

Why would you be for allowing corporations to offshore things, just so their business will continue? I say make them stay, pay taxes, and hopefully they can convince the government to spend less. All the citizens of the U.S. have to do this. Why should we allow big money to just go overseas and keep selling and making profits here in the U.S.?

Tex
 

TSR

Well-known member
Mike said:
And if your customers complain about price you lower the price huh Aplus??? Is that how you do business? If so you must make a lot of money in your business.

If you sell cattle at an auction and the buyers complain about high prices, they might bid less for yours.........What's the diff???????????

Profits are the simple driving force of "Capitalism".

When the conglomerate's "profits" start to dwindle from higher taxes, they will either close shop or make adjustments......

Is that so hard to understand?

Well I f I was Microsoft and I was successful in (yes I still like the word blackmail) blackmailing the gov't not to raise my taxes, I would just come back next yr and say they are still too high, lets lower them again or I'm moving my operation overseas. While all this is going on, all the rest of those conglomerates that I mentioned are waiting their turn for a friendly talk with Congress. In the meantime they aren't paying much attention to the fact that it was this American market that made them the most of their money.

With respect to Aplus' example, pretty soon I would have him paying me to let him do my janitorial work.
 

TSR

Well-known member
Mike said:
Secretaries became millionaires at Microsoft

Point made. :lol:

The Big Corps aren't all Ogre's.

Small business is the driving force in the U.S. economy, the American dream has been established many times by building a small company and getting bought out by the big boys, or taking that small business to the top.

You folks mindset is killing the USA........... :mad:

No Mike I am all for small business, lets give them every break we can as long as they will remain here and help American workers.
 

Mike

Well-known member
With respect to Aplus' example, pretty soon I would have him paying me to let him do my janitorial work.

Unreasonable thinking will always find an unreasonable answer. :roll:

This statement by you tells me you are not a reasonable thinking person that cannot be rational, thus void of the ability to debate. :arrow:
 

TexasBred

Well-known member
Oldtimer said:
Sandhusker said:
Why doesn't Obama let the banks repay their TARP funds?
.

Bernanke testified to Congress about a week ago that a list of the banks that were now deemed stable enough to repay the loans would be released probably this week...
He said the fact the private money was beginning to go back into the financial sector- and replacing the TARP funds- was a sign of confidence coming back- and the economy improving, altho he said things are still shakey with many financial institutions....

This all flew out the window with the latest unemployment figures which also blew away the obama budget plans......The only private money coming into banks is for purchase of new stock issues which are still so worthless just about anybody is willing to sink a little money in them knowing that unless the bank completely locks the doors the only direction the stock can move is up. Then they'll be selling.
 

TexasBred

Well-known member
Sandhusker said:
And who the hell are they to know more about an individual bank than the people who are running it?

Unfortunately many banks and bankers have already proved they know very little about what they're doing, where they're going or what's going to happen next. Even down to the local home owned banks.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
TexasBred said:
Sandhusker said:
And who the hell are they to know more about an individual bank than the people who are running it?

Unfortunately many banks and bankers have already proved they know very little about what they're doing, where they're going or what's going to happen next. Even down to the local home owned banks.

It looks to me like the Independent investigators think the Fed has been too easy on the banks- and should be tightening their hold on them rather than loosening up....

Bank Stress Tests Were Too Easy, Do Them Again, Warns Panel

Tuesday, June 9, 2009 9:20 AM

A government test of whether 19 major banks could survive a further downturn in the economy may have relied on too rosy a scenario and should be repeated, independent investigators say.



In a report released Tuesday, the Congressional Oversight Panel for the government's $700 billion financial rescue effort found that the Federal Reserve used a "conservative and reasonable" approach to assessing the health of the nation's biggest banks.


But, the panel added, the Fed's worst-case scenario does not go far enough. For example, the "stress tests" conducted by the Fed were based on the 2009 unemployment rate average of 8.9 percent. Unemployment in May climbed to 9.4 percent.


