Tax Time for Some and Not Others

The Bernie Sanders Ten, per release....

1) Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009. Exxon not only paid no federal income taxes, it actually received a $156 million rebate from the IRS, according to its SEC filings.

2) Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, although it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of nearly $1 trillion.

3) Over the past five years, while General Electric made $26 billion in profits in the United States, it received a $4.1 billion refund from the IRS.

4) Chevron received a $19 million refund from the IRS last year after it made $10 billion in profits in 2009.

5) Boeing, which received a $30 billion contract from the Pentagon to build 179 airborne tankers, got a $124 million refund from the IRS last year.

6) Valero Energy, the 25th largest company in America with $68 billion in sales last year received a $157 million tax refund check from the IRS and, over the past three years, it received a $134 million tax break from the oil and gas manufacturing tax deduction.

7) Goldman Sachs in 2008 only paid 1.1 percent of its income in taxes even though it earned a profit of $2.3 billion and received an almost $800 billion from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department.

8) Citigroup last year made more than $4 billion in profits but paid no federal income taxes. It received a $2.5 trillion bailout from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury.

9) ConocoPhillips, the fifth largest oil company in the United States, made $16 billion in profits from 2007 through 2009, but received $451 million in tax breaks through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction.

10) Over the past five years, Carnival Cruise Lines made more than $11 billion in profits, but its federal income tax rate during those years was just 1.1 percent. - Chicago Sun Times

Just saying. Big business really needs a tax cut to create jobs. Nobody said where they would create them though did they? Like this on Facebook to speak loud and clear on the bullshit that is trickle down taxes. Big business pays less so that you can pay more. It works if you are a Republican! We all should endorse this plan of corporations making billions and paying little if no taxes to make more jobs anywhere but here in America because it is the right thing to do... NOT!

If you think it is wrong that big corporations pay little or no taxes and yet make billions of dollars in profits then please "LIKE" this and pass it on to everyone you know on Facebook!!!! Maybe we could balance the federal budget if everyone was on the same playing field! There is no common sense in this form of taxation. NONE!

Papamoka

Big Bank Buyout

There is a probable solution to our nations banking crisis that started out with all of those bad loans that then turned into millions of foreclosures. Keep in mind you have to think like a wheeler and dealer like billionaire’ Donald Trump or Warren Buffet to make this proposition work.

If Bear Sterns could be bought for $2 per share then I think it’s possible for this blogger to enter the high finance games of Wall Street. First off you have to read this piece over at Reuters…

Goldman, Lehman outlooks cut to "negative" by S&P
By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc's and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc's credit rating outlooks were cut on Friday by Standard & Poor's, which said volatile markets could result in lower profit and revenue.

S&P revised its outlook to "negative" from "stable" on Goldman's "AA-minus" and Lehman's "A-plus" long-term credit ratings, suggesting a possible downgrade in one to two years.

(Snip)

Banks have suffered from lower earnings and share prices as the housing crisis, a slowing economy and worries about credit quality led investors to stop buying a wide range of riskier securities. This has cut into revenue from trading, arranging debt offerings, and advising on mergers.

Several banks have also been cutting jobs, and Bear Stearns Cos agreed last Sunday to a $2-per-share buyout by JPMorgan Chase & Co after a cash crisis.

S&P still has a negative outlook on Merrill Lynch & Co's "A-plus" credit rating, and expects to decide within 30 days whether to downgrade Morgan Stanley's "AA-minus" rating. The credit rating agency said net revenue in the industry may decline 20 percent to 30 percent this year. - Reuters

Keep in mind that my plan to buyout one of the nations largest investment banks will involve a little principal I like to call the meek shall inherit the earth. In this case I’m talking about all of us that have been victims to bad loans, poor decisions and foreclosure on our homes. Believe it or not we all hang out at the local diner sipping coffee and blaming Wall Street for our lot in life. For the sake of argument lets assume that there are ten million of us. It’s a big diner!

All we need to buyout Goldman Sach’s and Lehmans is fifty-one percent of the shares so right off the bat we have a 49% discount. All of the members of our little club have to contribute to the plan for this to work so here goes. Below is my top secret plan for us to finance our plan. Remember this is top secret so don’t tell anyone.

