Category Archives: Business/Economics

Business/Economics, U.S.

Evil Elites: Check the facts, fithly rich are NOT the ones creating new jobs!

Right wing pro-unAmerican Corporate America supporters are spouting off that the evil elites are the ones we should thank for job creation.

Fact: According to the Congressional Research Service’s report titled Small Business and the Expiration of the 2001 Tax Rate Reductions: Economic Issues, cutting taxes would have little affect on job creation. Here’s why; business owners already deduct their employees’ wages off their company’s tax filings!

Fact: According to the Congressional Research Service, there is no evidence that tax breaks results in increased investment into businesses!

Fact: Traditionally, in a bad economy the main reason for reduced employment is that business revenues are down, due to reduced spending by consumers.  Reduced revenue means less taxes businesses have to pay anyway (why do you think local governments are going bust?)! Tax breaks to rich business owners do not solve that problem!

Fact: Recently the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities issued a report which showed that tax breaks to rich business owners has a net effect of…nothing!  In the extreme short term jobs might be created, or working hours lengthened, but in the longer run the rich business owners cut back so much they cancel out any employment increases made in the short run!!!

Fact: Studies show that the businesses creating the most new jobs are new small businesses. But the overwhelming majority of filthy rich are not involved in new small businesses, so why give the elites more tax breaks?  According to the U.S. Treasury (Department of the Treasury, Office of Tax Analysis Methodology to Identify Small Businesses and their Owners, Technical Paper 4, August 2011), only 7.6% of elites get their income from small business operations, and only 5.6% of those actually have employees!!!

 

Business/Economics, U.S.

Evil Elites: Check the facts, high taxes on the rich do NOT hurt small businesses!

Right wing pro-unAmerican Corporate America supporters are spouting off that raising taxes on the elites will hurt small business owners.

Fact: The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s own data (August 2011 technical paper titled Methodology to Identify Small Businesses and their Owners) shows that increasing taxes on the filthy rich will affect only 2.5% of small businesses!

Fact: According to the Small Business Administration, the reason is that about 21 million small businesses are “mom & pop” operations, meaning they have little to no employees (they are operated by the owners themselves), and the average yearly revenue is only $45,000!

Something else, the SBA says the overwhelming majority of U.S. businesses are “small businesses”, employing more than half the U.S. work force.  However, the SBA also points out that the survival rate is not good, with only 25% lasting 15 years or more.  Interestingly the SBA says the survival rate for the big corporations is almost the same!

What this tells me is that tax breaks for businesses, or the filthy rich, are not helping businesses to survive long term (20 years is long term).

Business/Economics, International, U.S.

Media Misleading: Some news sources continue to say Romney is king of “small dollar” donations! How is $50,000 per person “small dollar”? Fundraiser held by convicted U.S. war criminal! Oh, and Israelis can’t wait to pay it on July 29!

I’ve noticed some news media sources seem to be marveling at how much money vulture capitalist Mitt Romney has been raising.  They even mislead people by claiming his campaign donations are “small dollar”!

Maybe small dollar if you’re one of the elites!  Try $50,000 per plate dinner fundraisers, that’s at least $10,000 more than what Obama is asking!

The most recent fundraiser was on July 12, in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  It was hosted by recently convicted (in absentia, in May of this year!) war criminal Dick Cheney: “At the end of the week-long hearing, the five-panel tribunal unanimously delivered guilty verdicts against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their key legal advisors who were all convicted as war criminals for torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.  Full transcripts of the charges, witness statements and other relevant material will now be sent to the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, as well as the United Nations and the Security Council.”-Foreign Policy Journal

The Jackson Hole war criminal fundraiser started out with $2,500 per person minimum donation and worked its way up to $100,000 for couples who would get to eat right along side Romney and Cheney, and, become a Founding Member of Romney Victory.

Another $50,000 per plate fundraiser for Romney is coming up on July 29, but not in the United States. It will take place in Israel.

