The Washington Post this morning writes about the central issue, buried in all the blah blah about stimulus this and stimulus that: what the heck is going to happen in light of the trillion (trillions?) in new money created by the Fed to create the illusion that the bust isn’t happening? How will the U.S. avoid a Weimar scenario?
As a coda to my article on the tax:
The HEART Act, passed on 17 June 2008, substantially modified provisions of the expatriation tax. Since the new law is materially different from the previous, I will attempt to explain the current tax consequences of expatriation.
There is quite a mystery surrounding the $81.5 million donated to fifteen colleges by a donor insisting upon complete anonymity. This mysterious donor has insisted that the recipient schools make no attempt to ascertain her identity.
Recently, I was listening to an NPR interview on the subject. In the interview the “expert,” Melissa Berman, president and CEO of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, hypothesized about the identity of the mystery donor. So far so good.
In a rush to stimulate the economy, the Obama administration is touting various “visionary” plans to make the American economy more progressive, more innovative, and more forward-looking by subsidizing politically-motivated projects like “green” technology. These hands-on policies will be ineffective. Recent research suggests that a much more effective way to accomplish the same goals would be to eliminate intellectual monopoly and to reduce the regulatory burdens on innovators.
According to Paul Krugman, who wrote in The Return of Depression Economics that governments can solve almost any crisis simply by printing money, declares that California easily could solve its present crisis by raising taxes.
I was getting my haircut today, and the barber woman and I were talking about the sorry state of the economy. She said my that she is doing her part to help our economy by refusing to buy Mexican hair products, even though they are cheaper than American ones. She said she would spend as much as $2 more per bottle of shampoo if that’s what it would take, in the interest of boosting the American economy. Buying from Mexico can only hurt us.
