Hell Freezes Over As Wall Street Calls For Tax Increases

In a stunning admission of the obvious, a majority of Wall Street bond dealers believe spending cuts alone cannot solve the U.S. budget deficit and tax increases must be part of the mix.There is unfortunately no room for compromise with Republicans. U.S House speaker John Boehner has said tax increases are off the table, “NO NEW TAXES.” They aren’t even willing to reduce or cut subsidies to oil and gas corporations.“I would ask Republicans to come up with new revenues that don’t undermine incentives to work and invest. And I would ask Democrats to recast entitlements in a way that doesn’t compromise the social safety net,” said Bob DiClemente, head of U.S. economic and market analysis at Citigroup in New York, according to Reuters.

This admission comes as no surprise to liberals and progressives who put forward a budget called, the “People’s Budget”, which cuts spending AND raises taxes while preserving our safety net.While the GOP is mired in tea party tantrums, Wall Street and progressives have found common ground, hell has officially frozen over.This Wall Street announcement comes on the heels of an article I reported on earlier showing that the United States is actually one of the lowest taxed countries in the industrialized world.

In that article, I reported that the United States tax base is 24% of GDP, third from the bottom in the OECD, only Mexico and Chile have a lower tax percentage than us.We do not have a spending problem in this country. We have a revenue problem exasperated by the recession and generous tax cuts to the very wealthy. Once the economy starts growing, the tax base will grow and the deficit will disappear.
Republicans will continue to cater to the fringe and oppose any and all tax increases. This obviously is due to their ideology that tax increases will kill job growth and tax decreases create job growth, but both arguments have been proven false.Wall St. wasn’t specific on what taxes needed to go up and by how much, but I can almost guarantee that capital gains will remain the same or reduced under their plan and increases will occur on excise tax and income tax on the middle class.

In fact, bond dealers don’t want the increase for the good of the country. They are bond dealers. They buy US bonds and if the US government defaults, they lose money. Wall Street is still a self interest group, nothing has changed, but it’s nice to hear them admit something that liberals have been saying all along.
http://www.politicususa.com/en/wall-street-taxes

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I thought it was the approaching storm, I guess I was wrong.:rofl:

The disagreement between them and Democrats and Main Street is on WHO to raise taxes on.

:thumbsup:

Zactly..

Plus or minus a bit depending on how you look at it..

TRANSLATION: We need more taxes, but not on the rich, whose wealth "creates jobs" and winds up being invested. Raise taxes on the middle class and remove the loophole that allow those "lucky duckies" among the working poor to avoid paying taxes just because they earn too little.

Don't think that's what he means? Wait and see.

Allow all the Bush cuts to die as a "compromise" for adding a VAT and whatever regressive booby traps they can saddle us with.

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Duh. Everyone knows this. Even the Republicans.

Fewer taxes, fewer subsidies.

Let's raise taxes! We need more skooling.

I guess we're not shoveling them money fast enough and we need a little more to fork over!

Wall Street/Big Finance are CREDITORS. They're the people who hold our home mortgages, our commercial loans, Treasury bills, etc.

If they allow the value of the dollar to be destroyed by inflation (by, e.g. too much money-printing) that impacts the value of the money they're owed back by the rest of society.

So it's not just what you say, but also *when* you say it. People who were saying "keep spending, baby!" were serving Wall Street interests back when the debt was relatively low (note it was Reagan who really got the financial insanity rolling). People who are saying cut spending and/or raise taxes now, are serving the interests of Wall Street.

So the idea that the interests of the super-rich are served only by tax cuts, or only by deregulation, for that matter, is not correct. Their scams are far more complex and clever than that. Deficit spending has benefited them so far because they're the folks who are in the business of debt-monetization. But at some point, like a loan-shark, they will turn off the spigot of easy money and easy credit, and demand we pay back what we owe. Probably when they can claim everything we have.

Taxes: Whatever the nominal rate, the super-rich who have access to off-shore accounts, expensive accountants and tax attorneys who can set up clever tax shelters, etc., will pay way, way less than that. So higher taxes will disproportionately fall on the middling-rich.

Regulations: can be used to protect the environment, and consumers, but they can also be used by Big Business interests (think "lobbyist written legislation") to cartelize and monopolize industries. I.e. by artificially making the barrier of entry higher, so they don't have to face competition from small mom-and-pop operations.

But the middle class cuts need to go too.

not them

here in Canada.