SubponticatePoster posted:

Nah, we want to redecorate your homes and make you go to brunch.

My Imaginary GF posted:

If mean American income were increased, would the program have a more equal distribution of benefits? If yes, the problem is with income and not the deduction.

ComradeCosmobot posted:

Technically correct, unless the rich are getting richer too. Income disparity results in benefit disparity, so what you really argue for is income equality, not income growth. But what if you don't like income equality? Well, then we'd best look into phasing out deductions.

quote:

"We now know that Fed loaned trillions of dollars at zero or near-zero interest rates not only to the largest financial institutions in this country, but also to many of our largest corporations - including GE, McDonalds and Verizon. Most surprising, the Fed also lent huge sums of money to foreign private banks and corporations" he added.

Among the corporate beneficiaries were Citigroup, which received over $1.8 trillion; Morgan Stanley, which received nearly $2 trillion; Goldman Sachs, which received nearly $600 billion; and Bear Stearns, which received more than $960 billion in short-term loans with an interest rate as low as 0.5 percent.

The Fed's multi-trillion bailout was not limited to Wall Street and big banks, Some of the largest corporations in this country also received a multi-trillion bailout. Among those are General Electric, to which the Fed made over $16 trillion in financing under a commercial paper funding facility alone; McDonald's; Verizon; and Toyota.

Good Citizen posted:

I don't think understand what an audit entails. One of the big 4 would be willing to take on the engagement, and the report would be an honest assessment of their financial position. Whatever the report is used for beyond that isn't much concern unless it brings in liability to the firm, and in that case it would be considered well before that stage and would only modify the scope of the audit.

Joementum posted:

I want to stand up for Fed Audits, based on what was found during the one-time Paul/Sanders audit of 2010, which was part of Dodd-Frank, limited in scope, and non-recurring.


The Fed should not be offering low-to-no-interest guaranteed loans to McDonald's, Verizon, and private banks (other than through the Federal deposit system) and I doubt there's any way to stop it from doing that unless there's a periodic, public audit and disclosure system established.

NYTimes posted:

Even if many middle-income families save in 529 plans, an administration official, referring to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, said that more than 70 percent of the account balances for 529 plans and another option known as Coverdell Education Savings Accounts are held by families with incomes over $200,000. (Those figures also include health savings accounts, but still provide a reasonable best estimate, the administration said.) A report from the Government Accountability Office found that a small percentage of families use 529 plans and Coverdell accounts. And those that do use them have a median income that is three times the median income of families without the accounts.

Joementum posted:

I want to stand up for Fed Audits, based on what was found during the one-time Paul/Sanders audit of 2010, which was part of Dodd-Frank, limited in scope, and non-recurring.


The Fed should not be offering low-to-no-interest guaranteed loans to McDonald's, Verizon, and private banks (other than through the Federal deposit system) and I doubt there's any way to stop it from doing that unless there's a periodic, public audit and disclosure system established.

Joementum posted:

I want to stand up for Fed Audits, based on what was found during the one-time Paul/Sanders audit of 2010, which was part of Dodd-Frank, limited in scope, and non-recurring.


The Fed should not be offering low-to-no-interest guaranteed loans to McDonald's, Verizon, and private banks (other than through the Federal deposit system) and I doubt there's any way to stop it from doing that unless there's a periodic, public audit and disclosure system established.

evilweasel posted:

I don't know what the issue is, but I am very, very sure that the Fed did not loan $16 trillion to general electric or anyone else. I'd be very interested in some analysis of what the audit actually showed, but that press release throws around trillion so often that something's seriously wrong with whatever they're talking about. It might be technically correct in some sense but I'm sure it's not the sense we think of when we hear $16 trillion loan.

Joementum posted:

And to that I'd say: great! Turn them up. If it's truly a case of the Fed issuing reasonable loans at a time when nobody else is doing so, then we can have a discussion about that. If it's something happening regularly, we'll be able to address it. That report was made public over four years ago and the foundation of the Fed hasn't crumbled in the interim, so I'm skeptical that a similar, annual report would be damaging.