But July 29 is a day of fasting for many Israelis, Tisha B’Av, to remember the victims of World War 2.  Does that stop Romney? Nope, his people said they’ll work around it: “Don’t worry, they’re not going to not have a fundraiser. They’ll find a way around it maybe by having a breaking of the fast meal combined with a Romney fundraiser.”-Jonny Daniels, Republican political strategist based in Israel (isn’t that interesting, the U.S. Republican party has strategists based in Israel)

 

 

 

 

Business/Economics, International, Technology, U.S.

What Economic Recovery? GE outsources innovation, spends millions building new China Innovation Center!

“These facilities…will play an instrumental role in building out much needed local innovation capabilities in the critical industries that are key to the region’s long term growth.”-Mark Hutchinson, president and CEO of GE Greater China

On 18 July 2012, unAmerican Corporate America giant, General Electric (GE), announced they’ve opened the China Innovation Center.

This as the Obama administration has been calling for more spending on innovation, but I thought he meant in the United States!  Here’s what he said: “We now live in a world where technology has made it possible for companies to take their business anywhere. If we want them to start here and stay here and hire here, we have to be able to out build and out educate and out innovate every other country on Earth.”-Barack Obama, September 2011

How can you “out innovate every other country on Earth”, when your own corporations are outsourcing the innovation?

The GE China Innovation Center in Xi’an cost $60 million USD to build.  I wounder if GE somehow got any U.S. taxpayer money, or some kind’o U.S. tax break, for their China project?

Business/Economics, International

Qatar & Iran join forces to extact oil from massive oil field!

“The excavations of oil wells in the South Pars Oil Field will bear fruit soon. Two oil drilling rigs have begun working there and one of them in the joint fields. Drillings of these fields have surpassed the depth of 1,500 meters [4,921 feet] inside the earth…”-Musa Souri, Pars Oil and Gas Company

18 July 2012, Iranian and Qatary oil companies have announced they will join forces to take advantage of the massive South Pars field.

Iran has stated that they will be extracting 35,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil, but, the Persian Gulf country of Qatar just announced their goal will be 450,000 bpd!

 

 

Business/Economics, International, Technology, U.S.

World War 3: Computer Trojan attacks both Iran & Israel! Is the coming War being manipulated by a shadow government?

“While the malware and infrastructure is very basic compared to other similar projects, the Madi attackers have been able to conduct a sustained surveillance operation against high profile victims.”-Nicolas Brulez, Kaspersky Lab

19 July 2012, several security companies have discovered a new trojan program that’s targeting several countries including Iran and Israel!

“Statistics from the sinkhole revealed that the victims were primarily business people working on Iranian and Israeli critical infrastructure projects, Israeli financial institutions, Middle Eastern engineering students, and various government agencies communicating in the Middle East.”-Seculert statement

The Madi (Mahdi) malware allows remote users to take data from Windows computers.  The fact that most of the programing is in Farsi leads computer security experts to believe it came from Iran, yet the strange thing is that the majority of computer infections are in Iran.

Is this really a covert CIA op using Iranians who’re sympathetic to U.S. interests, you know, use Iranians to spy on Iranians?

Business/Economics, International, U.S.

What Economic Recovery? IMF declares European economy in “Critical” condition, calls for Trilateral Commission style single banking system!

“Despite major policy actions, financial markets in parts of the region remain under acute stress, raising questions about the viability of the monetary union itself.”-IMF statement

18 July 2012, the International Monetary Fund has declared the European Union (EU) economy as “critical”.

The IMF is also pushing for the creation of a single banking union for the EU.  Germany is so far opposed to such an idea.

IMF officials say one of the reasons for the critical economic situation in the EU, is that people are pulling their money out of banks.  Example: Some wealthy Greeks pulled their money out of Greek banks and put it into banks of other European countries that were more financially sound.  By creating a single EU banking system it would prevent that.

