Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

So this is interesting: pressure from Congress to get back at Saudi for 9/11 leads to Treasury releasing country-by-country data on who owns its debt: http://ticdata.treasury.gov/Publish/mfh.txt. China and Japan hold more than rest of the top 10 combined.

Ireland is #4???

[Wild Hoss]

Hoss. I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't edit my posts to change their meaning. When I brought up the mortgage crisis, I was agreeing with you about the loss of real estate jobs that you pointed out.

You can have your opinion, but not your own facts. In the same article from Wikipedia where you got our chart, it says clearly that ARMs were about 80% of the subprime mortgage market. You make a point of saying that subprimes were less than 25% of all mortgages, but then blame it on ARMs, which had to be less than the subprimes.

Further, during the Bush years, the rate for 30-year fixed mortgages fell from around 7% when he took office to something over 6% in January of 2009. And, frankly, I don't know what greed has to do with interest rates. Interest is the price of money, and following the bust in 2008, there was less demand for money. Interest rates fell.

https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=NUh

We have now had 90 consecutive months of virtually zero interest rates; by far the longest time in US history. I don't know how you and froot can say that this is in any way "trickle down". Wealth is declining overall in the US., and the zero interest rate is the medicine prescribed by the political elites. It is simply a transfer of wealth from the savers to the borrowers. And the biggest borrower is the US Government.

The crisis in 2008 was primarily caused by a real estate bubble that burst. All the fly-by-night mortgage companies are gone now, but those junk mortgages were purchased by Freddie and Fannie. This was the result of governmental intervention through the CRA.

It was not my intention to change the meaning of your post Geez, just to remove the unnecessary fictional parts which supported the bolded premise. My intent was brevity, but I apologize regardless.

I think that if you actually read what I linked however, you would see that there is an entire section debunking your claims, specifically noting where studies by the GAO and other entities definitively stated that that government efforts to make housing available to lower-income borrowers in the 1990s was a contributing factor (as was every sale to some degree) but not a causal one.

We can debate whether the government should be in the real estate business at all, but to suggest the fraction of total borrowing that it backed- mostly fixed-rate loans to boot- caused the bubble or its eventually collapse is just silly.

[Wild Hoss]

Ireland is #4???

Yeah, seeing the Caymans at #3 isn't sketch either.

[hack]

Ireland is a tax haven. That also explains Switzerland, Luxembourg and Singapore. But I thought Ireland was a tax haven chiefly for tech companies, because the corporate tax rate is low and so is the rates for intellecutal property. So perhaps this means that Apple's hoard is heavily invested in government securities.

[entropy]

Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

Geezer... Hoss will blame bush... Just know that in advance.

The reason 2008 was even allowed to happen due was the repeal of the Glass-Steagel act and the community futures modernization act. I don't believe the need for large bailouts and the over heating of the economy happens without those changes.

Yes.. Pushing for less down payments by the Clinton administration also help.. Lower interest rates to offset the dot com bubble burst helped.. You can also add congressional approved tax breaks on home lending... And accounting rules like market to market that helped make properties look like hey were worth less on paper.. You can blame the delusion that homes would always increase in value making them almost risk free.. But again, IMO those items only added fuel to the fire... They were not the "cause".

Besides... Those Wall Street banks have given the clintons over $93m since Bill was elected. There is a reason for that..


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[Wild Hoss]

Geezer... Hoss will blame bush... Just know that in advance.

This from the guy who blamed Clinton a page back?

[Wild Hoss]

Ireland is a tax haven. That also explains Switzerland, Luxembourg and Singapore. But I thought Ireland was a tax haven chiefly for tech companies, because the corporate tax rate is low and so is the rates for intellecutal property. So perhaps this means that Apple's hoard is heavily invested in government securities.

There was an article written late last week that stated a substantial amount of overseas corporate holdings were owned by 5 major tech firms. Apple and Google (Alphabet) were among them, with Apple being #1.

[hack]

To be fair, they are just reponding intelligently to the rules as they are. American citizens pay tax on income no matter where it is generated or held, but corporate income isn't taxed unless brought back into the country. So they leave it out there, and other countries have responded intelligently themselves by grtabbing slices of it. Sick system.

[entropy]

Yeah, seeing the Caymans at #3 isn't sketch either.

a lot of banks in the Caymans. Holding US debt would make sense.

[Wild Hoss]

To be fair, they are just reponding intelligently to the rules as they are. American citizens pay tax on income no matter where it is generated or held, but corporate income isn't taxed unless brought back into the country. So they leave it out there, and other countries have responded intelligently themselves by grtabbing slices of it. Sick system.

Oh, no doubt about it...the endless duel between laws and loopholes.

IMO, most of those corps want to keep their money here, so if the environment was at least competitive, they would. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think we should be trying to entice that cash back home.

[Wild Hoss]

a lot of banks in the Caymans. Holding US debt would make sense.

They have the greatest banks. No self-respecting mobster would bank anywhere else!

[hack]

``Their banks are tremendous, believe me. The best banks.''

Now that other states are trying to tax that money, the US is going to incentivize bringing it back. Global tax system is pretty damn insane. But you've got think what led to this in the first place. Did the legislature and executive think it was doing what voters wanted when it created a system in which corporations can stash cash overseas and people can't?

[Wild Hoss]

Holy hell...its raining hard enough to wash away entropy's sins here.

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[entropy]

Let's not make crazy comments...


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[Da Geezer]

Hoss said:

IMO, most of those corps want to keep their money here, so if the environment was at least competitive, they would. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think we should be trying to entice that cash back home.

No question. And Hack makes a valid point that corporations are allowed to keep money overseas while individuals are not. Changing the marginal US corporate rate to 15% would fix the problem over time, but I fear that the politicians will try to use force to accomplish it quickly. US corporate income is taxed by the locality where it is generated, but, I believe, the tax paid becomes a credit against the US taxes when repatriated back to the US. A more palatable solution to our progressive friends may be to not allow this credit at all (coupled with a lower rate).