Joementum posted:

In other news, the KXL bill is going to pass its cloture vote test tomorrow, after a raft of Democratic amendment votes, as part of an agreement. It will then get a final vote later this week and then Obama will veto it.

Joementum posted:

And to that I'd say: great! Turn them up. If it's truly a case of the Fed issuing reasonable loans at a time when nobody else is doing so, then we can have a discussion about that. If it's something happening regularly, we'll be able to address it. That report was made public over four years ago and the foundation of the Fed hasn't crumbled in the interim, so I'm skeptical that a similar, annual report would be damaging.

Captain_Maclaine posted:

I lost track, did Bernie's climate change amendment make it through? I mean, I can't imagine it did, but weirder things have happened.

Joementum posted:

The Senate tabled the Sanders amendment to the KXL bill, 56-42.

Joementum posted:

Rhesus Pieces posted:

I love that "tabling" a motion has the complete opposite meaning in the U.S. than it does in the rest of the English-speaking world. Is it a spite thing, like coffee vs. tea, driving on the right side of the road, and on which side of the body the fanny resides?

Rhesus Pieces posted:

I love that "tabling" a motion has the complete opposite meaning in the U.S. than it does in the rest of the English-speaking world. Is it a spite thing, like coffee vs. tea, driving on the right side of the road, and on which side of the body the fanny resides?

RuanGacho posted:

Generally speaking, all government institutions should be transparent, and records should be generated and publicly accessible. I find it repugnant that there's some ideas or information that the public can't be allowed to see or know in due course because information imbalance leads to poorer decisions and we are in theory a government by public consent.

Kalman posted:

Oh, the commercial paper loans the Fed made when there was literally no one lending on commercial paper?

Many large companies (particularly those with either lending arms like GM and GE or accounts like Verizon use commercial paper to smooth cash flow issues). Markets froze and those companies would have collapsed - despite being perfectly healthy companies - because they wouldn't have been able to make payroll, have operating funds, etc.

It's basically the perfect example of the problems with auditing the Fed - that's absolutely what they should have been doing at that time, but it looks bad without an understanding of corporate structures that's absent from most people in the US. An audit would turn up more things like that - useful, important things that only look bad if you don't understand modern finance. (Which, in fairness, no one does.)

Joementum posted:

Quote of the night, "As you've no doubt heard I'm already rich" ~ Mitt Romney, on why he didn't do a pair speaking tour, post-2012.

Bonus: "As if I needed that", after recalling advice that he grow stubble to look "more sexy".

Berke Negri posted:

Alright that's kind of baller.

Berke Negri posted:

Alright that's kind of baller.

Alter Ego posted:

...where is the "fanny" in the UK?

RuanGacho posted:

Generally speaking, all government institutions should be transparent, and records should be generated and publicly accessible. I find it repugnant that there's some ideas or information that the public can't be allowed to see or know in due course because information imbalance leads to poorer decisions and we are in theory a government by public consent.

quote:

Declaring the university system needs to get out from "under the thumb" of state government, Walker said he wants to give the Board of Regents more authority to contract for services and construct buildings without following state rules and processes that other state agencies must. His plan, if approved by the Legislature, would be coupled with a reduction in state aid of nearly 13%. He likened the proposal to the budget cuts that were paired with Act 10, the 2011 law that all but eliminated collective bargaining for most public workers.

Walker, who disclosed Tuesday he had set up a political committee for a potential presidential run, made his UW System announcement as he promoted a separate plan at the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce to provide $220 million in tax-backed bonds to help fund a new arena for the Milwaukee Bucks.

Under Walker's plan, UW schools would continue to operate for two more years under a tuition freeze that has been in place since 2013. That means they would have to cut their programs to account for the dropped funding.

