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SilverSurfer

11/17/14 1:03 PM

#229962 RE: F6 #229959

The tax credit is not available for tax years after 2013 !!!!!!!!!!!!

BIG GOV making me unhappy !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

btw,,,do you agree with the study: Big Government Makes People Happy, 'Free Markets' Don't - ????

here is my study.... My family has had our own Health Savings Account type Personal Health Insurance for years ie...... Grandfathered.... and for many years we have gotten the tax credit for being covered. NOW - THANKS TO ACA we will get no tax break. Subsidy and Tax Credit only for those who signed up for the Exchange Marketplace plans. So,,, just as Gruber said... The healthy and covered pay for the Subsidy.... and if they had told us that up front there would have been OUTRAGE to the pols. Plus, just got notice that our premiums will double. Thanks A PANT LOAD ACA !!

http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/The-Health-Coverage-Tax-Credit-(HCTC)-Program
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fuagf

11/20/14 5:16 AM

#230051 RE: F6 #229959

Banks accept derivatives rule change to end 'too big to fail' scenario

By Huw Jones

LONDON Sat Oct 11, 2014 5:12pm EDT


A man walks past a building in the morning mist at London's financial district
of Canary Wharf September 16, 2014.

Credit: Reuters/Kevin Coombs

Related News

UPDATE 1-Banks to change rules governing derivatives market -FT
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/08/banks-derivatives-regulations-idUSL2N0S302I20141008
UPDATE 1-MOVES-Deutsche Bank hires Goldman exec as Americas compliance head
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/07/deutschebank-moves-elizabeth-ford-idUSL3N0S24W520141007
U.S., UK regulators want quick Deutsche Bank Libor settlement: reports
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/07/us-deutsche-bank-libor-idUSKCN0HV25U20141007
Bank of England toughens bank, insurance customer protection
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/06/boe-regulations-idUSL6N0S11G020141006

Analysis & Opinion

Call that money-printing? - http://blogs.reuters.com/edward-hadas/2014/10/08/call-that-money-printing/
Italian and Greek confidence votes - http://blogs.reuters.com/macroscope/2014/10/08/italian-and-greek-confidence-votes/

(Reuters) - The $700 trillion financial derivatives industry has agreed to a fundamental rule change from January to help regulators to wind down failed banks .. http://www.reuters.com/sectors/industries/overview?industryCode=128&lc=int_mb_1001 .. without destabilising markets .. http://www.reuters.com/finance/markets?lc=int_mb_1001.

The International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) and 18 major banks .. http://www.reuters.com/sectors/industries/overview?industryCode=128&lc=int_mb_1001 .. that dominate the market will now allow financial watchdogs to apply temporary stays to prevent a rush to close derivatives contracts if a bank runs into trouble, the ISDA said on Saturday.

A delay would give regulators time to ensure that critical parts of a bank, such as customer accounts, continue smoothly while the rest is wound down or sold off in an orderly way.

That would help to avoid the type of market chaos sparked by the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 and also end the problem of banks being considered too big to fail.

The Financial Stability Board (FSB), a regulatory task force for the Group of 20 economies (G20 .. http://www.reuters.com/subjects/g20?lc=int_mb_1001), had asked the ISDA to make the changes with the aim of ending the too-big-to-fail scenario in which banks are propped up with taxpayer money to avoid market disruption.

Under the new contract terms, default clauses in derivatives contracts such as interest rate or credit default swaps would be suspended for a maximum of 48 hours.

'EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS'

"Ending too-big-to-fail is going to be an evolutionary process, but the agreement of the first wave of banks to sign the protocol is a big step forward," ISDA Chief Executive Scott O'Malia said.

The ISDA template for millions of derivatives trades will now include the possibility of stays on both new and existing contracts, with the 18 leading players - including the likes of Credit Suisse (CSGN.VX .. http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=CSGN.VX) and Goldman Sachs Group (GS.N .. http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GS.N) - agreeing to change their contracts from January. Many derivatives are traded among banks.

"Well over 90 percent of the outstanding derivatives notionally held by the G18 banks will be covered with stays, which will give regulators some time to deal with a resolution of a bank in an orderly way," O'Malia said.

More banks are expected to follow suit as regulators across the G20 .. http://www.reuters.com/subjects/g20?lc=int_mb_1001 .. countries introduce new rules next year to require counterparties to derivatives trades to accept stays.

Mandatory rules will also mean that another big user of derivatives, the asset management industry, will have little choice but to accept stays.

Asset managers have resisted so far, arguing that they have a legal duty to their clients not to delay getting their money back from a failed bank and that agreeing to stays voluntarily could leave them open to lawsuits.