"While no one should gainsay the potentially positive results of the tests, it would be equally unwise to think that those results reflect a diagnosis of all of the potential weaknesses or create a necessarily sufficient buffer against future reverses for the banking system," the panel wrote.


Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard University law professor who heads the panel, was expected to testify before the Joint Economic Committee on Tuesday about the group's findings.


Last month, the Fed found that 10 of the 19 banks needed additional capital. Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo are among banks told to boost capital by a total of $75 billion to cover potential losses.


The Federal Reserve said Monday that plans submitted by those banks, if implemented, would be enough to help them survive a deeper recession.


The Congressional Oversight Panel says that additional capital held by the banks should not be interpreted as an end to the financial crisis.


The panel recommended that the Fed repeat stress testing so long as banks continue to hold large amounts of bad debt on their books. The panel also suggests that banks be required to run their own internal stress tests and share those results with federal regulators.
 

Mike

Well-known member
Banks. Must be a bad situation to be in when the CRA mandates you make a percentage of bad loans then picks your butt clean when you do it........... :???:

The once-obscure Community Reinvestment Act, passed during the Carter administration, has recently-in part because of my reporting-become a bogeyman for Republicans, some of whom have proposed its repeal. Liberal Democrats have defended it as unrelated to the meltdown. The truth lies somewhere in between. While it's a long way from the late-seventies world of the original Act to the twenty-first century's housing crisis, the CRA's role was important.

At the time of the CRA's passage, the world of banking was, as Monty Python would put it, something completely different. Banking was largely a local industry; indeed, interstate branch banking wasn't legal yet. Mortgage lending, moreover, was largely the province of just one sector of the banking industry-the so-called "thrift" or savings and loan institutions, which had a long-standing deal with government. They would pay relatively low rates of interest to their many small depositors in exchange for charging relatively low interest rates for home loans. The limited earnings spread strongly discouraged risk and, combined with the lack of bank competition, undoubtedly limited many neighborhoods' access to credit. This came to be known as "redlining," which led many advocates for the poor to conclude that only a legislative mandate could guarantee that those of modest means, living in struggling urban areas, had access to credit. (Back then, I was a crusading left-wing journalist pushing for just this kind of regulation.)

Until the Clinton years, CRA compliance wasn't a difficult matter for banks, which could get an A for effort simply by advertising loan availability in certain newspapers. Then the Clinton Treasury Department changed matters in 1995, requiring banks that wanted "outstanding" CRA ratings to demonstrate statistically that they were lending in poor neighborhoods and to lower-income households. But this new era of strict enforcement came about in response to conditions that no longer existed. The bank deregulation of the 1980s-initiated not by Republicans, but by the Carter administration's federal Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act-paved the way for sharp competition among mortgage lenders. "The CRA may not be needed in today's financial environment to ensure all segments of our economy enjoy access to credit," argued a 1999 Dallas Federal Reserve Bank paper called "Redlining or Red Herring?"

But banks, engaged in a frenzy of mergers and acquisitions, soon learned that outstanding CRA ratings were the coin of the realm for obtaining regulators' permission for such deals. Further, nonprofit advocacy groups-including the now famous Acorn and the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA)-demanded, successfully, that banks seeking regulatory approvals commit large pools of mortgage money to them, effectively outsourcing the underwriting function to groups that viewed such loans as a matter of social justice rather than due diligence. "Our job is to push the envelope," Bruce Marks, founder and head of NACA, told me when I visited his Boston office in 2000. He made clear that he would use his delegated lending authority to make loans to households with limited savings, significant debt, and poor credit histories. The sums at his group's disposal were not trivial: when NationsBank merged with Bank of America, it committed $3 billion to NACA. The housing arm of Acorn received a $760 million commitment from the Bank of New York.