The UW System would have more predictability from year to year to plan for how much state revenue to expect with a block grant and increases tied to inflation, said Walker, who has one son enrolled at UW-Madison and another at Marquette University. Walker attended Marquette but did not earn a degree.

UW System officials welcomed the plan to give them more autonomy — something they have long sought — but warned the cuts would mean fundamental changes in how they operate the system's 26 campuses. "This is going to mean layoffs in all of my schools and colleges," said UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank, calling the reduction likely the largest cut in the system's history.

Walker will formally introduce his plan Feb. 3 as part of the state budget he wants the Republican-controlled Legislature to pass. The state faces a shortfall of $928 million through mid-2017, and lawmakers will spend the next several months working off Walker's plan to balance the budget.

The UW System received $1.18 billion in state taxpayer money for the current fiscal year — less than what it received in 2010-'11. Walker's plan would cut that amount for next year by $150 million, or 12.7%. The $150 million cut would continue for the second year of the budget as well. State tax money makes up about 19% of the UW System's budget, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau. Tuition, federal aid, grants, donations and other payments bring the system's total annual funding to more than $6 billion.

After 2017, the Board of Regents would have the authority to set whatever tuition it saw fit for UW System schools. However, between now and then lawmakers would be free to pass legislation that would extend the tuition freeze or limit the size of increases.

Walker's plan would eliminate state laws governing the UW System. One such law provides faculty with tenure, which protects them from dismissal. Another provides for shared governance, which allows professors and students to have a role in how universities are run. Such matters would be left for the Board of Regents to decide — a better arrangement, said Rep. John Nygren (R-Marinette), co-chairman of the Joint Finance Committee. "Who do we want making those decisions? Legislators who have different perspectives or people in the day-to-day operation of the university?" Nygren said.

quote:

"In the future, by not having the limitation of things like shared governance, they might be able to make savings just by asking faculty and staff to consider teaching one more class a semester," Walker told reporters at the Madison hotel.

420DD Butts posted:

It looks like Scott Walker is really trying to up his conservative bonafides by gutting the UW system

Choice quotes, bolding mine:


And a quote I found hilarious from a follow-up article today:


Hmm yes, because who needs research when you can spend all of your time teaching classes that would normally have dedicated instructors without all of the inevitable layoffs?

Amergin posted:

And from all of the people who were saying Fed audits are only for college libertarians to be smug, crickets.

Fuckin' crickets.

They'll pile on an idea because a Republican proposed it without doing a drat bit of research and then pile on Republicans who do the same thing to Obama.

ErIog posted:

It only rankles people because they think of money the same way people did under the gold standard, and dag nabbit you're just handing out money to lazy bankers for no interest!

Stereotype posted:

Remember the real problem during the 2008 crisis was one of liquidity, as basically every bank and lending institution shut off all credit overnight due to perceived systematic instability.

Kalman posted:

"to correct their mistakes", it was to make sure they could operate normally.

Kalman posted:

The difference is that if you go bankrupt it sucks for you and your family. If GE can't pay its employees and defaults on long term corporate debt, it fucks the entire world over even worse than it already was.

Stereotype posted:

Remember the real problem during the 2008 crisis was one of liquidity, as basically every bank and lending institution shut off all credit overnight due to perceived systematic instability.

Joementum posted:

Great. In that case, absent the conditions of 2008, a regular audit should turn up nothing interesting.

Kalman posted:

And a regular investigation into research spending should also turn up nothing interesting, and generally doesn't, but that doesn't stop people from playing politics with it.

PC LOAD LETTER posted:

That was the common explanation given but I'm not buying it.

RuanGacho posted:

Right, which is why it is probably best to have full disclosure all the time so it's not an event which information comes out.

Kalman posted:

And a regular investigation into research spending should also turn up nothing interesting, and generally doesn't, but that doesn't stop people from playing politics with it.