(Editing by David Goodman)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/11/us-banks-derivatives-regulations-idUSKCN0I00T720141011

I don't believe SilverSurfer's Zero Hedge ..
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=108335556 ..
contains any mention of the stitching of the financial system above. To do so, i'd guess, could be seen
to detract from the total collapse doom and gloom scenario to which Zero Hedge appears to be wedded.



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arizona1

01/12/15 10:33 AM

#230845 RE: F6 #229959

The Laffer Curve has flatlined



Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker believed in the Laffer Curve. It's coming back to bite him.

“I don’t want to say the Laffer theory is disproven, but it’s a difficult time to advance that way in Wisconsin because our revenue numbers aren’t as robust as we need,” said a senior Senate GOP leadership aide, adding that Republicans were disappointed that Walker tax cuts from earlier this year didn’t grow revenue as much as they predicted.

--Rachel Bade, Politico

There's only one upside to the fact that Republicans have complete control of so many state legislatures and can use them as incubators for arch-conservative policies: it gives the perfect opportunity to demonstrate that these same policies are blindingly wrong and produce bad outcomes for just about everyone. Case in point? The most famous economic theory ever devised on the back of a napkin, the Laffer Curve.

The Laffer Curve came about as the result of a lunch conversation in 1974 among conservative economist Arthur Laffer, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld. The curve in question is the relationship between tax revenues and tax rates—at zero percent, no tax revenue will be collected because no income is taxed, while at 100 percent, no revenue will be collected because there is no incentive to work if all income is confiscated. Somewhere in the middle is a sweet spot: the perfect rate of taxation at which revenue is maximized, and where any tax increases past that point will actually result in a decrease in revenue.

The Laffer Curve has been consistently used as justification for the supply-side belief that tax cuts will pay for themselves through the increased economic activity that they will create. This belief is no longer simply a theory, but is now official federal policy: the 114th Congress changed the rules for how budget bills are evaluated from static scoring to what is called "dynamic scoring," which will mask the actual cost of tax cuts by simply assuming that they will increase economic output.

Unfortunately for Laffer, the facts aren't bearing this out. The governors who brought him on as an adviser to their tax-cut schemes have been hard hit by results they did not expect.

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback brought on Arthur Laffer as an advisor to steer his radical experiment of cutting taxes to the bone under the assumption that the cuts would simply pay for themselves through economic expansion. The results, however, have been absolutely horrific: job growth on the Missouri side of the Kansas City metropolitan area is occurring at four times the rate on the Kansas side. Education is being vastly underfunded. And perhaps most tellingly, the state collected far less money in taxes than it expected in December, even after downgrading expectations. In other words, Laffer was wrong in every single way possible.

In Wisconsin, meanwhile, Republican Gov. Scott Walker has followed a path nearly has extreme as that of Brownback, but is being forced to scale his ambitions back because the theory just isn't working:

Earlier this year, just before enacting the half-billion-dollar tax cut, Walker said it was just the beginning — that he wanted to eliminate income taxes. Now, a representative of Walker, asked about the elimination plan said the governor “has only said that he would explore other areas of tax reform.”

The state has a projected $2.2 billion deficit for the next biennium, 2015 to 2017. There’s also a transportation funding problem.

Now, not even his top allies in the House think new cuts aren’t possible.

The situation is so bad in Wisconsin that to try to balance the budget in anticipation of a possible 2016 presidential campaign, Walker is rumored to be considering selling off public assets as a stopgap measure just to make the numbers look good. The contrast with states like California, which raised taxes to help balance its budget and cover a shortfall in education, couldn't be clearer: California's revenue is surging, while tax-cutting states are figuring out how to mitigate the damage.

The senior GOP leadership aide in Wisconsin may not want to admit it, but the Laffer theory as currently understood—that tax cuts always pay for themselves—is dead. Govs. Brownback and Walker killed it simply by implementing the theory and proving its lack of success. The funny part? The whole other side of the Laffer Curve is never discussed. Supply-side theorists who believe in the Laffer theory always assume that our tax rates are on the prohibitive side of the graph, where cutting taxes will increase the total amount of revenue collected. But the other side of the graph is the one where tax rates are lower than the one that would maximize revenue.

For believers in the Laffer Curve, then, the results from Kansas and Wisconsin don't necessarily disprove the theory. Instead, perhaps Brownback and Walker were simply wrong about what side of the curve their state's tax rates were on. If they were true believers, the sound Laffer theory solution would be to raise taxes as soon as possible.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/11/1356171/-The-Laffer-Curve-has-flatlined?showAll=yes