Sizable pools of capital came to be allocated in an entirely new way. Bank examiners began using federal home-loan data-broken down by neighborhood, income, and race-to rate banks on their CRA performance, standing traditional lending on its head. In sharp contrast to the old regulatory emphasis on safety and soundness, regulators now judged banks not on how their loans performed, but on how many loans they made and to whom. As one former vice president of Chicago's Harris Bank once told me: "You just have to make sure you don't turn anyone down. If anyone applies for a loan, it's better for you just to give them the money. A high denial rate is what gets you in trouble." It's no surprise, then, that as early as 1999, the Federal Reserve Board found that only 29 percent of loans in bank lending programs established especially for CRA compliance purposes could be classified as profitable.

As I contended in City Journal back in 2000, this was exceptionally poor social policy. Extending lines of credit based on noneconomic criteria hurts low-income neighborhoods much more than it hurts banks or other lenders. In a February 2003 study, Congressional Budget Office analysts Charles Capone and Albert Metz wrote: "Once a neighborhood foreclosure cycle starts . . . it becomes progressively harder for other households to sell their homes. Abandoned properties and blight can destroy neighborhoods where low-down payment affordable housing programs are prevalent" (emphasis added). In 2003, a homeowner in Chicago's blue-collar Back of the Yards neighborhood-where the first wave of subprime foreclosures had already begun-told me: "That hurts values right there. You try to show people that there's hope for the block and then you get slapped right back down again." Collateral damage is greatest for lower-income households that pay their bills on time but find themselves living next door to a house in foreclosure.
 

TSR

Well-known member
Mike said:
With respect to Aplus' example, pretty soon I would have him paying me to let him do my janitorial work.

Unreasonable thinking will always find an unreasonable answer. :roll:

This statement by you tells me you are not a reasonable thinking person that cannot be rational, thus void of the ability to debate. :arrow:

Come on now Mike, where's your sense of humor. I was just grossly exaggerating what could happen if everytime one of Aplus' customer complained that his prices was too high.
 

aplusmnt

Well-known member
Tex said:
aplus, the brevity of my statement was meant to allow you to think but you seemed to use it as an excuse to not think any deeper than a liberal vs. conservative label you have made up in your head.

We need a little more thought than the simpleton argument you propose.



Tex

Problem is we think we different sides of the brain! I have given it just as much deep thought as you, only difference in my deep thought I came to the conclusion to do what has worked in the past and not repeat the failed tries of over taxation.

It truly is a simple view to realize if you make something more rewarding to do that businesses will do it. Why is everything about Tax, Tax, Tax.

If you think heavy taxes are proven to work for businesses then please explain why companies take their companies and move from California to the Midwest on almost daily.

Some one with thought would realize if a company moves a thousand jobs from California to the Midwest to save on taxes that there is something to cutting taxes. Only question is rather the U.S. will follow the California model that is going bankrupt or follow the model of states who lower taxes and see growth.

The answer has always been in the puzzle, you just have to keep putting it together long enough to see the picture in front of your face!
 

aplusmnt

Well-known member
reader (the Second) said:
Has any of you seen Gate's estate? His garage is 45,000 square feet. Secretaries became millionaires at Microsoft. They are by no means suffering folks. They've had a fabulous run as a monopoly and used every trick in the books to shut out competition.

In his defense, The Gates Foundation does a huge amount of good in the world.

What a company! Secretaries become millionaires! Seems a company like that should be rewarded not punished.

Guess instead of Secretaries becoming millionaires you liberals want the government to get that money! :roll:

Liberals will never be happy until everyone is poor and no one is rich! A company that has secretaries become millionaires has to be one of the greatest companies to ever walk the earth!
 

aplusmnt

Well-known member
TSR said:
And if your customers complain about price you lower the price huh Aplus??? Is that how you do business? If so you must make a lot of money in your business. :shock:

Funny you mention it, I just been working on two contracts that both of them got their prices reduced. Things change all the time, one of the accounts offered me 10 more stores after I agreed to a lower price. I came in under their new per store budget and they rewarded me with an increase of about 25% more profit for their account.