Despite being “critical” the economy of the EU is still bigger than that of the United States, and directly affects U.S. business, which is why so many U.S. investors are glued to news from Europe.

Business/Economics, International, U.S.

Corporate & Government Hypocrisy: Too Big to Fail U.K. bank caught violating U.S. sanctions against Iran! It happened under Bush Jr’s watch!!!

“The vast majority of the Iranian transactions, ranging from 75-90% over the years, were sent through HBUS [HSBC’s U.S. operation] and other U.S. dollar accounts without disclosing any connection to Iran.”-Department of Homeland Security report to U.S. Senate

17 July 2012, testimony in front of a U.S. Senate panel, by Homeland Security officials, revealed that HBUS (the U.S. division of United Kingdom’s HSBC) “concealed Iranian transactions” between 2001 and 2007 (gee that’s during the Bush Jr administration!).

$19.4 billion USD are involved in the “u-turn” transactions (a type of money laundering by Too Big to Fail banks): “From at least 2001 to 2007, two HSBC affiliates, HSBC Europe (HBEU) and later HSBC Middle East (HBME), repeatedly conducted U-turn transactions involving Iran through HBUS, many of which were not disclosed to the bank, even though they knew HBUS required full transparency to process U-turns.”-report to U.S. Senate

U.S. Senator, Carl Levin, said “HSBC’s chief compliance officer and other senior executive in London knew what was going on, but allowed the deceptive conduct to continue.”

Levin also pointed out that the U.S. Department of the Treasury, under George W. Bush, did nothing to stop HSBC.

This is the latest accusation against HSBC. The Too Big to Fail bank has also been accused of helping Mexican drug lords and Saudi Arabian terrorists, among other crimes.  Read about it in the 335 page report at www.hsgac.senate.gov/reports

Business/Economics, International, U.S.

World War 3: Russia about to pay off debts to Iran, announces financing deal to help Iran avoid U.S. & EU sanctions!

“The problem of the Iranian LCs [Letters of Credit] created by the U.S. and western states’ sanctions against the banking system (of Iran) can be solved by using the banks operating in the Russian regions.”-Alexander Vitalivic, Russian Head of the Iran-Russia Regional Cooperation Workgroup

17 July 2012, Russian officials announced, at the Iran-Russia Regional Cooperation Workgroup meeting, that Russia is willing and able to help Iran avoid any bad economic effects from U.S. and European Union sanctions!

“The presence of small and medium size banks and financial institutions of the (Russian) regions (on the scene of transactions with Iran) will be useful for motivating an increase in exchanges and preventing decrease in exports.”-Alexander Vitalivic

Also, Russian Head of Iran-Russia Joint Trade Council, Yuri Papoyev, announced that Central Bank of Russia (CBR) is ready to make due payments to Iranian parties: “After meetings with the Russian Central Bank officials, they agreed to make due payments and open LCs [Letters of Credit] for Iran in the least time possible.”

Business/Economics, U.S.

Class Warfare: New poll shows U.S. Democrats & Republican voters want to cut the Military!!! Republicans hate benefits for military families! More proof your Elitist leaders are out of touch!

“The idea that Americans’ would want to keep total defense spending up so as to preserve local jobs is not supported by the data.”-Steven Kull, Program for Public Consultation

On 16 July 2012, the Program for Public Consultation (run through the University of Maryland) announced that surveys showed both Democrats and Republican voters want to drastically cut tax spending on the U.S. Department of Defense!

The survey was also conducted by the Stimson Center’s Budgeting for Foreign Affairs and Defense program, and the Center for Public Integrity’s National Security program.

According to the survey, 80% of people who consider themselves Democrats favor drastic cuts to the military, but, so do 74% of people who consider themselves Republicans!

And when the survey asked specifically about healthcare spending on military families and retirees, Republicans jumped on that, with a call for cutting that budget by $7.4 billion USD!

Don’t worry Red voters, Democrats also wanted to cut benefits for military families and retirees, but by only $6.6 billion!

More details here.