Usury, to be clear about it, is rich people taking advantage of poor people by lending them money on terms that are sure to make them fail - William Greid

A Government Accountability Office study due to be released today says that two thirds of US corporations and about 68% of foreign corporations doing business in the United States completely avoided any corporate income taxes between 1998 and 2005.

The GAO study did not investigate why corporations weren't paying federal income taxes or corporate taxes and it did not identify any corporations by name. It said companies may escape paying such taxes due to operating losses or because of tax credits.

More than 38,000 foreign corporations had no tax liability in 2005 and 1.2 million U.S. companies paid no income tax, the GAO said. Combined, the companies had $2.5 trillion in sales. About 25 percent of the U.S. corporations not paying corporate taxes were considered large corporations, meaning they had at least $250 million in assets or $50 million in receipts.

Link to article

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email: rshuler3156@gmail.com

A transplanted Midwesterner puts down roots in Alabama and helps show how "loyal Bushies" have corrupted our justice system.

It's hard to decide what to make of the sections in the Higher Education Act reauthorization that target "pay for play" conflicts of interest in the student loan programs.

A decade after its last reauthorization and five years since an updated version was due, a new version of the Higher Education Act has finally passed Congress. Here is what to like in the final higher ed bill.

Whenever a new sender email drops into my inbox, I use the online equivalent of a Kevlar vest and full M. O. P. P. gear to open it. Besides the obvious, they're often rife with incoherent wingnut screeds and veiled threats, usually the spelling and whatnot is just awful. So this chain looking thing I got today was a pleasant surprise simply by virtue of being readable:

How many zeros in a billion? The next time you hear a politician use the word 'billion' in a casual manner, think about whether you want the 'politicians' spending YOUR tax money. A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of it's releases.

A billion seconds ago it was 1959; a billion minutes ago Jesus was alive; a billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age; A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.

The communiqué then goes to complain about proposals for Hurricane Katrina reconstruction efforts, specifically New Orleans, and ends with a confusing mix of tax freedom stuff. But the numbers part was interesting, and the thing is, I think a lot of us here can comprehend a billion. These days we’re forced to struggle with a trillion.  So let's put that into perspective.

One trillion seconds ago anatomically modern humans were successfuly competing with the last bands of neandertals in ice age Europe; One-trillion minutes ago there were no modern humans at all and fire was still a million years in our hominid ancestors' future; One-trillion hours ago our direct ancestors were rat-like nocturnal insectivores hiding in cozy daytime burrows from allosaurs and raptors; One-trillion days ago there were no animals at all, but bacterial collectives had begun working together in communities that that would one day be called protozoa. And one-trillion years ago ... well there was no one trillion years ago as that would predate the observed beginning of time and space many times over.

Then again we can cram a trillion into much smaller time scales, as in the half a trillion dollar deficit Bush just admitted to, or the multi-trillion dollar war in Iraq based on a false premise, or the trillions in tax cuts and government giveaways to wealthy corporations and trust funds kids that will have to be repaid by hard-working single moms and their children for the next five generations, or the ten trillion dollar national debt almost all of which was racked up under the past three Republican Presidents.

A trillion is vast number, one thousand billion to be exact. For someone raised on the writing of the late Dr. Sagan, with a love for natural history, a billion is something I've had to learn to get my arms around. It took Republicans to teach me what a trillion feels like.

This is my first diary so please be kind.

The Federal Reserve Board is looking for input and consumer comments on proposed credit card lending rules. Some of the proposed changes are good. You can read about the changes and leave input at the Federal Reserve Board web site.

The rules, proposed for public comment under the Federal Trade Commission Act (FTC Act), also would forbid banks from imposing interest charges using the "two-cycle" billing method, would require that consumers receive a reasonable amount of time to make their credit card payments, and would prohibit the use of payment allocation methods that unfairly maximize interest charges. They also include protections for consumers that use overdraft services offered by their bank.

There’s been a great deal of talk lately about the inflationary implications brought on by rising commodity prices and negative real interest rates.  Many smart people feel the Federal Reserve should substantially raise rates.  In fact, there is an impassioned debate going on at the Fed regarding this issue.  So far, those on the Fed who want to keep rates low have prevailed.  

There is another side to this issue though.  Deflation.  Yes I said the nasty "D" word.  While it’s true that commodity prices have soared mainly due to rapid economic growth from some developing economies, disinflationary pressures do exist and should be of concern to everyone.

