Why Congress matters
Oversight: You thought the Democrats did a great job
advocating for oversight for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae? You ain’t
seen nothing yet. The Democratic leadership by and large still refuses
to acknowledge the……

Or does he keep that stuffed in his mattress?

Speaking personally, I think there are a lot of rich people out there who we can tax at a point down the road to recover some of this money.

Barney Frank reminds me of Fagen You’ve got to Pick a Pocket or Two”

You have to love Barney Frank. He’s so confident of an overwhelming victory on November 4th, that he’s already announcing how Congress and the (assumed) Obama Administration will massive raise taxes: But, hey, he’s willing to wait a year before……

can we have a state please, just ONE tiny little state, of nothing but conservatives…we can call it Reaganhood.

JustTruth101 on October 21, 2008 at 12:31 PM

Come to Arizona. We’re working on it.

And what will they do when the rich decide to leave the country?

After all, they are the demographic with the means to easily do so…

They already planned for that:

http://www.sovereignsociety.com/Default/InsidiousNewExitTaxMayCostExpatsDearly/tabid/1765/Default.aspx

When the artificial intelligence machines we build rise and wipe our their human slavers, we won`t have to worry about ANY of this.

“Come with me if you want to live.”

All this talk about capital fleeing for places like ireland, why hasn’t it already happened? I mean, our corporate rate has been high for years…

Name the last high tech IPO (or any IPO for that matter). There was a time when, although our tax rate is higher, there were still advantages, like looser labor laws and such. With the passage of Sarbannes/Oxley that has ceased to be the case.

Some years ago, Congress enacted a law whose motivation was to stop US drug companies from transferring the intellectual property for very early stage drug discoveries into offshore companies, by levying a tax so calamitous that no one who knew about the law would ever do it. So, if you are a company or an individual inventor and transfer or sell your intellectual property (patents, patents pending, copyright, etc.) to an overseas company, you would be taxed as if you did not sell or transfer your patent, but as if you had only licensed your IP to that offshore company.

What does this mean? It means that, even after selling or transferring your IP, you will be liable for taxes on what that overseas company later makes on the IP, even though you never collect a single royalty from them. You will have a tax liability even though you have no income or profit.

Drug companies, faced with the incredibly long odds against any one discovery paying off and the enormous risks and costs associated with waiting years for FDA approval for any drugs that even made it that far, had ample reason and justification to transfer IP offshore at the earliest patent-idea stage in order to reduce the tax burden on any future profits from the drugs that proved out and then ran the government gauntlet. With Congress already shackling the drug companies left and right, it is a miracle on the order of a “miracle drug” in itself that our drug companies have managed to continue and innovate anyway. Moving their IP assets around internationally at an early stage, when they hardly knew what, if anything, they might be worth, is the minimum self-protection these companies should and did attempt to do, on behalf of their shareholders.

By enacting these laws, the Congress over time has only added to the reasons for drug companies (and any successful company) to simply move their HQ from the US to a more hospitable country, and thus avoid the increasing network of chains put on them by Congress.

While big drug companies were the target, as with all destructive and coercive economic directives from Congress, there has also been collateral damage from these “anti-offshoring laws” to the individual inventor and the small tech startup.

Unsuspecting inventors who find a foreign company that would like to invest in their technology and transfer their invention to that company will find themselves caught by this law.

Also keep in mind that there is a draconian exit tax in the US. We are the ONLY country that has one and we are also the only country who taxes it’s citizens who work overseas.

Frank is the one who needs adult pampers.

Frank must be German. He loves to eat frankfrutters.

“Here is the article from the New York Times that was calling for Fannie Mae
to open up the subprime market by order of the Clinton Administration.
Maybe, all the Democrats that have had the power of the congress and have been led around by the nose by the lobbyist from Credit Suisse and UBS should stop saying that the Republican trickle down theory created this mess and take some ownership”. Fat chance.

Here is the article:
By STEVEN A. HOLMES

Published: September 30, 1999 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities
and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the
credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other
lenders.

The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15
markets — including the New York metropolitan region — will encourage
those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is
generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae
officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.

Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been
under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand
mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure
from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.

In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been
pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime
borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are
not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans
from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates –
anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional
loans.

”Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the
1990′s by reducing down payment requirements,” said Franklin D. Raines,
Fannie Mae’s chairman and chief executive officer. ”Yet there remain
too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our
underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying
significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.”

Demographic information on these borrowers is sketchy. But at least one
study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the subprime market went
to black borrowers, compared to 5 per cent of loans in the conventional
loan market.

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae
is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any
difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized
corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a
government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in
the 1980′s.

”From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another
thrift industry growing up around us,” said Peter Wallison a resident
fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ”If they fail, the
government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up
and bailed out the thrift industry.”

Under Fannie Mae’s pilot program, consumers who qualify can secure a
mortgage with an interest rate one percentage point above that of a
conventional, 30-year fixed rate mortgage of less than $240,000 — a
rate that currently averages about 7.76 per cent. If the borrower makes
his or her monthly payments on time for two years, the one percentage
point premium is dropped.

Fannie Mae, the nation’s biggest underwriter of home mortgages, does not
lend money directly to consumers. Instead, it purchases loans that banks
make on what is called the secondary market. By expanding the type of
loans that it will buy, Fannie Mae is hoping to spur banks to make more
loans to people with less-than-stellar credit ratings.

Fannie Mae officials stress that the new mortgages will be extended to
all potential borrowers who can qualify for a mortgage. But they add
that the move is intended in part to increase the number of minority and
low income home owners who tend to have worse credit ratings than
non-Hispanic whites.

Home ownership has, in fact, exploded among minorities during the
economic boom of the 1990′s. The number of mortgages extended to
Hispanic applicants jumped by 87.2 per cent from 1993 to 1998, according
to Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. During that
same period the number of African Americans who got mortgages to buy a
home increased by 71.9 per cent and the number of Asian Americans by
46.3 per cent.

In contrast, the number of non-Hispanic whites who received loans for
homes increased by 31.2 per cent.

Despite these gains, home ownership rates for minorities continue to lag
behind non-Hispanic whites, in part because blacks and Hispanics in
particular tend to have on average worse credit ratings.

In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that
by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s portfolio
be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers. Last year, 44
percent of the loans Fannie Mae purchased were from these groups.

The change in policy also comes at the same time that HUD is
investigating allegations of racial discrimination in the automated
underwriting systems used by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to determine the
credit-worthiness of credit applicants. (End Article)

Starring Roles of The Raw Deal played by Pelosi, Frank and Raines.

Hey, if Oslima is elected it’ll be off to the re-education camps (Hotel Californias) for me. I was wondering do you think Katherine Ham would enjoy a nice Elk Dinner harvested by yours truly? You know, my last. Man’s gotta dream! (Nothing personal Michele, its just you’re married :-))