BS: US heading for 'fiscal cliff' - HELP!!!

Subject: RE: BS: US heading for 'fiscal cliff' - HELP!!!
From: GUEST,999
Date: 29 Dec 12 - 01:55 PM

Good link, Ed.

Subject: RE: BS: US heading for 'fiscal cliff' - HELP!!!
From: Ed T
Date: 29 Dec 12 - 01:13 PM

From the Huff Post

How Canada avoided the Cliff

Subject: RE: BS: US heading for 'fiscal cliff' - HELP!!!
From: GUEST,DDT
Date: 29 Dec 12 - 12:47 PM

The fiscal cliff is a big load of baloney.

Subject: RE: BS: US heading for 'fiscal cliff' - HELP!!!
From: GUEST,999
Date: 29 Dec 12 - 08:43 AM

That would be a change. As it is we're borrowing from our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.

Subject: RE: BS: US heading for 'fiscal cliff' - HELP!!!
From: Ebbie
Date: 28 Dec 12 - 04:51 PM

Maybe we could just borrow money from our parents?

Subject: RE: BS: US heading for 'fiscal cliff' - HELP!!!
From: Rapparee
Date: 28 Dec 12 - 03:56 PM

Just pull the ripcord on your golden parachute. Oh, yeah, wait, I don't have one either.

Subject: RE: BS: US heading for 'fiscal cliff' - HELP!!!
From: GUEST,999
Date: 28 Dec 12 - 03:52 PM

I don't expect agreement, either. But if any Republicans expect to get re-elected in 2014, they better shape up in a hurry, because this time President Obama won't be wearing the stuff that hits the fan, Republicans will. The Grand Old Party ain't so grand, and the party's over. imo.

Subject: RE: BS: US heading for 'fiscal cliff' - HELP!!!
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 28 Dec 12 - 02:57 PM

Politicians of both parties know that taxes must be increased in the near future and spending must be curbed.
Failing to agree and letting the 'fall' occur allows both parties to put the blame on each other and accomplishes the tax rise.
I expect no agreement.

(Getting out of the Middle East would help, but at least two more years of that unsuccessful venture).

Subject: RE: BS: US heading for 'fiscal cliff' - HELP!!!
From: Ebbie
Date: 28 Dec 12 - 02:19 PM

The current issue of Time Magazine has a comprehensive article on the effects of the 'fiscal cliff', entitled 'Doomsday at a Glance'.
If nothing is done, it will start out slowly but by February or March, "when the federal government hits its legal borrowing limit", the effects may be basically unmanageable and we could find ourselves back in a 2008-style economic collapse.

Subject: RE: BS: US heading for 'fiscal cliff' - HELP!!!
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 28 Dec 12 - 01:16 PM

Another aspect of the "cliff:"

Death and (estate) taxes sometimes go together

John Carney, CNBC.com
28 December 2012

Because the "fiscal cliff" will not stop for death, it looks as if death's carriage may make a "kindly" stop to pick up some American millionaires this year, to paraphrase Emily Dickinson.

In 2010, after a year in which the estate tax was zeroed out altogether, Congress passed a law that set the estate tax at 35 percent and exempted all estates under $5 million, adjusted for inflation. That law expires in January 2013 when the exemption will fall to $1 million and the tax will rise to 55 percent.

Many families are faced with a stark proposition. If the life of an elderly wealthy family member extends into 2013, the tax bills will be substantially higher. An estate that could bequest $3 million this year will leave just $1.9 million after taxes next year. Shifting a death from January to December could produce $1.1 million in tax savings.

...

It's well-known that people can delay death, for example, in order to live through significant dates—birthdays, holidays, anniversaries. In the first week of 2000, local New York City hospitals recorded an astonishing 50.8 percent more deaths than in the last week of 1999, according to the New York Times. Apparently, a significant number of people delayed their deaths in order to see the new millennium.

...

Economists Wojciech Kopczuk of Columbia University and Joel Slemrod of the University of Michigan studied how mortality rates in the United States were changed by falling estate taxes. They note that while the evidence of "death elasticity" is "not overwhelming," every $10,000 in available tax savings increases the chance of dying in the low-tax period by 1.6 percent. This is true both when taxes are falling, so that people are surviving longer to achieve the tax savings, and when they are rising, so that people are dying earlier, according to Kopczuk and Slemrod.

