Internet sellers who don’t report their sales will no longer be under the radar. Starting next year, any bank or other payment settlement company that processes credit cards, debit cards, and electronic payments such as PayPal will have to issue information returns telling the IRS what merchants receive. The new returns are Form 1099-K, Merchant Card and Third-Party Payments. (Read more from auctionbytes.com)

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has published State Tax Changes in Response to the Recession:

The national recession has had such a devastating effect on state finances that states took in $87 billion less in tax revenue from October 2008 through September 2009 than they collected in the previous 12 months. This 11 percent decline, the steepest on record, resulted from the impact on tax collections of lost jobs, reduced wages, and lowered economic activity.

To recoup lost revenue, states have taken such actions as eliminating tax exemptions, broadening tax bases, and in some cases increasing rates as well as raising a number of fees.

(Read more from taxprof.typepad.com)

Mr. Geithner is quoted as saying, “Some on the left have fallen into a trap set by the Republicans, allowing voters to mistakenly think that the biggest part of the bank bailout had come under Obama rather Bush.” Mr. Geithner should know – as he spearheaded the saving of banks and other financial institutions under both Bush and Obama. In fact, it’s the continuation of George Bush’s policies by other means that really has erstwhile Obama supporters upset.

Geithner also suggests that his critics compare government spending on different kinds of programs under President Obama: “By any measure, the Main Street stuff dwarfs the Wall Street stuff.” This insults our intelligence. Wall Street created a massive crisis and we consequently lost 8 million jobs; any responsible government would have tried hard to offset this level of damage with all available means. This includes fiscal measures that will end up increasing out privately held government debt, as a percent of GDP, by around 40 percentage points. It’s not the fiscal stimulus, broadly defined, that is Mr. Geithner’s problem – it’s the lack of accountability for the bankers and politicians who got us into this mess.

and, most notably:

“we saved the economy but kind of lost the public doing it” No, Tim. They Saved the Big Banks But Kind Of Lost The Economy Doing It.

(Read more from baselinescenario.com)

This economy requires confidence the same way that continued participation in a game of three card monte requires confidence.

Keynesian Predictions vs. American History

Tom Woods is a very lucid and exciting speaker. I love this particular lecture because it reveals some monumental bits of hidden history.

Lecture begins @ 5:00.

@8:20 Tom Woods talks about how Keynesians predicted massive unemployment and a depression in 1946 because of demobilization of the military and huge reductions in government spending. In fact, 1946 was the single greatest economic year for the United States.

@18:00 Tom Woods talk about influential American economist Paul Samuelson who repeatedly praised the Soviet Union in an influential Economic text widely used in classrooms from 1973 to 1989. Samuelson wrote, among other things, that Soviet political oppression might be worth its economic gains.

In the 1989 edition he wrote “Contrary to what many skeptics had earlier believed, the Soviet economy is proof that a socialist command economy can function and even thrive.”

There was gigantic Soviet propaganda in the United States, and I like when people have the courage to point it out.

Technology and Social Change

I love this lecture by Jeffrey Tucker for its last ten minutes. Skip to 20:00 if you just want the best of it. He dispels the myths that progress is driven by government force or even by great individuals. Eli Whitney did not invent the cotton gin (people have been ginning cotton since the 5th century), and the Wright brothers did not invent the airplane. (They got one little patent, and sued the pants off everyone else working on airplanes. This set American aviation back so far that the U.S. had to buy planes from France during WWI.)

Progress, he argues, is made in little steps by ordinary people imitating success and making modest improvements. I found this very inspirational.

“It appears that the more liberty we loose, the less people are able to imagine how liberty might work. . . People can no longer imagine a world in which we might be secure without massive invasions of our privacy at every step.” -Lew Rockwell.

On 9 December 2009 Representative Ron Paul introduced H.R. 4248 the Free Competition in Currency Act of 2009. This Act has the potential to impact the investment world more than any other legislation that has been enacted for decades. The impact on the bond market, Treasury market, stock market and general economy would be tremendous and disruptive.

The aims of the Act are fairly simple to (1) repeal federal law which currently decrees unconstitutional forms of currency legal tender, (2) prohibit federal taxes on gold, silver, platinum, palladium or rhodium bullion, (3) prohibit States from assessing tax or fees on any currency or monetary instrument used in interstate or foreign commerce that has legal tender status under the United States Constitution, (4) repeal federal criminal code pertaining to gold, silver or other metal coins and nullify any previous convictions under those codes.

Like he has often been when attempting to restore the checks and balances of the Constitution on this issue with H.R. 4248 Dr. Ron Paul is the lone voice in the wilderness and has no co-sponsors. (Read more from news.goldseek.com)

See also: Obama says stimulus bill saved troubled economy

Leviathan government requires companies to be politically connected if they want to succeed.

@ 0:00 – Half Trillion $ per year trade deficit. Our government continues to do all it can to prevent Americans from saving.

@ 0:45 – Bailing out Greece creates moral hazard for nations and creditors & punishes responsible states.

@ 3:45 – Jobs bill & payroll tax holiday is a gimmick. It creates incentive to fire someone and hire a replacement at a discount. All the bill does is let politicians take credit for hires that will probably happen anyway.

@ 8:00 – This alludes to the Fed’s reluctance to raise interest rates. The Fed has painted itself into a corner. It needs to raise interest rates to stop bank from leveraging and lending out the massive quantities of money which have been printed, which would precipitate the collapse of the collar. But our phony economy and the big wall street firms with rule Washington are surviving on the easy money of artificially low interest rates. Peter Schiff discusses the Fed’s latest gimmick — paying banks to not lend money. It won’t work.

@ 9:20 – The Fed’s claim that they haven’t lost money on TARP is another obfuscation. They’ve bought crap from irresponsible banks. They won’t take a loss until they try to sell the crap.

See also: Greece is a poor country full of rich people [tax evaders]

Seems Greece can’t collect from its own citizens, so it’s going to collect from other Europeans.

Akaka (D-HI)
Alexander (R-TN)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bayh (D-IN)
Bennet (D-CO)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Bond (R-MO)
Brown (D-OH)
Burr (R-NC)
Burris (D-IL)
Byrd (D-WV)
Cardin (D-MD)
Carper (D-DE)
Casey (D-PA)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Collins (R-ME)
Conrad (D-ND)
Corker (R-TN)
Dodd (D-CT)
Durbin (D-IL)
Enzi (R-WY)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Gillibrand (D-NY)
Graham (R-SC)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hagan (D-NC)
Hatch (R-UT)
Inouye (D-HI)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johanns (R-NE)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kerry (D-MA)
Kirk (D-MA)
Klobuchar (D-MN)
Kohl (D-WI)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Lieberman (ID-CT)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Lugar (R-IN)
McCaskill (D-MO)
McConnell (R-KY)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Murray (D-WA)
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Nelson (D-NE)
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Reid (D-NV)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Schumer (D-NY)
Shaheen (D-NH)
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Tester (D-MT)
Udall (D-CO)
Udall (D-NM)
Voinovich (R-OH)
Warner (D-VA)
Webb (D-VA)
Wyden (D-OR)

(source)