Not too long ago my wife and I were on the brink of foreclosure.  I know what that experience is like and I know how my wife and I reacted.  For those of you who have never experienced this kind of thing I would like to share our emotional reaction to this traumatic event.

You think you're going to be sensible.  You think that you'll have a clear head and that you'll explore all the options.  No one pictures themselves acting like complete idiots, putting their heads in the sand until it's too late.  But unfortunately, it happens anyway.

Cross posted from Future Majority.

In one of his Netroots Nation recaps, Kevin mentioned a new organization called Qvisory, which essentially aims to be the AARP for young people.  In conjunction with the research group Greenberg, Quinlan, Rosner, Qvisory just released a poll on the economic concerns of young people.  

We all know that the economy is the  #1 issue for (non-latino) youth.  The poll has some good information that fleshes out young voter's economic concerns.  Here's the situation in which many young people today find themselves:

When I went away to college, living away from home and being on my own was such a blast. Some of my best memories of school were in that first year -- dorm parties, my buddies on the second floor of Kreuger Hall, football games, and being surrounded by a small city of people my age. Heaven!

I was going to school full time and working between 10 and 30 hours a week to pay my way. I also got a checking account for the first time. Damn, I felt grown up. And then I started bouncing checks.

After seeing Lava20's diary on how to beat the credit card companies at their own game, and reading the comments from people who had ideas of their own about how to eliminate credit card debt -- and the laments of some commenters who needed more help -- I didn't see anyone who had tried the method that I used.

I started to write it into a comment, but it was so long, it merited its own diary.

Let me preface by saying, I am awful with finances and something of a procrastinator, so it's easy for me to get into trouble managing debt.  This method worked for me because it was so damn simple, and entirely goal-driven.  Follow me below the fold for the explanation.

The Fannie and Freddie show is not over yet.

In an article in the Telegraph today, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard warns that the the US Treasury may have just days to act before foreign patience snaps

Merrill Lynch has warned that the United States could face a foreign "financing crisis" within months as the full consequences of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage debacle spread through the world.

Brian Bethune, chief financial economist at Global Insight, said the US Treasury had two or three days to put real money behind its rescue plan for Fannie and Freddie or face a dangerous crisis that could spiral out of control.

Please read the full article. It is enlightening, and scary.

There's some odd similarities between the current credit crisis and Kurt Vonnegut's book "Hocus Pocus."

Yep.  We're kind of boned.  I suspect we'll be well and truly boned shortly.

The dollar's in the crapper.  Oil is flirting with $150 a barrel.  We're fighting two wars at the moment and either we or a close ally will probably strike Iran by the end of the year.  We have entitlement spending spiralling out of control (and both parties are to blame for that, thank you very much Medicare prescription drug "addition").  We are long on demand for mass transit but short on infrastructure.

We're really in some trouble here.  I think we need to soberly assess what we need, what we want, and what we can afford.

Besides the IndyMac collapse, the big business news story this week has been the future fate of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the government sponsored mortgage lenders.

If Freddie and Fannie go under, then obviously the shareholders would get nothing, but there is also talk about bailing out the bondholders (the people who own their debt). Who are these bondholdersthat could be bailed out by the government (and taxpayers)?

The top five foreign holders of Freddie and Fannie long-term debt are China, Japan, the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, and Belgium. In total foreign investors hold over $1.3 trillion in these agency bonds, according to the U.S. Treasury's most recent "Report on Foreign Portfolio Holdings of U.S. Securities."

China alone holds $376 billion!

This is my first diary hope everything is on the up and up.  I'm sure someone has already "diaried" about the newsworthy part of this diary, but I have a more personal question?  Okay, here goes:

Obama fundraising may be slowing down.  The problem doesn't seem like primarily being an issue of obama's supporters just not giving to the campaign, from all accounts it seems like the problem may be that Clinton's major donors/fundraisers are not donating to Obama because some feel the Obama campaign is not "doing enough" to help bring down Clinton's debt.

My question to thoses donors is: What more can Obama do?

Ok, I really didn't give Hillary $50. But if I did send her $50 as she requested via email today, I would have gotten a nifty shirt just like this one:

Pretty snazzy, huh? Nothing quite says, "Never quit, even when you're mathematically eliminated from the race and your continued attacks on your fellow Democrat increase the chances of John McCain becoming President and destroying the world as we know it", like one of these babies.