[A little more at the link]

John

Subject: RE: BS: US heading for 'fiscal cliff' - HELP!!!
From: ChrisJBrady
Date: 28 Dec 12 - 06:38 AM

Rolling Stone contributing editor Janet Reitman, the author of Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy: Inside Dartmouth's Hazing Abuses in the latest issue, recently sat down with her story's subject, Andrew Lohse, to talk about the article and its aftermath. Lohse, a whistle-blower on the over-the-top hazing in his school's Greek system, recounts some of the most outlandish rituals and speculates on how the story will affect [b]Dartmouth president Jim Yong Kim, who was recently tapped as the Obama administration's pick for head of the World Bank.[/b]

"I've never had any personal interactions with Dr. Kim, as much as I've tried," says Lohse. [b]"This is a guy who was just completely unaccountable, unresponsive, and I think maybe just uninterested in what was happening in the lives of his students."[/b]

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/update-dartmouth-frat-controversy-20120405

Subject: RE: BS: US heading for 'fiscal cliff' - HELP!!!
From: ChrisJBrady
Date: 28 Dec 12 - 06:03 AM

'Park Avenue' was a hard-hitting documentary in the US and UK a few months ago. It explains why and how the rich and wealthy in Park Avenue, Manhattan will never let those living in another Park Avenue in the South Bronx - aka the middle-class and poor - get out of poverty and debt.

Why Poverty? - 4. Park Avenue - Money, Power and the American Dream

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p010jx3m/Why_Poverty_Park_Avenue_Money_Power_and_the_American_Dream/

740 Park Avenue - an exclusive apartment building in Manhattan - is currently home to more billionaires than any other building in the United States. Less than five miles to the north is another Park Avenue in the South Bronx, where almost 40 per cent live in poverty and life prospects are less promising for those stuck at the bottom of the American pile. As international attention focuses on the US elections, Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney looks at inequality in the US through the prism of these two, near-adjacent places, to ask if America is still the land of opportunity.

"There's always been a gap between the wealthiest in our society and everyone else, but in the last 30 years something changed: that gap became the Grand Canyon," says Gibney. Through the story of the two Park Avenues, he argues that the extreme wealth of a few has been used to impose their ideas on the rest of America. By focusing on the residents of 740 Park, he asks questions about the influence of CEOs in Washington in return for tax policies that favour the ultra-rich. What chances do those at the bottom of the ladder have for upward mobility? Can someone who starts life on Park Avenue in the South Bronx end up living on Park Avenue in Manhattan?

Through archive and interviews with academics, political scientists, psychologists, former lobbyists and even a former doorman at 740 Park, Gibney's film is a polemical look at the socio-economic political landscape of contemporary USA.

A BBC Storyville film, produced in partnership with the Open University, Park Avenue screens as part of Why Poverty? - when the BBC and the OU, in conjunction with more than 70 broadcasters around the world, hosts a debate about contemporary poverty.

Its available on BBC iPlayer (use ExpatShield first), YouTube and other media sites.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=park+avenue+poverty&oq=park+avenue+poverty

and

http://video.pbs.org/video/2296684923

Take care everyone.

Subject: RE: BS: US heading for 'fiscal cliff' - HELP!!!
From: GUEST,999
Date: 27 Dec 12 - 03:30 PM

The Mayans missed y'all. One out of two ain't bad.

Subject: RE: BS: US heading for 'fiscal cliff' - HELP!!!
From: Bill D
Date: 27 Dec 12 - 03:20 PM

watch out!

Rudolph/Boehner

Subject: RE: BS: US heading for 'fiscal cliff' - HELP!!!
From: Greg F.
Date: 27 Dec 12 - 03:13 PM

Delete. Delete. Delete. Delete.

Subject: RE: BS: US heading for 'fiscal cliff' - HELP!!!
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Dec 12 - 03:03 PM

No wonder the USA is soscrewed up with leaders from these kind of abusive 'secret' (frat.) orgs. 'Dubya' Bush belonged to the Skull and Cross Bones or something like that. He dithered on gun control after a college shooting and did s*d all about it (see the news clips). Now we have the latest atrocity. Could it be that the NRA is also populated by these abusive couldn't-give-a-damn frat. members - all protecting each others' collective backsides? And hazing is illegal - huh - how many other frat. pledges need to die due to the excessive dictats from their pledge masters?

Subject: RE: BS: US heading for 'fiscal cliff' - HELP!!!
From: GUEST,CJB
Date: 27 Dec 12 - 02:53 PM

And this is the educational calibre of many of the decision makers:

http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/confessions-of-an-ivy-league-frat-boy-inside-dartmouths-hazing-abuses-20120328

Help!!!!

Subject: BS: US heading for 'fiscal cliff' - HELP!!!
From: GUEST,CJB
Date: 27 Dec 12 - 02:49 PM

And it could take the world down with it. Meanwhile concern is being widely expressed amongst the hapless American public that their 'democratically' elected representatives in Congress et al are enjoying a relaxed Christmas - sorry Festive - break rather than debating what to do about the situation.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20853624

Help!!!!!