We’ve all gotten those flyers in the mail that you get $25 if you open a new savings account, we each open an account and pool the results. Then we look for all the banks offering free toasters and we open an account and sell the ill gotten toasters on Ebay for $50 each. (Really nice top of the line toasters with the assumption that there will be a bidding war for all ten million of them.) Again pooling all of the money. Seeing that we are all going to be high finance bankers we are going to need reliable transportation to get to Wall Street. We each buy a new car and pool the $1000 cash rebate. Before we give the dealer our old clunker of a car we each find $10 in spare change in it. We need a Green side to this buy out so everyone has to collect $100 worth of bottle and can deposits from the side of the road. Since we are going to be dealing with stocks and bonds we are all going to need new computers so we each buy a top of the line computer with a $400 rebate on the computer and a $100 rebate on all of the software.

This is the really creative part of the financing… We each sign up for that beta testing for tracking emails that Microsoft is undertaking. That should pay each of us $2000 and Bill Gates will thank each and everyone of us for helping him out. Next up, we each email back all of those crooked bankers in Africa that have $30,000,000.00 sitting in dead men’s checking accounts.

If my math is correct it looks like out little group of dead beat losers has to much money now. That’s a nice problem to have. It looks like we can take Goldman Sach’s and Lehman private at $4 per share. Oh, I almost forgot, we each have a $1 off coupon! With the change we have left over it looks like we can buy Canada and rent it back to them.

The Donald will be so proud of us…

Papamoka

Feel free to link to or borrow this post…

Cross posted at MichaelLinnJones.com

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F.B.I. Investigating Home Lending

Don’t for a minute think that this post is about you the disenfranchised foreclosed on former first time home owner. Even though you were told by your lending professional, abandoned on the side of the road used car salesman, small appliance repair, and fortune teller that you could afford your recently foreclosed home, this story is not about you. Justice is never about you so this post is not about anyone at or below the middle class income level that lost their home to dubious lending practices.

One thing is a given in America, the only justice is for the millionaires that can afford to demand it. All of the bum loans that the mortgage lending and banking industry gave out like free cheese to the poor was not a big enough problem to look into. And yet when the millionaire investors start loosing their shirts it just might be a problem.

F.B.I. Opens Subprime Inquiry

By REUTERS
Published: January 29, 2008

WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 (Reuters) — The F.B.I. has opened investigations into 14 corporations as part of a crackdown on improper subprime lending, agency officials said on Tuesday.

F.B.I. officials told reporters that the inquiry involved potential violations including accounting fraud and insider trading.

Separately, Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley said government investigators were seeking information from them about their subprime mortgage activities. But it was not immediately clear if the disclosures by the three banks were linked to the F.B.I. probes.

F.B.I. officials did not identify the companies they were looking at, but said the investigation reached across the industry to include developers, subprime lenders, companies that securitized loans and investment banks that held them.

The cases could lead to potential civil or criminal charges, the officials said.
The F.B.I. said it was investigating the cases with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has opened about three dozen investigations into the subprime market collapse.

Targets of the S.E.C. probe include the investment banks Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch, as well as the Swiss bank UBS and the bond insurer MBIA. It was not clear whether any of those companies were involved in the F.B.I. investigation.

The S.E.C., which has formed an internal subprime-mortgage task force, is looking at how financial firms priced mortgage-based securities and whether they should have told investors earlier about the declining value of those securities. - New York Times

All of the businesses that sold the loans to you the former homeowner hardly ever hold on to those loans. They sell them to bigger banks and bigger banks bundle them all together and sell them as investment vehicles for the mega rich. Now that the loans are being defaulted on in larger than life numbers those investment vehicles are up on cinder blocks with tickets on them from the board of health as a public nuisance. AKA losing money for the mega rich people and businesses that invest in them.

What the F.B.I. is investigating at the banks is the fact that the SEC has some serious rules about selling bovine by product as any kind of investment product. Especially, when those products are purchased by the mega dough bucks people at the top of the income earners heap.

Now it’s officially a Subprime Lending crisis! Now let’s see who goes to minimum security, weekends off for god behavior prison? Maybe when these guys have to loose their golf handicap they might see what justice is really all about.

One more note, Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have all dropped in shareholder value between $15 and $20 in the last three months. Things that make you go hmmmm or screw them too?

Papamoka

Feel free to link to or borrow this post…

Cross posted at MichaelLinnJones.com

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