The Government has the same choices, they can not lower taxes and they not only will not grow jobs in that sector but they will most likely lose jobs. Or they can listen to the businesses and people and lower taxes and see an increase of Jobs. Simple Math!

Problem with Liberals is they can not see how the snowball works, you lower corporation taxes you get more jobs, then you get more people paying income tax, then you have more people spending money at other locations so they hire new employees. The Government ends up getting more tax revenue and people get jobs, and corporations get to make profit instead of moving or going bankrupt like so many do now days.

Liberals just can not stand to see a company or person be successful, they want the profitable ones to be taxed or unionized until they fail.

Isn't it a lot better to see a company succeed than to see them get our tax dollars in a bail out? :roll:
 

TexasBred

Well-known member
Oldtimer said:
TexasBred said:
Sandhusker said:
And who the hell are they to know more about an individual bank than the people who are running it?

Unfortunately many banks and bankers have already proved they know very little about what they're doing, where they're going or what's going to happen next. Even down to the local home owned banks.

It looks to me like the Independent investigators think the Fed has been too easy on the banks- and should be tightening their hold on them rather than loosening up....

Bank Stress Tests Were Too Easy, Do Them Again, Warns Panel

Tuesday, June 9, 2009 9:20 AM

A government test of whether 19 major banks could survive a further downturn in the economy may have relied on too rosy a scenario and should be repeated, independent investigators say.



In a report released Tuesday, the Congressional Oversight Panel for the government's $700 billion financial rescue effort found that the Federal Reserve used a "conservative and reasonable" approach to assessing the health of the nation's biggest banks.


But, the panel added, the Fed's worst-case scenario does not go far enough. For example, the "stress tests" conducted by the Fed were based on the 2009 unemployment rate average of 8.9 percent. Unemployment in May climbed to 9.4 percent.


"While no one should gainsay the potentially positive results of the tests, it would be equally unwise to think that those results reflect a diagnosis of all of the potential weaknesses or create a necessarily sufficient buffer against future reverses for the banking system," the panel wrote.


Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard University law professor who heads the panel, was expected to testify before the Joint Economic Committee on Tuesday about the group's findings.


Last month, the Fed found that 10 of the 19 banks needed additional capital. Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo are among banks told to boost capital by a total of $75 billion to cover potential losses.


The Federal Reserve said Monday that plans submitted by those banks, if implemented, would be enough to help them survive a deeper recession.


The Congressional Oversight Panel says that additional capital held by the banks should not be interpreted as an end to the financial crisis.


The panel recommended that the Fed repeat stress testing so long as banks continue to hold large amounts of bad debt on their books. The panel also suggests that banks be required to run their own internal stress tests and share those results with federal regulators.

OT, actually it's just the opposite. Field examiners and investigators often find violations in banks and write up these violations in their examination report. The bank always reserves the right to go before the feds and appeal any violation. That's where "big money" talks as well as good whiskey.......well up the ladder. The work done out in the field is negated by the big shots.

Internal "stress tests" have been going on for years just under a different name..."internal audits" and meeting reserve requirements on a daily basis. These new "stress tests" are a joke.
 

Tex

Well-known member
aplusmnt said:
Tex said:
aplus, the brevity of my statement was meant to allow you to think but you seemed to use it as an excuse to not think any deeper than a liberal vs. conservative label you have made up in your head.

We need a little more thought than the simpleton argument you propose.



Tex

Problem is we think we different sides of the brain! I have given it just as much deep thought as you, only difference in my deep thought I came to the conclusion to do what has worked in the past and not repeat the failed tries of over taxation.

It truly is a simple view to realize if you make something more rewarding to do that businesses will do it. Why is everything about Tax, Tax, Tax.

If you think heavy taxes are proven to work for businesses then please explain why companies take their companies and move from California to the Midwest on almost daily.

Some one with thought would realize if a company moves a thousand jobs from California to the Midwest to save on taxes that there is something to cutting taxes. Only question is rather the U.S. will follow the California model that is going bankrupt or follow the model of states who lower taxes and see growth.

