Wednesday, April 2, 2008

"HEADS" THEY WIN, "TAILS" WE LOSE

As usual, Robert Reich does an excellent job explaining why the Big Financial players are walking away with Big Bucks, while our economy and our wallets take the hit for the very poor (and dumb) decisions the Big Guys made ...

Some of the dollars I'm sending to Washington are now being used to backstop Wall Street investment bankers, hedge fund and private equity managers, and anybody else associated with a borrower that's too big to fail. The reason they're too big to fail is they've borrowed so much from me and from you - from our pension funds and money-market funds - that if they went bust, our savings would disappear ... The reason they've been able to borrow so much from us without putting up much of their own capital is they're unregulated, and don't have to put up their own money. The tax code also rewards them for borrowing rather than investing, by letting them deduct interest payments on the money they borrow. The tax code also allows them to treat the earnings they get on the investments they make with the money you and I lend them [because our tax dollars subsidize their deductions] as capital gains rather than ordinary income.
It's not much longer, so read the entire link here.

- Mark

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