The first paragraph of this article made me cringe

[Zebo]

<sarcasm> Yeah, things were great, but then this $70 billion to maintain the same cut for the "rich" that everyone else got is ruined it! </sarcasm>

The "tax cut for the rich" is the political equivalent of a meaningless feature list checkmark on a video card box. The amount is a pittance compared to the deficit, it's not even worth spending a bunch of time on, we have bigger issues to deal with..... but it became a symbolic item for both sides: the repubs wanted to show they would not let taxes get raised - on anyone... while the dems wanted to tell their base they were doing whatever they could to sock it to the "rich".

Bottom line, the $70 billion is meaningless, just a political hot potato. The real issue is the $900 billion we just added to the credit card balances of our children

I have a Finnish lawyer looking into getting all the collectibles in my safe into country so my kids don't have to worry about it.

Put a fork in it, she's done.

 

[bamacre]

Why do we pay taxes at all?

It is absolutely no coincidence the Federal Reserve and the income tax were brought to us during the same time. Our government's legal authority to tax us equates to being collateral for our debt, rather than inflating away our debt being the only option.

 

[child of wonder]

Is the "Making Work Pay" credit disappearing or being extended?

 

[The-Noid]

DJN - Moody's "We have long-term concerns about the US rating outlook and they're not being addressed."

Downgrade you fools, bring some credibility back to your worthless organizations. Just because it would ruin all the insurance surplus and make banks change their IPS doesn't matter. Anyone have a CDS quote on UST 5 or 10-year? I am out of the office the rest of the day. I would expect to see 4 or 5 bps of widening on the news though.

 

[Infohawk]

The uninformative title of your thread makes me cringe.

 

[PingSpike]

Hey guys, I have a question...if my wife gives birth to our children in a Canadian hospital, do they get dual US and Canadian citizenship? It's to late for me, but I'd like to do better for my own children.

 

[brencat]

Why do we pay taxes at all?

If they can gin up 2.1 trillion what's another 1.2 tillion which is current receipts?

Would save a lot of time and paper.

A client mentioned to me today that gridlock historically leads to the Treasury getting raided. Compromise becomes another fancy word for "charge it to the national credit card" as Dems and Repubs basically get what they want... more spending and lower revenue coming in.

Expect the deficit to utterly explode over the next 2 years. We are well on our way to global hyperinflation.

 

[The-Noid]

CBOE Treasury 10 year yield up 23bps...

What is 5-year US CDS doing bren?

Upper left vol has to be having a good day though.

Even with the huge bid by the Federal reserve you can't hold rates down forever. Like the run in munis of last month this is credit related this is not interest rate or inflation related.

Everyone is hedged 90 ways to inflation, whether it be 5y5y, reals, rate futures, swaptions, and commodities. This is credit related.

 

[Exterous]

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/12/06/obama.taxes.debates/index.html?hpt=C1



So the compromise was to cut the income while increasing the spending... Lovely.

Fuck. I heard this in passing this morning and I had hoped I heard it wrong and it was only a 13 week extension on unemployment benefits. (Which would be bad enough)

Goddamnit - how is this in any way a good idea?! Shit - one or the other would be bad enough but both? They're not even using lube when they rape us now!

Bipartisanship: When the party of evil and the party of stupid get together and do something evil and stupid.

It just goes to show that our politicians are so out of touch it's terrifying. Not scary, not infuriating - terrifying. If something doesn't change we are fucked as a country

 

[JD50]

ROFL repubs are here to reign in the deficit

You do realize that the Republicans haven't take over yet, don't you?

 

[werepossum]

You do realize that the Republicans haven't take over yet, don't you?

I think he may have to set his bar lower, like maybe daylight versus dark . . .

 

[brencat]

What is 5-year US CDS doing bren?

Closed 39.3/44.2. Composite 41.8, +0.3 vs yesterday

Hope this is what you're looking for.

 

[chucky2]

I think possibly the only thing to save the US at this point is one of two things:

1.) Someone nukes Washington DC. This is the only sure fire way to get rid of all of Congress, and a large part of lobbyists and entrenched political system, all at once. Replacing Congress and/or lobbyists onsey twosey with somewhat good candidates, only to have them become more corrupt as time go on, and have the system never change because one or two isn't enough by orders of magnitude, won't work. So this option 1 would be preferable.

2.) A conventional - hopefully - WWIII, with China. Given their size, values, and proximity, they'll take control of asian countries close to them, such as Burma, Vietnam, N. Korea (probably S. Korea too unfortunately), Laos, Thailand, quite possibly even Japan depending how much the US can commit. With our slave labor (relative to us at least) manufacturing base gone, as well as our environmental manufacturing dumping ground, we'll have to source our product elsewhere. The hope would be that it'd be here/North America, and not some new cheap sh1thole like Africa.

It's just seeming less and less likely America has the will - populace and/or political - to save itself.

Chuck

 

[BoberFett]

Bipartisanship: When the party of evil and the party of stupid get together and do something evil and stupid.

 

[The-Noid]

Closed 39.3/44.2. Composite 41.8, +0.3 vs yesterday

Hope this is what you're looking for.

Weird no real blowout, would have figured it would have been a lot worse. Traded in the 35-45 range for quite a while now.

 

[RbSX]

Hey guys, I have a question...if my wife gives birth to our children in a Canadian hospital, do they get dual US and Canadian citizenship? It's to late for me, but I'd like to do better for my own children.

We have too many immigrants coming here already, we honestly cannot take anymore.

If I had it my way we'd close the fucking border.

 

[Acanthus]

You do realize that the Republicans haven't take over yet, don't you?

Err republicans in current seats didn't win on that platform?

Aren't we supposed to be doing the will of the American people? Who, based on the elections, want the deficit reigned in?