The answer has always been in the puzzle, you just have to keep putting it together long enough to see the picture in front of your face!

I don't believe the answer is to tax tax tax either. There is a big disconnect between politicians who spend more than they take in via taxes. They can borrow the difference, print money, or tax. None of them are good in excess and all have costs.

When you think you can get away from those three items, you just don't know what you are talking about. I don't think you can collect no taxes, nor do I think you should inflate your way out of it nor do I think we should just put the debt on our kids.

I sure don't believe we should just let very rich people make the argument that they will take their money and run if we don't decrease their taxes. If they run, don't let them sell in the U.S. anymore and siphon money out of the U.S. Make them have as much of an interest in putting things back in balance instead of running from the problem and leaving everyone else behind.

The recent "conservative" argument has to been to stop taxing. That only leaves the other two items and they have totally over borrowed leaving a huge national debt.

They also made the deal of shipping in cheap Chinese goods in return for Chinese buying t bills. It has allowed the communist Chinese government to basically buy industries here in the U.S. without increasing interest rates, which is what borrowing usually does. The politicians have pulled one over on us keeping the party going and putting everything on the nation's credit card, which will have to be paid back.

Your "stop taxing" argument instead of stop spending argument has put our nation in serious financial straits because the credit card limit is being set by the Chinese. They can take those dollars they have of ours and continue to buy up the world's resources, including oil.

What can you expect from someone who can only put things in two categories, "conservative" or liberal.

You remind me of the kid that just put everything on daddy's credit card without a thought. "Please, daddy, let me party and leave you with the bill, you can give the bill to your grand kids."

Tex
 

Sandhusker

Well-known member
TexasBred said:
Sandhusker said:
And who the hell are they to know more about an individual bank than the people who are running it?

Unfortunately many banks and bankers have already proved they know very little about what they're doing, where they're going or what's going to happen next. Even down to the local home owned banks.

You can say the exact same thing about our president and 90% of Congress - both parties.

I say let them go broke and let the bankers who do know what's going on take their place. That's how it is supposed to work in a capitalist society.
 

Richard Doolittle

Well-known member
You can say the exact same thing about our president and 90% of Congress - both parties.

This basically sums up the answer to most all of these debates. WE NEED TO STOP THE MADNESS AND THROW ALL OF THE BUMS OUT OF WASHINGTON! Most all of the elected representatives lose all concept of reality far too soon when they get up there.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Sandhusker said:
TexasBred said:
Sandhusker said:
And who the hell are they to know more about an individual bank than the people who are running it?

Unfortunately many banks and bankers have already proved they know very little about what they're doing, where they're going or what's going to happen next. Even down to the local home owned banks.

You can say the exact same thing about our president and 90% of Congress - both parties.

I say let them go broke and let the bankers who do know what's going on take their place. That's how it is supposed to work in a capitalist society.

We haven't had a free market capitalist society in the US since 1789....Since then the government has established the "winners" and the "losers".....

And when the GREED of Bankers/Financial Investors/Big Business CEO's puts their trust by the public as lower than lawyers, and used car salesmen--- that tells a lot ... :roll: :(
 

Sandhusker

Well-known member
What about the GREED of the unions who drove the hand that fed them into bankruptcy? What about the GREED of Senate Banking Committee Chairs who took bribes from those those he was to oversee? You're getting good at cherry picking for your blanket Obama defense.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Sandhusker said:
What about the GREED of the unions who drove the hand that fed them into bankruptcy?
Why did management agree to these contracts :???: I've arbitrated and negotiated with several unions- you don't have to give in to them...


What about the GREED of Senate Banking Committee Chairs who took bribes from those those he was to oversee?

Prove it....Why haven't they been charged :???: Repubs controlled the Congress for 12 years- and the Administration/Justice Dept for the past 8-- if these folks were committing crimes- why weren't they investigated- and charged :???:

.
 

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