Steadfast Finances

 Taxes         No comments

Did you know that you might be paying corporate taxes and not even know it? Don’t bother checking your 1040 for an accounting error. If you aren’t self-employed, but paying corporate tax rates, you are never going to know for sure thanks to something known as tax incidence. Tax incidence is a term used in government to define the party who pays the financial burden of a given policy. Just because a piece of legislation outlines a tax or fee to one entity doesn’t mean that the identified entity bears the brunt of the legislation. Taxable entities and individuals often have the ability to shift legislative burdens to others, which means it’s important for policymakers to understand where the buck stops before crafting legislation that has unintended consequences.

 Infographics & Chartology,Politics         4 comments

If you’re a member of Gen X and Gen Y, this is probably the scariest chart you will see in 2011, and possibly, right up to the time you’re old and gray. As you can clearly see, the crony capitalism, fake prosperity, recycled Keynesianism memes et al., have been a great benefit to the U.S. economy… right [...]

 Consumer Education,Taxes         8 comments

Many years ago, John Madden once gave a memorable quote about the necessity for speed at the skill positions in the NFL: Speed: can’t teach it, can’t coach it, better draft it! It would appear that General Electric, a “too big to fail” corporation, has a similar philosophy in paying their corporate taxes… if you [...]

 Business Trends,Small Business,Taxes         No comments

When speaking of financial innovation or the future of money, rarely does the downward trend of paying cold hard cash come up. DiscountWithCash.com hopes to change that… DiscountWithCash.com will be a database of small businesses that rewards its customers for paying cash, and needs your help in finding them. So if you know of a [...]

 Banking,Financial Crisis,Public Awareness         No comments

Only in America! Not only did taxpayers bail out Fannie and Freddie and overpay (still overpaying) the executives, but we’re also paying their legal bills. Kinda like paying the Captain of the Titantic an overly generous salary for ramming the iceberg, rescuing him from certain death, then paying his legal bills after the families of [...]

 Politics,Taxes         No comments

Sobering words from David Stockman, former Director of the Office of Management and Budget (1981–1985) under President Ronald Reagan. (FYI, this guy is widely considered one of the major, if not the major, architects of Reaganomics.) In 1981 the national debt was $1 trillion. Today, national debt it is $14 trillion. The economy in the [...]

 Politics,Taxes         2 comments

Call me a cynic, but if ever there is a better example of how demosclerotic the “greatest country in the history of the world” [via Mitt Romney] really is… Top senators from both parties indicated Sunday that a deal was likely soon on temporarily extending Bush-era tax cuts for all Americans, along with unemployment benefits [...]

 Politics,Taxes         3 comments

Any young person better start paying attention. This may not be the greatest generation, it might be the greediest generation. Sober up, or sleep in the streets. – Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, Bipartisan Deficit Commission A funny thing happens when you give people money, perks and benefits… once you give it to them, they [...]

 ETFs,Investing 101,Politics         2 comments

Like it or not, political policy, and the uncertainty it creates, is a major influence in the financial markets. Case in point: the massive sell off in municipal bond funds and ETFs, in what is usually a historical snooze fest, over the last two weeks when President Obama caved to political pressure by extending the [...]

 Real Estate         No comments

I’ve purposely avoided discussing ForeclosureGate, even though I discuss real estate quite a bit, for the sole reason that I’ll write a 5000 word rant on the illusion (delusion?) that a largely deregulated financial market and under-the-table derivatives market would not implode upon itself. Much like a parent leaving a hedonistic teenager at home alone [...]

 Infographics & Chartology,Real Estate         No comments

Excellent illustration displaying the interwoven connection, or feedback loop, of real estate to poverty rates, crime, education, property taxes and home values by Jessica Hagy of Indexed.com. I’m a major believer in the idea that visual illustrations, and even on-demand web based video, can be significantly more powerful than text based content because it: transports [...]

 Economy,Politics,Taxes         2 comments

One of the strange things about contemporary American politics is that we currently have a society who wants change in our government, will vote for any Joe Schmo who promises to enact anything resembling change, but won’t budge when it comes to changing the policies (e.g. monetary benefits) currently in place. The proponents of those [...]