Our efforts to learn more about the private equity industry are revealing how determined public pension funds are to hiding as much as they can, even when they don’t have a legal leg to stand on.
Read more...Bitcoin is getting hammered today.
Read more...We told readers earlier this month that the IRS was well-nigh certain to deem Bitcoin to be property, not a currency, and that would deter its use in commerce. We got pushback from Bitcoin defenders, who tried several lines of argument, basically along the lines of “digital currencies are inevitable” and “the tax authorities are irrelevant”. Today, the IRS issued a release that states that it regards Bitcoin as tradeable property, which will make it cumbersome to use it in commercial transactions.
Read more...Yves here. I must confess I find it difficult to counter the simple-minded and inaccurate arguments of the deficit scaremongers. Joe Firestone offers some pointers
Read more...The great David Cay Johnston has obtained a letter written by a veteran IRS lawyer to 10 members of the Senate Finance Committee, alleging not only a gaggle workplace conduct violations but favoritism toward well-connected tax filers and even document fraud.
Read more...Warning to Bitcoin enthusiasts: if you airily try dismissing UCC Article 9 as a nothigburger, you’ve just established you are unqualified to comment on commercial transactions in the US. Read what follows and be warned.
Read more...Bitcoin is not a currency any more than gold bars or collectable baseball cards are. And that has serious implications for this “innovation”.
Read more...All this talk about the 99% versus the 1%? I say the easiest—and likely the most useful—thing to do is just forget the 1%.
Read more...Peculiarly, despite the importance of tax havens, a pathbreaking paper published in 2013 by Gabriel Zucman of the Paris School of Economics, The Missing Wealth of Nations: Are Europe and the U.S. Net Debtors or Net Creditors? (hat tip Dikaios Logos) has received perilous little attention. Perhaps that’s because, among other things, it undercuts the Bernanke-flattering claim that “global imbalances” were a major driver of the financial crisis.
Read more...Why Obama’s budget is yet another economic policy failure.
Read more...kayfabe: Term in pro wrestling. Kayfabe was the unsaid rule that the wrestlers should stay in character during the show and in public appearances in order to maintain a feeling of reality (albeit suspended) among the fans.
Read more...Yves here. This is a short, straightforward Real News Network interview with John Weeks, Professor Emeritus of the University of London, which dissects the logic, such as it is, by which neoliberals argue against taxes and for smaller government.
Read more...Inequality is currently a prominent topic of debate in Western democracies. In democratic countries, we might expect rising inequality to be partially offset by an increase in political support for redistribution. A new paper argues that the relationship between democracy, redistribution, and inequality is more complicated than that.
Read more...Yet another private equity tax swindle has come to light.
Read more...Obama is looking more and more like an ideal Republican president with every passing day.
Read more...